Avoiding the news when married to a news junkie

October 13, 2017 6:59 AM

While my husband and I agree politically, I am having a hard time emotionally with current events and he is...not so much. We used to both be interested and involved - now he is more invested in it, and I feel the need to pull back from it. How can I navigate this and protect myself while maintaining our otherwise good relationship?

I'm a lot more emotional than he is generally, I'm more anxious/depressive overall, and I'm terrible at compartmentalizing. I'm still interested in the news intellectually, but it's making me miserable to follow it closely (to the point where I'm considering hiding the MF political threads, blocking all social media for at least large parts of the day, and possibly taking even more drastic measures).

He is active in local politics, interested in national politics, active on social media, and responds to the situation by becoming more informed and getting more active. It doesn't affect him nearly as much, at least not that I've observed - he manages to be generally optimistic about the long term. I find this commendable and admirable, but the reality is that I don't want to discuss these topics with him anymore, or at least I want to discuss them less than he wants to.

This is difficult because up until recently, this was one of our main topics of conversation! I am not really sure how get around this. I like that we are close and that he wants to share things with me. I don't want to shoot down that impulse to connect. I don't want to edit him, or make him feel like he has to walk on eggshells around me. But I also feel like I have to protect myself and my mental health, and be more controlled about how I approach the media in general. I don't want to get blindsided by "hey, did you hear the latest awful thing?" while we're chilling after dinner.

Obviously, I'm planning to talk about it with him, and yes, I'm looking at other ways to improve my mental health overall. :) I'm just curious if anyone else is dealing with this kind of issue in their relationships (or friendships), and how you've dealt with it.

Thanks all!

posted by Knicke to Human Relations (10 answers total)

Best answer: My husband stopped listening to the news after the election, and I have gotten more engaged. We discussed this as an emotional, self-preservation sort of need. We are open about it, and though we still discuss politics, we have a sort-of-enforced rule that That Man's name is not to be used outright, and that we refrain from all political discussion after 6pm. I inform him of important developments, but I just have to respect that we all have our ways of coping.
posted by RedEmma at 7:08 AM on October 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I'm dealing with it with friends, where I'm generally the more political one, and I respect their need for self-care by just not talking about politics with them. Your husband has other outlets for those conversations and that activism, which is great! You don't have to be all things to each other.
posted by lazuli at 7:09 AM on October 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Best answer: When my spouse wants to express himself about the latest awfulness in the news, I’ll let him vent for a couple of minutes, and then I’ll redirect the conversation by saying “kittens are nice” or “puppies are nice”, he’ll respond “yes, kittens are very nice,” and we’ll go on our way. I forget how it started, but it developed over a period of time as a way of saying “I want to keep engaging with you, but I don’t have the emotional energy to deal with that topic.” He’s also found other interlocutors in our social circles who are happy to have long, intense conversations about politics, while I’m elsewhere in the room talking with someone else.
posted by matildaben at 7:19 AM on October 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Ha ha, at my house we are in theory on a "conversations about news" break and it's hard.

But...a suggestion that seems to be working a bit for us is to do more non-news stuff together. Watch more movies, watch a show together, go to the bookstore or the museum or basically anywhere where there's something to talk about that is not the news. Or start following something non-news on the internet that you can both talk about - a frequently updated site, or a site with a lot of personalities.

Not only does this give us something more to talk about, it helps fill the brain space that "OMG everything is worse than I can ever remember it being" normally fills for us. When we're both paying attention to Hobbyist Site, it becomes much more automatic to chat about that instead of updating each other on how things are going to hell.
posted by Frowner at 7:24 AM on October 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Also, planning things together, whether real things or not, fun or not. "How are we going to find someone to fix the roof", "what indoor house projects can we do this winter", "where shall we go on our annual autumn Day In The Country"...planning is absorbing and fills some of the "talking about real things in the world" place.
posted by Frowner at 7:25 AM on October 13, 2017

Response by poster: Oh hey, I should probably mention that we have a young kid, both work full-time, and are wicked-busy (see increased political activity above), so getting out of the house alone together or finding other stuff to do is hard! But I appreciate the basic idea.
posted by Knicke at 7:41 AM on October 13, 2017

Best answer: oh hey this sounds exactly like us down to the young kid and full time jobs, except I'm the one that wants to talk (mostly because I need to process!). He explained his needs and I am doing my best to respect his boundaries and not talk to him, especially if he refers to a specific topic he really doesn't want to hear about. It's frustrating but a. I found friends to talk to instead and b. I feel like it's a fair request since it's helping him manage. I think you are perfectly within your right to say, "we can only talk about politics on Saturday at nap time" or "don't bring anything up after dinner" or "I don't want to hear about X topic at all" or whatever. Obviously this calls for your husband to need to do more emotional labor so maybe he's not used to it, but dude needs to step up.

We talk about work more than we used to. Also all the shit that needs to get done at home, which is stressful in a different way. And kid is just getting old enough to participate in conversations, so there's that. Leads to a lot of conversations about either animals or playground dynamics at dinner.
posted by john_snow at 8:52 AM on October 13, 2017

I learned about Pod Save America through a MeFi mega politics thread and chose to start listening in on that for my update on US politics rather than wading through mega-threads. however, via Pod Save America I also discovered Crooked Media's Pod Save the People. I LOVE this podcast because although it covers problematic issues, I find it inspiring to here the guests that DeRay interviews who are doing all sorts of great activism. It's more uplifting. maybe you could try listening to that and discussing one of those topics with your partner and after that, switch to playing games with your kids. I'm not sure how young is young for your child but I play the cooperative board game "Snug as a Bug in a Rug" with my kids and it's fun.
posted by biggreenplant at 12:13 PM on October 13, 2017

I've asked my more tuned in husband to give me weekly (or so) recaps of important events. It actually helps to have it filtered through, being less draining than occasionally reading through lots of articles. Otherwise I've said that I only really want lots of details/more info of there's something we can do. So if there's a rally he wants us to go to, letters we should write, yes I'd like to hear all about the issue. Otherwise, probably not. I've also asked my daughter to refrain from diatribes about the president and state of our country except at dinner time. I just needed to not have it bursting out all the time. (I know this is backwards from most people's "no politics at the table" rule, but it works for us.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 5:27 PM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I am much more politically engaged than I was two years ago, but I absolutely 100% avoid the news whenever I possibly can. I get my pointers for active engagement from Indivisible and re:act letter and so forth, and avoid general news otherwise.

What's worked for me is to tell people explicitly and repeatedly "I don't want to talk about the news," and then to also have some go-to subjects that I DO like to talk about handy. For me, that's space stuff (NASA, LIGO, ISS fly-bys), computer stuff, books I'm reading.

I am much, much happier and more able to attend to the important things in my life (including the level of civic engagement I'm able to cope with) by avoiding news topics.
posted by kristi at 11:07 AM on October 17, 2017