One day last July, I went to dinner with a man who had sent me death threats. “I’ll kill you slowly...” he’d emailed me repeatedly several years ago, when I was working as a magazine editor covering, among other things, sexual assault and abortion rights. Like many women on the internet, I didn’t know if he was fixated on me specifically or if mine was just an email an angry man found on 4chan. Now, years later, I recognised his email address after we matched on a dating app. Did he remember? Did he recognise me? Was that why he wanted to go on a date?

I had no idea. I only knew why I was there: In a sincere attempt to not only date but understand men like let’s-call-him-Jared*, I spent much of 2024 on a conservative dating app. There are plenty to choose from, free and easily found, wherever you get your apps. Some platforms cater to the politically right-leaning looking for love with like-minded people; others are more identity-based, a handful centre Christianity, and many welcome daters with any kind of political beliefs.

On the app I’d ultimately go with, I presented myself truthfully, as a Republican-curious woman tired of the Democrats’ hopelessness and constant pivoting during a highly charged election year. I come from a liberal background, I explained in my initial chats with matches, but was open to new perspectives. I used ‘Veronica’ as my app name, listed my actual age (34), uploaded a few real photos, then worked through the provided prompts. I answered ones asking what I love about America but skipped fill-in-the-blanks about my thoughts on January 6.

He seemed soft-spoken, shy. Not like the kind of person who’d issue death threats

From May to November, I would match with a total of 60 men across a wide conservative spectrum — self-proclaimed MAGA bros, ‘European’ guys looking for their submissive ‘European’ dream girls, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists — although most identified in some way with the alt-right. I’d scour profiles in an effort to figure out where these men were coming from, why they seemed to oppose the things I’d previously spent a career fighting for: women’s rights, social justice, reproductive freedoms, LGBTQIA+ equality. I tried to imagine that maybe we weren’t so different, maybe there was some chaotic internet-age misunderstanding at play.

And maybe I could answer another big question, one that seemed intimidatingly complex: as politics in the US (and beyond) grows more divisive, as the internet fuels hard-line cultural ideologies and social discord, as like-minded communities double down on rejecting anything different, is it possible for romantic connections between contrasting groups to even exist? Could dating be a way to help forge an understanding — of value systems, of experiences that drive beliefs — that could start to bridge the dissonance? Or at the very least, could it teach me about my own rules of attraction? Could I ever be physically enticed by (or even intimate with) someone with very different political views?

• When the ballot box comes to the bedroom

All in all, I’d see 14 of my matches in person and go on a total of 26 dates, one of them that dinner with Jared. The night was perfect: high 20s, light breeze. A hostess led me to the outdoor patio of a New York City restaurant, gesturing to a tall man in his mid-30s wearing a black baseball hat. Initially, Jared seemed soft-spoken, shy. Not like the kind of person who’d issue death threats. He clearly had no idea he was out with someone he once threatened to kill.

I told him that I was born in Russia and was a writer. He showed me a list he’d written of his favourite desserts in the city. It was a sober hobby he’d started during the pandemic, going to restaurants by himself, sampling sweets. He made a lot of lists, he said, most of them food-related. I asked what other kinds he made.

“Lists of lies liberal white women tell about Donald Trump,” he replied.

Suddenly, his leg was shaking. He grabbed the edges of the table and raised his voice: “White, liberal women are a plague on our society.”

He proceeded to drink 11 iced coffees.

Something about getting ready to go on these dates made me feel like I was 18 again — except now I had the ability to run professional-level background checks, which I did. Not because I was operating on preconceived notions but because the few peers I told about my mission encouraged me to. Given some of the vitriol against women in online alt-right groups, they felt I should treat every date as if it were a threat to my life. (The dating app I used does not conduct its own background checks or take responsibility for its users’ content or conduct.)

I came up with a routine: before a date, I’d tell at least three people in advance where I was going and what time they should expect to hear from me by. I enlisted a friend who’s a former Navy SEAL to be my unofficial security consultant. (Some of his advice was less than practical. He told me that as a woman, I am five to eight times more likely to be physically attacked and should be prepared to use lethal force if necessary, which would require training in hand-to-hand tactics. “Stay as powerful and fit as humanly possible,” he added.)

We think we can tell everything about someone because they wear a red hat or a blue ‘I Voted’ shirt

My selection process was straightforward. Before swiping right, I sorted through bios that included guys comparing the violence of January 6 to how violent they are in bed and phrasing that stated they believed in “two genders only”. Many profiles I read included the word ‘pureblood’ (to signal that someone wasn’t vaccinated, usually against COVID-19); one man who loves Tucker Carlson wrote that dating someone who agrees with him politically is “more important than ever”. I came across four different profiles mentioning a hatred of women with pink hair.

I asked every man I messaged with about his relationship expectations and family values. Each seemed to know exactly what he was looking for in a wife and articulated it before we even met. She was typically an unvaccinated Christian white woman willing to quit her job and commit to homeschooling children. Her hobbies might include “tending to a garden” and “feeding the animals”. (I’m a vaccinated white woman who works and loves exercising at 6 a.m. and going to spas on Friday nights.)

The more people I messaged with, the more profiles I read, the more I saw the term ‘anti-feminism’. Something bizarre started to happen: I found myself more and more curious about where my own political beliefs originated. And I did an analysis and realised I’d only ever dated men who aligned with my points of view and seemed to genuinely champion my work. What was it, exactly, that made this current group of men reject these ideas — and by proxy, even the notion of being with someone like me — so aggressively?

I was early to meet another match, Tom*, 27, outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan for a second date. He was already sitting on the steps, wearing a tweed suit and reading a paperback book. A scene right out of a rom-com, if this were Hollywood.

“I’m not that religious,” he’d told me on our first date. “But I want my future wife to teach our kids biblical values.”

Tom’s mother died of cancer when he was in high school, after which the women in their church community cooked meals for him and his father. My parents didn’t raise me with any religious practice and I’d never been to church other than for weddings and funerals. But I’d sincerely told Tom I was interested in learning more about the lifestyle he envisioned — so here we were, staring up at the monstrous bronze doors of the largest Roman Catholic building in the United States. (I’d spent extra time figuring out what to wear before landing on a floral Reformation dress and cardigan — an outfit I based on Mandy Moore’s character in A Walk to Remember, where she plays a minister’s daughter.)

I knew he didn’t recognise me as the person he’d once vowed to kill

“Veronica,” Tom said, standing up and slipping his book into his jacket pocket. He offered me his hand to go up the stairs, like a prince ready to catch me if I lost my balance. Although I walk up five flights to my apartment every day, sometimes while carrying heavy things, I placed my palm in his. “It’s so refreshing to meet someone open to doing this instead of drinking at a bar,” he said. That part felt nice for me, too.

As we admired a panel of stained glass, I asked him about the term ‘biblical patriarchy’, popular online among a set of women who call themselves anti-feminist because they are returning to biblical womanhood. “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” Tom recited. “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” This is Ephesians 5:22-24, which I’d seen cited on TikTok, blogs, and podcasts by Christian nationalists, tradwives, and the men’s rights movement, usually used to justify conforming to gender roles as prescribed by the Bible.

• ‘Misogyny isn’t just present: it’s mainstream’

I asked Tom what he thought a biblical woman even is. “Women should be submissive to their husbands, and some people believe they should be trained,” he said. “It’s about knowing your role in nature. It’s undesirable for women to be too independent. As a man, I want to take care of you, and I believe in that biology. The liberal women I’ve dated emasculate men with their aggressive energy.”

We were no longer holding hands.

As we lit $2 (£1.50) candles, a tour group walked past, and I thought about Tom’s dating profile. It said nothing about the Bible nor any of the things we’d been discussing, but it did mention he was anti white genocide. I asked him whether his future wife has to be white. He paused, then replied, “I believe, on principle, that white people have a right to maintain a positive identity, and our collective well-being must be maintained with healthy families. White guilt is poisoning kids.”

Part of what I was trying to explore — and push back against — is the idea that a person’s identity can be reduced to a one-dimensional entity based solely on who they voted for. Now more than ever, we think we can tell everything about someone on the ‘other side’ just because they wear a red hat or a blue ‘I Voted’ t-shirt. The job I’d assigned myself (I proactively started this research long before I began writing about it for Cosmopolitan) was to dig deeper, to learn more about these men on the ‘other side’ of me — way on the other side, in most cases. And as someone who cares about bringing people together, I wondered whether it was me who had been excluding them.

When I first connected with Jared, our messages were standard dating app fare. He’d played Division I sports, he wrote. He’d recently taken an international trip.

But then, on that first date, he remembered that a steak he ate while abroad reminded him of the steak he was eating at an outdoor restaurant in New York when a group of protesters started yelling at him for wearing a MAGA hat. He stood up and reenacted the scene as he remembered it. The people at the tables around us looked scared.

“Don’t be surprised if people like me come back a few years later to apologise”

Jared’s eyes became erratic — completely different from the eyes of the man I’d sat down with at the beginning of the night. “If we lived in a different time, we would be hanging white liberal whores in the town square and dragging them through the streets for the lies they spread,” he roared. My immediate reaction was an attempt to de-escalate the situation.

“Let’s take a deep breath,” I suggested. I took one, then he took one, and we repeated it. He reset. Later, though, when I had my hand on the table, he grabbed my wrist and started ranting again about how liberal white women create witch hunts.

“They say horrible things about me and make everyone hate me and think I’m a bad person,” he said. He was staring at a point in the distance, speaking like he was in some kind of trance.

“What did they say about you?” I asked.

He snapped out of it. “Oh, not me,” he answered. “I meant Donald Trump.”

Over the course of a few dates, he’d make this mistake often, where he’d talk about Trump in the first person. And I came to realise that while I was trying to separate Jared from who he voted for, he may have been personally struggling to do the exact same thing, just in a very different way. It became clear to me that he truly loved Trump not just because he identified with Trump the politician but because he identified with Trump the person being considered ‘bad’ by progressive standards.

And so continued my date-a-thon. On a Thursday summer evening, I met Bryan*, 35, at a French wine bar in Brooklyn. I wore a long, black ribbed dress — the most conservative option I could think of — and arrived early, counting 13 people and two exits.

As we got our drinks, Bryan’s hand found my lower back. “I love that you dressed up for me,” he said. I asked him if he considered himself a romantic. He countered by asking if romance was important to me. “Yes,” I replied, “I live my life in a way that makes me feel like I’m romancing myself. I do whatever makes me fall in love with myself and the world.” “I’ve never heard that before,” he said, sounding confused, maybe disappointed. “That’s not something I see for myself.”

“You don’t think you deserve it?” I asked. “Men deserve to be romanced.” He wouldn’t know where to start with something like that, he said, and I turned the conversation toward what he was looking for in a relationship. He responded with some now-familiar anti-feminist rhetoric, emphasising “natural feminine roles”. How did he envision the masculine role, then? “A real man provides discipline, and any talking back or acting out is asking for punishment,” he said. Okay, but what else besides obedience does the real man need to feel loved? Bryan took a moment: “The feminists convinced women to be dominant. Where’s the love in taking away a man’s masculinity? Love isn’t always in the cards when people don’t know their roles. I’m trying to make enough money to support a family, which means I need someone who can be home and take care of everything there.”

“I created an alter ego that helped me harness violent and dominant energy”

On a different week, I met up with Jake*, 36. He was on his second mezcal negroni, and I was sipping a seltzer with lime, when I asked him why his last relationship ended. “My previous girlfriend killed our child,” he said. “Like, she’s in jail now for murder?” I asked. “No, but she should be,” he explained, shooting back his drink. “She got an abortion and killed our child without asking me.” I took a deep breath and tried to listen carefully.

I went on a date with Ron*, 42, who was excited to tell me about his passion for funding women’s health clinics. “Like Planned Parenthood?” I asked. “That’s funny,” he replied. No, he was talking about crisis pregnancy centres, which typically have religious affiliations and give out false information to pregnant women seeking abortions. When I asked Ron how many abortions he’d prevented with his donations, he said “over a thousand”. When I asked how many of those women died as a result of their pregnancy, he said, “If they picked up a Bible, God would show mercy.” I couldn’t help wondering aloud if he knew that one in four abortions in America is performed for a Catholic woman. Or that the majority of married Catholic women who have abortions are mothers who have already given birth twice. He said he didn’t know. He gave his glass a little shake. The last few drops of his drink dribbled through the ice into his mouth.

Jo Minor

At a chic omakase place, Matthew*, 25, from New Jersey was going off about how “we should have never let a woman be head of the Secret Service”. With each course, I fired off questions about his upbringing. He mentioned online groups where there were “others like him”, the kind where people whose radical-to-me beliefs find validation — and even more than validation, identity itself. Matthew later revealed he has a swastika tattoo.

Some of these men, like Matthew, I’d see only once; others I’d meet multiple times. I tried to organise what I observed and learned: a lot of my dates seemed to express that they felt lost without a solid definition of what a man is. And even if they did feel like they checked all the boxes for some specified male role, they still felt like they were getting left behind. Many of their ideologies seemed to be built on this perceived rejection and a desire to revert back to how “things used to be”.

Just because I got where he was coming from didn’t mean I wanted to make out with him

A conclusion I came to is that these men feel like most people (including the “mass media”) don’t take the time — or have no interest in taking the time — to understand them or where they come from. Valid or not, this seemed to compound their feelings of isolation, which in turn bred a lack of curiosity on their part, furthering their own intolerances.

I didn’t feel that any of the men I dated were that interested in me as a person or where I came from either. I rarely got questions like, Why are you Republican-curious? What drew you to our dating app? What are your family values? What are you looking for in a partner? What are your goals in life? I wondered, for a while, if this was supposed to be my role — should I have helped them create a framework for approaching relationships with more curiosity, one that might ultimately lead them toward a more inclusive kind of mindset?

Maybe. But it was never my intention to save these men from their hatred. (And I recognise that I am privileged to even ask these questions and be able to explore them in real time and in person.) Plus, after all these dates, I started to answer my own questions. I was too different from them, even if that was due to circumstance and upbringing, in ways that made romantic or sexual attraction impossible. Despite my willingness to be open to anything, none of my dates progressed beyond talking.

Out of everyone, surprisingly, I’d had the most hope for some sort of understanding with Jared. On our second date, he remained calm the entire time. He told me about his childhood in the Northeast, where he came from a “good” family and went to a “good” school. He was a sports prodigy but started drinking and doing drugs as a teenager, then got sober years later, after “something really bad happened”. (I calculated that his sobriety happened a while after he’d sent me death threats.)

“For sports, I created an alter ego that helped me harness the violent and dominant energy I needed to tap into this stronger part of me,” he told me over tapas, during a self-reflection that seemed genuinely impressive. “That was how I could do more than I thought was possible. The problem was I couldn’t turn it off. As long as I was winning, my coaches didn’t care what I did. So I was always in it, always partying, anxious about guys from another school showing up to a party to beat the shit out of my teammates and me. I would drink and do drugs to calm myself down. And then we would go beat up the other guys.”

Jared said he now spends his weekends trying to help men going through similar struggles. I told him that I’d written about mental health and covered drug education in the past, too.

• My best mate the Tory

“Don’t be surprised if people like me come back a few years later to apologise,” he said. I knew he still didn’t recognise me as the person he’d once vowed to kill, but in the moment and without calling him out, I took this for what it was: the closest thing to an apology I was likely to ever get.

Were we still on disparate sides of the political spectrum? Yes. Would we be able to somewhat companionably spend more time together, discussing things beyond our political viewpoints? Probably. Would I ever choose to get romantically involved with him? No. Just because I now got where he was coming from, at least in part, didn’t mean I wanted to make out with him.

On our last date, we were walking through a park when I told him we couldn’t keep seeing each other, that I disagreed with most of his beliefs and didn’t align with the future he wanted. Confused, he replied that from his point of view, we actually agreed on most things.

No, I said, we didn’t, which he would know if he’d asked me any questions about myself. He still leaned in and tried to kiss me. We never saw each other again.

• The names used to refer to each of the men mentioned in this story have been changed.

Vera Papisova

Vera Papisova is an award-winning editor and journalist living in New York City.