But given the incredibly politically-charged era we live in, there has perhaps never been a more challenging time for certain friends to maintain their relationship.

Certainly that is true for me, The Woke, and my very good friend, The Cooker.

I am a bleeding-heart liberal, I believe in social justice and mainstream science … he loves Trump, is anti-vaccine and thinks transgender identity is simply attention-seeking.

Yet ask either of us to describe the other and these are our adjectives: smart, funny and kind.

The Cooker is someone who, when the chips are down, will always support me and my family. That’s not just my suspicion, that has been the reality. And vice versa.

Our friendship stretches back 30 years and across continents, we have travelled together, our families have holidayed together and, for decades, we have argued together.

There was the time in 1999 when I wandered the town square of Pamplona, Spain crying about Indigenous rights after arguing with The Cooker.

There was the time my husband, one of The Cooker’s oldest friends, begged us to please stop making everyone so uncomfortable with our endless sparring. The Cooker and I just shrugged at each other, we always kind of enjoyed it.

But as the years rolled on and world ideologies became more fragmented, these theoretical debates turned practical as politics began affecting each of us and our families in a far more personal way than ever before. Our discussions just hit different.

The pandemic was when a real schism occurred between our beliefs, and that has only been magnified in the current era of Trumpism.

While I know our ideological divergence is not uncommon, the fact that our friendship continues, albeit with a few bumps and the occasional apocalyptic blow-up, is increasingly unusual.

So The Cooker and I thought we’d share some insights about how we have maintained our relationship and the benefits of putting in this effort.

First, I’d like to allow The Cooker to explain his point of view:

“Being on ‘my side’, I still get exposed to so-called mainstream arguments but I think you can find experts and facts to support either side. So it’s a matter of whose facts do I like best and make the most sense to me?

“When the Covid vaccine first came out, I thought why are they even vaccinating? Coronavirus didn’t seem that bad to me.

“Then I saw someone post something similar on social media and the algorithm just led me to more evidence confirming what I was thinking.

“The authoritarianism of the government during the pandemic really scared me – mandates and lockdowns and quarantine. Not all of my worst fears were realised, but it definitely seemed like it could have gone that way.

“I am getting to the point where I oppose most vaccines and I don’t really trust governments or the medical industry in general. When you look at the polio epidemic, the rates were already dropping when they introduced the vaccine.”

Now, in my opinion, there are ‘facts’ and there are facts. It’s true the polio epidemic was declining in the US as of 1955, but if you look at the five decades preceding it, the case numbers rarely dropped below the thousands, and deaths rarely below 500. Since the vaccine, case numbers and deaths hover at zero.

Also, I do think that his point about feeling scared during the pandemic is interesting … psychological research shows that a large part of engagement with conspiracy theories is driven by fear and lack of control.

Regardless, both the Cooker and I are extremely passionate in our opinions … something we have learned to tone down in polite society.

For me, I rarely post my political beliefs on social media, although in-person conversations are generally a safe space for me. My opinions, while strong, are not necessarily extreme (in my opinion, anyway) and most people I know tend to at least vaguely agree with my sentiments.

For The Cooker, he said he bites his tongue when around friends and family who do not share the same views, although he does use social media as something of an outlet, especially as it’s a place where he has found others with similar viewpoints.

For both of us, the past few years have seen us dance warily around certain topics in order to protect the friendship, but there has certainly been the occasional volcanic blowout.

Even within those apocalyptic conversations there are boundaries: we try not to make it personal, we try to include humour to lighten the tone, and, above all, we remember and respect that each of us is a good person who believes their words and actions are morally motivated.

Ironically, rather than tear us apart, these arguments tend to strengthen our foundation. Our friendship is nothing if not resilient.

Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for everyone. Both the Cooker and I agree that if we met now, we probably wouldn’t be able to see past these disagreements to the common ground that, through our shared history, we know we still have.

But it is difficult sometimes. There have been moments when I wonder whether I am compromising my own morals by not challenging him more often. And I’m sure he has felt the same.

Will we ever change each other’s viewpoints? I doubt it.

But it’s still worth pursuing this friendship. As The Cooker told me, I’m ‘a tremendous person’.

And that goes both ways.

Besides, maybe one day I will win him over …