To ask why some people object so much when someone refers to the person they don’t live with as a partner?

[AlternativePerspective]

I’ve seen this numerous times on threads, in fact I even saw an OP about it once, saying that “if you don’t live with him, he’s not your partner he’s your boyfriend.”

And all i can wonder is, why? Why does it bother people so much?

People have numerous reasons for not living together, sometimes it’s for logistical reasons or work reasons or because of children from a previous relationship, or distance. That doesn’t make the relationship any less valid.

Added to which, by that definition, if a woman moved a bloke in after six weeks he would apparently earn the title “partner”.

I can only think that maybe people who are so bothered by it are insecure in their own relationships, and want to think that their relationship is superior because they live together, when actually it might be even more shit than the relationship of a couple who don’t.

But I do wonder if anyone can explain just why it annoys them so much....

Partner describing long term commited relationship where living together may not be practical (children, work, bitter experience) fine. Partner describes sharing of aspects of life.

Partner describing early, casual stages of a relationship barely into "courting", misleading. I've seen many a AIBU about someone's dilemma over their "partner" and the tone has very much implied a long term commited relationship and it's barely been a couple of months and he's not even committed as far as "exclusive" in his mind. "Partner" being used prematurely like that can distort a sense of perspective about the state of a relationship.

BogRollBOGOF fair enough, that makes sense. Partner implies an exclusive relationship of some duration. It's a bit daft to use the term with someone you've been seeing a couple of months, although still not really any of anyone else's business.

But the thread is about the insistence that some people have that unless you are cohabiting your relationship is temporary and you have no right to call one another partner. Which I find absolutely bonkers, not to mention incredibly prurient.

I also think this attitude has the effect of making people feel that cohabitation is always the ultimate goal of a relationship which pushes lots of people into cohabiting inappropriately and then finding that its very difficult for them to untangle themselves from the resultant mess.