Hi, Laura here. If you heard last week's episode, you know I've been pondering politics and romance. That led to Love Across the Divide, a Dating Well Gray broadcast special with American Public Media. Last week in part one, we heard from older Americans navigating red-blue romance.

Today, in part two, we're offering some expert advice for bridging differences.

Please enjoy.

I'm Laura Stasi, and this is Love Across a Divide from Dating While Gray.

Have you noticed how certain words become labels, sometimes worn proudly, sometimes weaponized, like feminist? It's a noun, a person who believes women should have the same political, social, and economic rights that men have. Now, I admit,

when I started dating after divorce, I was uncomfortable embracing the term, because I thought

feminist might also mean a total rejection of gender dating

expectations. I wasn't ready to give that all up. I talked about this with Steve, a retired

university professor in Wisconsin. Steve is a feminist and he shared this experience when he

started dating after his wife died. There's one. It was maybe my second or my third first date with a woman.

And, you know, we had a beer and tea or something.

We talked for a couple hours and afterwards, we said, let's get together.

So I texted her at one point shortly afterwards, said, you know, that I enjoyed everything.

And I said, I haven't dated for over three decades.

I'm still kind of new to this.

And I'm, you know, still trying to figure out the rules and everything else.

And her reply was something like, okay, here's how it works.

Boy asks girl out to dinner.

Boy pays. Then this happens a couple times.

Then girl invites boy to her apartment, makes dinner for him, and then it proceeds from there.

And then I wrote back and I said, well, I said, that might be one way to do it, but I said, I'm a feminist, and so I don't like to sort of follow gender rules.

So maybe it'll be a little different with us.

...