To think many posters are very weird about the word ‘partner’?

[Savante]

I’ve noticed it for years and find it so bizarre.

If a poster says she’s been with her partner for five years but they don’t live together there are screams of ‘you don’t even live together. He's your boyfriend’.

If she says they live together but have only been together for a year it’s ’not sure why you’re calling him your partner. He's barely a boyfriend’.

And then on the flip side, if a woman calls her husband her partner, presumably due to habit, she gets leapt on with ‘why are you calling your husband your partner OP’.

Am I missing something? Is there some strict definition of partner I’ve missed?

It irritates the fuck out of me, unreasonable or not.

I know people are joking-at least I hope they are-but surely nobody wants to introduce someone to their work colleagues or their estate agent as their “fancy man” “gentleman caller”” bidey-in” or even “boyfriend”? Surely if you’re not married the only word for an adult to use is “partner”?

To be clear, I sometimes jokingly call my OH that he is my ‘fancy man’. I don’t say it to anyone else 😆
I usually call him my partner in the real world, but as I said in my first post on here, it’s leas to people assuming I live with him or that I might be a lesbian. I feel it’s a rather ambiguous term.