The Mixed-Politics Marriage - NYTimes.com YOU put a political sign in your yard to signal your views, your tribe. You want to be understood by those of like minds as well as by those whose minds you do not like. In certain climates these signs multiply nightly, on a quadrennial mating cycle. They spread in sympathy or opposition in neighborhoods and along culverts. Decided citizens declare their species. When your own yard contradicts your truth, it rankles. Which is why as Election Day approached in 2008 I found myself spending stolen time tracking a campaign office. I joined wait-list hopefuls for a flimsy piece of foam board. I studied the terrain of our front yard for advantageous visibility, and tapped it lovingly into the ground alongside the rival sign nearby. I wanted passengers from each direction to have a line of sight on both sides. Of my sign. When my husband and I became engaged 19 years ago, my childhood pastor reviewed our premarital surveys and remarked, "Well, you two have the most compatible scores I've ever seen." John and I flashed each other smug smiles and he squeezed my hand. The pastor then hesitated. "Except ... well, for one item," he continued, "where you have the biggest conflict you could possibly have." He studied the graphs, "I think you're actually off the chart." As we waited, I felt my palm clam up inside John's. "You both score high in dominance," the pastor said. He looked up, seeing our furrowed brows. You both want to be in charge. We laughed, relieved. We know we both have a "No, do it my way" certainty, tinged with competitiveness. Our wedding went off without a hitch, after I had yelled at John (lovingly) for forgetting to set up the videotaping with a friend. Birds swooped overhead and fairy lights glistened as my father offered his toast. "Be kind to each other," he said simply. I found his advice odd for its brevity. That's it? Five years later, our son Ben was born. The first election he remembers is Bush versus Kerry in 2004, when he was 5. I crouched at the front door that morning, zipping his blue fleece so we could walk together to the polling station. Ben wouldn't stand still, was distraught. He had just learned that Mommy's vote was not going to match Daddy's. "You have to agree with Daddy," he pleaded. He turned to his father: "Tell her." "That's not the way it works, buddy," John said. Sadly. I leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "Why don't you keep Daddy busy here and Mommy can go vote alone?" "No!" he shouted. You stay home. I'll go with Daddy. Shoot. He was in such a Daddy phase. John and I both teach negotiation and conflict resolution. We are asked regularly what it's like at home, being married to another negotiator. And when they learn that we straddle the growing American political divide between right and left, we're asked to speak on the topic of sleeping with the enemy. In 2004 I turned down these requests from radio stations and clients. Ours was an uneasy peace, perhaps too precarious to survive rigorous examination, and we were both on edge as Election Day approached. My strategic sign placement had sparked a positioning arms race out front. Inside, John obsessively scoured blogs, pacing the house hopped up on invective. His family treats politics as a competitive sport, and those family playing fields have produced four sons whose résumés read like political parody. One worked for the Republicans, ran the Defense Oversight Committee for the Senate, and recently returned from a Navy Reserve tour of Iraq. Another worked for the Democrats on the Hill and once paraded in front of the Texas statehouse dressed as a cigarette for the antismoking lobby. Sheila Heen teaches negotiation at Harvard Law School and is an author of "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most."