Marriage Diaries is a column by Telegraph Family in which people share snapshots of their relationships and their dilemmas. It is published every Wednesday.

We’ve always known our political stances differed: I’ve always voted Conservative and she has always voted Labour. But I confess, I didn’t tell my wife that I voted leave until months after the referendum.

I didn’t exactly lie; I just said, jokily, when pressed, that my vote was between me and the ballot box. I’d archly raise my eyebrow and nudge her, which she could have interpreted any way she liked.

And things might have carried on as normal had I not got very drunk one evening at a dinner party, and got into a heated debate with one of her appalling friends’ husbands (a smug, self-righteous prig whom I took great delight in putting straight on some totally inaccurate scaremongering); I declared that leaving was the only sensible option to get out of the EU’s corruption and general mess.

I remember the look on my wife’s face: a combination of shock, disgust and embarrassment.

But the gravity didn’t really hit me until a very frosty breakfast the next morning. I realised I’d been right to keep it to myself, because it was like lighting a touch paper. Woomph! She was off...