In the penultimate book of Sue Townsend’s series, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Adrian Mole tells his girlfriend, Daisy, that he supports the invasion of Iraq, and is informed by her that, “It’s like being told that somebody you love secretly votes Tory. You can never look at them the same way again”. He makes a few attempts to reason with her, realises that he’s fighting a losing battle and moves on to dodging questions about his impending marriage to Marigold.

The extract is less than a page long and yet it still succinctly summarises the dynamic of relationships in which each partner votes for an opposing party. Both characters reconsider their relationship, even if only momentarily, because of their conflicting political beliefs, although thankfully for Adrian and Daisy, everything turns out okay in the end and they prove that having different political opinions in a relationship is hard, but doable.

Almost. Sometimes. This time last year, my interest in politics extended about as far as, “Oh, David Willets has been told to ‘Fuck Off’ by some protesters”. My boyfriend this time last year, however? He was a staunch Ukip supporter.

Admittedly, we broke up because I’m a needy megalomaniac who’s a nightmare to be with at the best of times. But when we first ‘discussed’ (read and fought over) politics at the start of our relationship, even with my lack of knowledge, I still found myself, like Daisy, looking at him in a completely different way.

The clash between my politics – first, ignorant; later, left wing – and his was an endless source of friction between us and of course wasn’t helped by my immediate thought, mid-discussion, which can briefly be summarised as, “Shit, I’m dating a homophobic racist who probably thinks my place is in the kitchen”.

Fortunately, this certainly wasn’t the case. My ex was intelligent, rational and had what he felt to be, and what often seemed to me, good justification for his conservative politics. Yet differences in political opinion are often symptomatic of wider dissimilarities and, in our case, ‘discussions’ about politics revealed cracks between us that were nigh on impossible to address. For instance, when we disagreed about immigration and the EU, since it seemed that neither of us was directly affected by what we were discussing, we let it drop.

A few months later, however, an argument over cuts to foreign aid was harder to let go. Another debate over state funding of education and the worth of my whimsical arts degree, in comparison to his sensible, employable, science one, resulted in my screeching, “It’s fundamentally a good thing!” at the top of my voice.

And if that weren’t enough, a row that culminated with the line, “Even if you were the main breadwinner, it’s not a man’s job to stay at home and raise children” (and him promptly being asked to leave) was a never-ending source of conflict right up until the end of our relationship.

Like Daisy, in light of this, I found myself regularly reconsidering our relationship, even if only briefly, and I’m sure he did too. I’m sure that for every time I asked myself, “Can I really be with someone who thinks we shouldn’t provide foreign aid?” he asked himself, “Do I really want to be with someone this naïve and this stupid?”

The reality was that like any other difference in a relationship, our political differences made my ex and I question whether we were really compatible and whether we really wanted to be together. Evidently, the answer was no. However, if there were ever an argument in favour of the relevance of politics, the extent to which you are defined by the party you support, the values you deem important and the policies you agree and disagree with is a surprising one for a society in which few of us explicitly define ourselves by our political persuasion.

A year later, my ex and I have both moved on from arguing with one another about whether our country needs an immigration cap or not and, more importantly, at least one good thing has come of it. Dating someone with the opposite political beliefs made me realise what my own political beliefs actually were.

So next Thursday, I won’t be voting for Ukip, or the Tories. And hopefully, my vote will cancel out another tick in a different box, made by someone I should probably thank for making me sit up and take an interest in the first place.

@MorwennaJones