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Are women leaving right-wing husbands? Here's what marriage therapists and divorce lawyers are seeing

Are women leaving right-wing husbands? Here's what marriage therapists and divorce lawyers are seeing

As Reform UK divides opinion, we ask whether political differences are exposing deeper cracks in long-established marriages.

Ruairidh Pritchard

Published: October 21, 2026 at 12:39 PM

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Imagine a marriage ending. You're probably picturing an affair, a spectacular argument, perhaps years of resentment finally boiling over. Someone has done something unforgivable. Someone else has decided they've had enough.

But not every marriage ends with one dramatic moment. Sometimes, over the course of 20 years, two people can gradually become strangers to each other. Not necessarily in how they live, but in what they believe.

And what if one of the clearest signs of that growing distance is how they vote?

In America, research has found that divorced men are considerably more likely than divorced women to support Donald Trump. One possible explanation is that divorce leaves some men feeling angry or alienated, making right-wing politics more appealing. But there is another possibility.

What if some of those political differences existed long before the marriage ended? What if the values that appeal to a man politically are precisely the ones his wife has spent years struggling with at home?

It is a provocative question, particularly in Britain, where Reform UK has a substantially larger male than female support base. Are political differences becoming the final straw in long-established marriages? Or is a husband's vote simply bringing into focus frustrations that have been simmering for years?

Research suggests that couples who disagree about politics are more likely to separate. And divorce lawyers and therapists are seeing women in midlife reassess marriages that have lasted decades. The question is whether these two stories are connected, and what politics might reveal about relationships behind closed doors.

What happens when your husband votes differently from you?

Rear view diverse people voting in private booths

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A major British study published in 2025 examined more than 28,000 heterosexual couples and found that those with different political party preferences had approximately 39% higher adjusted odds of separating than couples whose political preferences aligned.

In absolute terms, the difference was smaller than that figure might suggest. The annual separation rate was 1.06% among politically mismatched couples, compared with 0.77% among couples who agreed. The researchers also found a particularly strong association between disagreement over Brexit and relationship breakdown.

The study cannot tell us whether political disagreements caused those separations. Nor can it tell us which partner decided to leave. Its data also predates Reform UK's current prominence.

Nevertheless, it raises an uncomfortable possibility: the ballot box may reveal something about the private dynamics of a marriage.

Marjha Golding-Evans, partner and family lawyer at IMD Solicitors, says political differences do sometimes come up in divorce conversations, but rarely in the simple form of one spouse supporting one party and the other supporting another.

"In most divorces, political disagreements are not the cause of the breakdown but a reflection of a deeper divergence in values, expectations and visions for the future."

What we are seeing more often is couples questioning whether they still share the same fundamental outlook on life.

Marjha Golding-Evans, partner and family lawyer at IMD Solicitors

In other words, the argument may begin with an election, but it does not necessarily end there.

So where does Reform UK fit into all this?

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The gender divide in British politics provides a contemporary backdrop to these questions.

The 2025 British Social Attitudes survey found that Reform UK attracted support from 28% of men, compared with 19% of women. And separate Ipsos polling found that 45% of British women said they would find it difficult to be in a relationship with a Reform supporter, compared with 35% of men.

That is a sizeable difference in attitudes towards a potential partner. But there is an important distinction between saying you would struggle to be in a relationship with someone who holds particular political views and deciding to end a marriage of 20 years because of them.

The polling does not establish that women are leaving Reform-supporting husbands. Nor does it show that Reform voters necessarily hold particular views about how housework, childcare or money should be shared within a marriage.

What it does suggest is that political allegiance can carry meanings beyond an individual's preferences on tax, immigration or public spending.

For some people, the party their partner supports may seem to say something about how they view the world, and how they view them.

Golding-Evans says a significant change in one partner's political or social beliefs can prompt the other to question whether they still share the same core values.

If one spouse feels that the other's views no longer align with their understanding of respect, equality, family life, or how they wish their children to be raised, that change can become a tipping point.

Marjha Golding-Evans, partner and family lawyer at IMD Solicitors

This is not quite the same as leaving someone because of a political party. It is about what that political disagreement has come to mean within the relationship.

Why a political argument might really be about the washing-up

A female and male figurine join together side by side on coloured background.

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Consider the ordinary compromises of a long marriage. Who works fewer hours when the children are small? Who remembers the school forms, the dentist appointments, the birthday presents? Who takes time off when someone is ill? And whose career, free time or ambitions quietly become the more important ones?

These are not usually described as political questions. But they are questions about power, fairness and the value placed on different kinds of work.

A 2025 study published in PNAS Nexus, involving more than 7,000 couples in the US and Germany, found that American women reported greater relationship satisfaction when they or their partners held more egalitarian attitudes towards paid work and family responsibilities. The wider findings also suggested that how closely partners' expectations aligned could matter for relationship satisfaction.

A separate 2026 study of 213 American couples found that more conservative political views, particularly among fathers, were associated with mothers feeling that their partners were not doing their fair share of parenting. Those perceptions were also linked to lower relationship satisfaction and greater dissatisfaction with parenting.

Neither finding proves that right-wing men make worse husbands, or that political conservatism causes divorce. But they help explain why disagreements about equality can feel intensely personal inside a marriage.

Cheryl Kennedy MacDonald, registered psychotherapist and founder of Female Focused Therapy, puts it plainly.

"Political differences can highlight how partners feel about equality and respect and whose needs actually matter in a relationship."

An argument about Reform or Brexit is a lot more personal when it reflects what’s going on at home.

Cheryl Kennedy MacDonald, psychotherapist and founder of Female Focused Therapy

For a woman who feels she has spent years carrying most of the domestic and emotional workload, a disagreement about gender equality may not feel like an abstract difference of opinion. It may feel like confirmation of something she has suspected for a long time: that she and her husband do not see her contribution to the family in quite the same way.

And why might this matter more after 20 years of marriage?

Hands of female who is about to taking off her wedding ring. Divorce concept

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There is another reason this question feels particularly relevant to women in midlife.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 26% of opposite-sex divorces in England and Wales in 2025 involved couples who had been married for at least 20 years. That is a larger share than the 23% who divorced after five to nine years.

After 20 years together, the children may be growing up, the routines that held family life together are changing, and couples can find themselves confronting questions they've spent decades avoiding. Do we still want the same things? And, perhaps more uncomfortably, do we still believe in the same things?

James Legg, partner and head of family law at IMD Solicitors, says women in this stage of life form a significant part of his client base.

"I regularly act for women in their 40s and 50s who are reflecting on what they want from the next stage of their lives and whether their current relationship is helping them achieve that."

Many, he says, have spent years prioritising children, careers and family responsibilities. Now they are considering what they want for themselves.

Golding-Evans has noticed something similar.

"I think as views modernise, the stigma around ending a long-term marriage is rightly eroding, and so I see more and more women simply deciding they no longer have to put up, or make do."

She describes women who feel emotionally unfulfilled, unheard or dissatisfied with divisions of responsibility established years earlier.

Kennedy MacDonald sees how these questions can intersect with political disagreements. As children grow older, she says, women may find themselves reassessing arrangements they have previously accepted.

A woman could be thinking, ‘Do I really want another 20 years of this?’ Political disagreements can become the tipping point when she starts to sense that her partner is unwilling to share responsibilities more equally.

Cheryl Kennedy MacDonald, registered psychotherapist and founder of Female Focused Therapy

The question, then, is not necessarily whether a woman suddenly discovers that her husband votes differently. It is whether that difference comes to represent a much larger problem.

Are women more likely to be the ones who leave?

Woman unlocking the door of a vacation rental property while arriving for a business trip stay. Female traveller carrying backpack and coffee beside luggage outside countryside accommodation, capturing remote work lifestyle, bleisure travel, short term rental and modern flexible working culture.

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There is evidence that women more often reach the point of wanting a marriage to end.

An American longitudinal study of marital breakups found that wives were more likely than husbands to report having wanted the separation. But it did not establish that political differences were responsible, and its findings cannot simply be transferred to British couples.

In England and Wales, the introduction of no-fault divorce in April 2022 also means that couples no longer need to provide allegations about why their marriage has broken down.

That makes it particularly difficult to identify any supposed rise in politically motivated divorces from official divorce records.

Legg says the fundamental reasons relationships end remain familiar: loss of connection, poor communication, financial pressures, different expectations and couples growing in different directions.

Golding-Evans agrees, although she has noticed a shift in how some clients describe their dissatisfaction. Rather than focusing solely on arguments or individual incidents, they increasingly talk about equality, emotional needs, identity and personal fulfilment.

Politics, in that context, can become a way of articulating a divide that has existed for years.

Can you stay married to someone whose politics you disagree with?

Of course, plenty of couples vote differently and remain happy together. Political compatibility is not a prerequisite for a successful marriage, and agreeing about an election does not guarantee fairness or respect at home.

Kennedy MacDonald says political disagreements have caused genuine difficulties in her therapeutic work. She recalls working with a couple who held strongly opposing political views and repeatedly argued because neither was willing to understand the other's perspective.

She has not specifically encountered Reform UK or Brexit disputes in this context, and says she cannot confidently claim political disagreements are becoming more common.

For her, the more revealing question is how a couple handles those differences.

Couples don’t have to share every political opinion, but there needs to be some willingness to understand why something really matters to your partner.

Cheryl Kennedy MacDonald, registered psychotherapist and founder of Female Focused Therapy

That may be the distinction worth paying attention to. A disagreement about politics is one thing. Feeling that your partner dismisses your beliefs, your experiences or your contribution to the family is quite another.

Perhaps the more interesting question isn't whether women are leaving right-wing husbands, but what happens when a husband's politics begin to reflect everything his wife has grown tired of in their marriage.

After 20 years together, an argument about an election might not really be about an election at all. It might be about who has made the compromises, whose ambitions have taken a back seat, and whether the two people who built a life together still want the same things from it.

A marriage can survive a difference of opinion. But what happens when that difference reveals two entirely different ideas of what marriage, equality and a shared future should look like?

Authors

Ruairidh PritchardDigital Growth Lead

Ruairidh is the Digital Lead on MadeForMums. He works with a team of fantastically talented content creators and subject-matter experts on MadeForMums.