T

he sighs of ecstasy are drowned by groans of discontent. Warm greetings die on cold shoulders, as Facebook smileys are clicked away with '€œunfriend'€ requests.

Infidelity the most ominous menace to any romance. Money the bane of family feuds and friends.

Yet neither recently were the most striking nuisances that turned many a sheet on a lover'€™s bed cold, and froze the warm coffee of a friendly chat.

It'€™s been a weird four months for relationships, be it between friends, lovers or kin.

The choice of a nation became an emotional division, breaking more hearts than it did bones during the campaign period.

Those who made the mistake of bringing campaign politics into the bedroom risked their pillow talk escalating into a pillow fight.

In an election filled with ghastly rumors, unqualified sentimentality and outrageous hypocrisy everyone got swept away.

How emotional we all became these past months. How overanxious many were to convert a political choice into a filter of friends.

A partnership jolted not because a partner was caught flirting with a woman at a bar, but because he opted for one presidential candidate over another.

This was no unique experience. It'€™s a good bet that everyone has a friend, or heard of a friend of a friend, who had their relationship jarred because of the political brouhaha.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. Love, like politics, evokes the deepest emotions.

People may forgive what we say, and over time even absolve us for what we did. But they never forget how we made them feel.

And the contest between the two candidates aroused such emotion, driven by the same hypothalamus brain region that arouses anger and desire.

In the cacophonic world of social media, election fervor was a nightmare of anarchic incongruity.

Everyone with an account '€“ be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path, Line, Whatsapp or BBM groups and others '€“ went online not because they had something worthy to say but because they felt they had to say something.

Logging-in used to be a fun exercise full of surprises. During the campaigns, it became a dreaded chore filled with annoying online pals.

A study found an increased occurrence of '€œunfriending'€ activity during the peak of the campaign period.

Prapanca Research in its observations between June 4 and July 4 found a significant jump in tweets relating to '€œunfriend'€, '€œunfollow'€, '€œblock'€ or '€œunshare'€.

But Indonesia'€™s very noisy democracy was unceremoniously affecting personal relationships prior to this round of elections.

Each year there are some 2 million registered marriages in the country and the Ministry of Religious Affairs estimates about 10 percent end in divorce.

According to their data some 500 couples divorce due to political differences.

Khofifah Indar Parawansa, the minister for the empowerment of women during the Abdurrahman Wahid presidency, recently remarked that irreconcilable political differences ranked number 13 or higher in the reasons for divorce.

'€œIn the last four years, divorces due to politics sharply increased,'€ she said.

Be it the elected or the electors, around the world politics forges and destroys relationships, especially in great democracies.

In India during the last campaign, the public was treated to a family feud of soap-opera proportions as the fifth generation of Gandhis, Rahul and Priyanka, of the Congress Party fired salvos at cousin Varun, a candidate for the opposing BJP.

It is a rivalry stemming from their parents, Rajiv and Sanjay, the two sons of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, and the competition between their respective widows, Sonia and Maneka.

Former US vice president Dick Cheney in his retirement has had to endure the political feud between daughters Liz and Mary as the former in her senate bid stood against same-sex marriages despite her younger sister being openly lesbian and married to a female partner.

Closer to home, married couples in Jambi and South Kalimantan provinces ran for seats on opposing tickets. By all accounts, both couples are still, thankfully, happily married.

The wisdom of Thomas Jefferson some 200 years ago rings true today as he warned that politics was such a torment that everyone he loved should not mix with it.

Hopefully with the election over and Joko Widodo confirmed by the Constitutional Court as the president-elect, couples and families can get back to fighting over the more traditional relationship issues: infidelity and money.

'€” Faustus Belial