The contrast in political beliefs has never been sharper. It can be startling to realize that someone you’ve chosen to love and potentially spend your life with holds polar-opposite values. However, more people find themselves facing hateful ideologies every day, making their partners unrecognizable to the ones who love them.

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That’s why, when I recently asked the Community to share their stories of breaking up with a partner over their MAGA beliefs, I received responses that floored me. Without further ado, here are 17 of the most shocking responses:

Note: Some responses were also sourced from this Reddit thread.

1. “I was 18 when I met my ex, who was also 18 at the time, and we dated on and off for six years. During the later years, I noticed he was trending towards ‘nice guy’ behavior: blaming women for his personal misery and calling us ‘sluts.’ What made me cut all communication with him was during the 2016 election night; as Trump was winning, he laughed at me in the meanest of spirits and called me a ‘lib.’ He also said he hoped Trump would burn the world down.”

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“In the heat of his rage, he confessed to having doxxed Muslims and given their personal info to hate groups for targeting them with threats of violence. I never spoke to him again.”

—u/runswithskizors

2. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’ll never know what it’s like to be oppressed like white men have been.’ I’m a Black woman…”

“He had become MAGA slowly over the course of our relationship, but that comment finally made me realize how bad it was. Three years of my life wasted.”

—Anonymous, 24, Houston, TX

3. “He was German and asked me to recommend a book that explains the U.S. Constitution because I have a Ph.D. in the field and have taught courses on the U.S. Government for many years. I told him I would answer any questions he had, but he said he wanted to learn about the ‘real’ Constitution.”

“This led to a long conversation about his recent trip down a YouTube rabbit hole, culminating in his statement that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ and the only reason I didn’t believe that is because I don’t know how elections work in the United States.”

—Anonymous

4. “I was with a guy for seven years, and we were engaged when we separated just a few days ago. There were a few different issues, but politics and religion were a huge part of it. We started on the same page about issues, except that he was bad at recycling and a little too supportive of the police. He also avoided answering my questions about his viewpoints, and he’d always talk in circles, so I’d eventually shrug it off and give him the benefit of the doubt.”

CNN / Via tenor.com

“To put things succinctly, in 2016, he believed in God (but wasn’t religious) and voted for Bernie Sanders in the democratic primaries, while I was an atheist, bleeding heart liberal (and still am). By 2020, he was super religious, repeating conservative conspiracy theories, believing the media was lying, and thinking Democrats were evil.

I’d always told him that if I were ever to become pregnant, I’d abort it, and it wasn’t until this year that he told me he’d leave me if I did. We were on rocky grounds before he said that, but that was just the bomb that caused the mudslide.

I don’t recommend dating someone with vastly different views from yourself — it’s too stressful. I found myself tiptoeing around certain issues, feeling uncomfortable when we watched a show together that dared to mention racism or anti-LGBT rhetoric because I couldn’t share my fears with him or my opinions. When I really needed his support, he couldn’t speak to me in a way that offered it.

It was only three days ago that we finally separated. The wild and awful part of it is that I still totally love him. I helped him move into his apartment, we went on a date, and laughed and loved each other. I still know I can lean on him, and he can lean on me.

I didn’t really leave him, but we concluded that we’re better off away from each other. I’ve learned a lot of things — mainly that kind and intelligent people can believe the most awful things. I believe fear drives people more than they realize, and fear makes people cling to not only religion, but also traditions and systems of the past.”

—u/OfficerFuzzy

5. “I left because my partner wasn’t MAGA, but he was definitely sliding that way, and I wouldn’t tolerate it. At first, he was kind, thoughtful, and empathetic, but as our marriage continued, he tried to impose traditional views and roles. When we started trying to have kids, he fully expected me to drop everything to take care of them, do 100% of the housework and mental load, and he wouldn’t support various health decisions that I made for myself, including pausing trying for kids to focus on trauma recovery and prioritize our marriage.”

“He flipped his lid when he discovered that I actually made more money than he did, and railed on me for out-earning him. He also kept making racist jokes (I work with immigrants) and started using incel names for me — even his best friend cut him off.

When I initiated the divorce process, he told me that I ‘wasn’t allowed to’ because he was the man and had final say. I did it anyway, and I can guarantee he’s becoming more right-wing every single day.”

—Anonymous, 28, CO

6. “My guy refused to vote in the last election, claiming, ‘Both sides are the same. And if it mattered, they wouldn’t let us vote.'”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it as a betrayal of me and womankind. His refusal to have any political opinions, even now, in the face of everything happening, was too much for me. Bye, Dave.”

—Anonymous, 60, Midwest

7. “One of my exes was very Republican. His entire family was Republican, and they associated it with God. For a long time, I didn’t know about his political beliefs because they never came up before Trump ran for President, and he sided with him.”

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“Then the dark side of him started showing, and he’d say subtly racist and sexist things. We never saw eye to eye on abortion, but he also started calling BLM a terrorist group and saying racist things. Then came his support for the Confederate flag and how it’s ‘heritage, not hate’ and he even wanted to go as far as get a tattoo of the Confederate flag. I was so deeply disturbed.

I broke up with him one time over it, but we got back together because he had ‘changed and started acting like Jesus,’ but that was a load of BS. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but it only lasted three months. I was SO conflicted near the end of the relationship because I couldn’t view him as a good person, and he certainly wasn’t a good role model. And I didn’t want our children, if we were to have any, to look up to him. I fell out of love because our morality was just so different.

Our relationship lasted two years in all, and I’m so glad I left because I’m much happier now and not stressing over stupid shit. I learned a lot from that relationship. Now I know how important political views and morality are. If I find out somebody identifies as Republican/conservative, I’m instantly abandoning ship — never doing that again.”

—u/Cookie-M0nsterr

8. “I was gearing up to attend the first Women’s March instead of going out to shoot guns with him (I didn’t want to anyway.) He asked why I’d rather attend a protest, and I told him it was because our rights are more important than his guns.”

“He snarked back, ‘What rights don’t you have?’ It’s for the ones we’re trying to keep, you braindead misogynist.”

—Anonymous, 44

9. “For me, it was when my (now) ex-husband suggested I collect intelligence on my immigrant students to give to the government. I teach refugees.”

—Anonymous, 47, TX

10. “Almost five years ago, I broke up with my partner of four years because he supported the NC bathroom laws and didn’t believe that transgender people should be able to use their preferred bathrooms. We never got farther down the road of what he really thought of transgender people because I could tell it wasn’t going to be a road congruent with mine.”

NBC / Via youtube.com

“He was concerned ‘some kid pretending to be a girl’ was going to use the same bathroom as his niece in an attempt to make friends or flirt (she was two and a half at the time). It was weird, and I didn’t see his bigotry coming. Looking back on this incident connects red flags I missed when I was 19. I don’t miss that relationship.”

—u/awkwardavril

11. “I was in a demisexual relationship with my partner, but one day things changed. I was telling them about my day, explaining all of the errands I ran, and explaining how I was approached by a man who was obviously MAGA and totally entrenched by their hateful ideology of fascism.”

“The MAGA tried to rationally explain that the COVID vaccine wasn’t necessary for the majority of people, especially children. He then explained that since 1986, the only product you can’t sue for damages is a childhood vaccine, and that once you get infected and recover, you don’t need to be vaccinated or boosted. I couldn’t believe it!

As I told my partner this, they seemed to validate these points, and I became furious! How could he possibly agree with this bigot pushing his hateful, racist, and frankly untrue ideology? So, I ended things with my partner because of this. I can’t stand for people dying because of this type of misinformation.”

—Hayden, Seattle, WA

12. “My ex told me a couple of months into our relationship that he voted for Trump because everyone close to him did, and he didn’t care to inform himself. I’m very liberal and outspoken about standing up for what’s right; he doesn’t seem to have any beliefs at all. He grew up very conservative and has never cared to think about the experiences of others, whereas I started examining my privilege a long time ago and have always been accepting of people different than me.”

“Not only did we not share beliefs, but he also didn’t care to listen to or learn about mine at all — he was very ignorant and willfully so. He wasn’t very intelligent, so he wasn’t able to have those tough conversations because he couldn’t grasp how important certain things are.

We broke up for other reasons (he was freshly divorced, incredibly clingy, made fun of my interests, etc), but that revelation was what started to kick things downhill. Ultimately, it’s very important to respect your partner’s beliefs about the big issues, and I could not respect his lack of beliefs at all.”

—u/withdavidbowie

13. “Last November, I started dating a guy I went to high school with. I always knew he was more conservative, but he never came off as extreme and was generally very sweet. We also never really talked politics, so it wasn’t an issue…until a few months ago. I was bored and logged onto Facebook for the first time in a LONG time, and my feed was littered with racism, cruelty, and BS like ‘liberalism is a mental disorder,’ not to mention tons of posts worshipping cops and making jokes about the people who have been injured and killed due to police brutality. It was disgusting.”

HBO / Via youtube.com

“I sent him a message and told him not to bother coming over again, then he blew up my phone with 38 texts with pretty much every dumb insult you can think of before he showed up at my house anyway, pounding on my door and screaming. What a mess.”

—[deleted]

14. “I dated a man who hid his right-wing political beliefs from me until we broke up and claimed to be a centrist while we were together. He said he ‘liked Trump’s economic policies’ but not what he did about China, and that’s about it. We disagreed on a lot of stuff, like abortion, and he didn’t ‘understand’ gay people, but of course, me being bi was perfectly acceptable because I’m a woman. I finally managed to get him to accept that calling somebody by their pronouns (even if he didn’t like it) was the right thing to do. Dude browsed 4Chan somewhat often and occasionally said racist slurs because his friend, who is a POC, gave him a ‘pass.’ If I brought up any issues about the media he consumed, it was a futile effort. He constantly complained about the liberalism in his university course (media studies) as well.”

“There wasn’t one particular thing that ended it. I discovered he wasn’t the kind person I originally thought he was, and our polite debates, which were somewhat fun at the beginning of the relationship, turned into something I dreaded because it upset me that he chose to believe in things that genuinely hurt people and were sometimes unscientific. I eventually grew distant and didn’t want to engage with things like that.”

—u/oceansRising

15. “My ex and I were actually both liberals, but my beliefs fall on the far-left/progressive end of the spectrum, whereas he was very much a moderate. We argued about a lot (universal healthcare was probably the biggest one since we’re in the US), but were always able to agree to disagree.”

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“I stopped being able to do that when the Black Lives Matter protests started. My ex claimed he didn’t support police brutality, but was also vocally anti-protest (he was even against peaceful ones because they ‘inconvenience regular people trying to go about their lives’). The specific incident that sent me over the edge happened after the protests in our city. The protesters were peaceful and had planned a march from downtown onto a nearby highway, which was blocked in anticipation. When they got to the highway, police suddenly started tear gassing the crowds, who up until this point had been completely non-violent.

Despite knowing all of this, my ex told me that he thought the protesters DESERVED to be attacked by the police for blocking the road and therefore ‘dragging innocent people who don’t want to be involved in it.’ The fact that he could justify police brutality for any reason was too much for me. Things had been rocky for a long time leading up to that, and it was the final straw.

Not long after that, I was proven right about him. One of my best friends told me that a mutual (former) friend of my ex’s and mine had been extremely racist towards her on multiple occasions. I was still trying to be friendly with my ex at this point, but when I told him about what my friend had said, he immediately jumped to the racist girl’s defense, saying that my friend was being too sensitive and seeing things that weren’t there. He straight-up accused a Black woman of lying about having had several repeated racist encounters with one of his friends because he couldn’t bear the idea that one of his BFFs is actually a really shitty person. I can’t believe I ever dated him, to be honest.”

—u/sexyswamphag

16. “The second I found out he was a Trump supporter, I NOPED the hell out of there and never spoke to him again! We had been friends for 25 years before that, and were starting to become more.”

—Anonymous, 47, Cincinnati, OH

17.. And finally, “He was my first serious boyfriend that I met in my first year of university. He was also a political science student who was the leader of the conservative clubs at our school.”

Bloomberg / Getty Images

“I grew up in a pretty small town, so I never had a lot of political opinions. I went to school to study business, but after living in a more ‘liberal’ town, I started having my own political beliefs (which were much more left-leaning), and I even changed my major to sociology.

As time went on, he would constantly get angry at me because ‘I was so much more conservative than I think I am.’ He would constantly bring up topics (like abortion) that we differed greatly on to start debates. He was also a free-speech warrior; he wanted controversial speakers to come to our university even when I explained that their backgrounds were wrong, but he didn’t care. I became so frustrated with his beliefs and his belittlement of my own opinions.

The final straw was when he and his mother belittled my sexual assault by saying I made it an excuse for everything. I packed my bags and left. I was young then, and I will never date someone who differs politically from me ever again. That was two years I won’t get back.”

—u/j_rek