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.

Companion makes me laugh - sounds like it is for 80 year olds who sleep in separate beds or rooms!

Plenty of younger people sleep in separate rooms for various reasons. Has no bearing on sex life!

I hope your other reasons for marrying him were better. 🤣

Wait until you’re 62 and he’s 71 and realise how ridiculous boyfriend sounds

In that scenario you say ‘This is my friend Richard/Julie’ and everyone understands what’s what. Everyone knows the difference between their friend Joan from knitting class versus their friend Martin who seems to turn up everywhere with them socially. It’s not really mental gymnastics😁.

I know people who use "partner" to mean someone they meet for dates every now and again, and for people who only want to graduate to "partner" once they've combined bank accounts. Both are fine with me. I'm capable of using other context clues to figure out the general sense of what they mean. After all, it's not a legally protected term.

I started calling my partner my "boyfriend" after we got married two years ago. It makes me smile.

Wait, so you went through a legally binding process and are now financially tied to someone purely because you don’t like a particular word?

I’m sorry I find this utterly batshit…

The literal equivalent 9f byfriend and girlfriend would be manfriend and womanfriend.

Partner could be business partner or life partner or work partner.

Use partner if you like. I don't care, its usually just used as the 30+yo version of boyfriend and girlfriend.

"Bit"
May I introduce you to Curlew, my bit.

Sophisticated and elegant.

Ooh, I love the olde world charm of 'companion', but I think people would side eye me. Maybe I'll ask him what he says because funnily enough I've never asked how he speaks about me when I'm not there, and when I am there he just says 'this is Brassy.'

The pp said "one of the reasons", and was obviously using a bit of hyperbole for comic effect. Take a breath.

I have many friends of both sexes. If people made that assumption whenever I introduced someone as “My friend Mary” or “My friend John” it would suggest that I have a much more exciting life than I do…..

Same here - I have quite a few platonic male friends. It would really, really annoy me if I introduced a platonic male friend to someone and they starting raising eyebrows or assuming I was banging them.

Im too old for a boyfriend. It would sound ridiculous

Or like when my mum used to refer to my grandad's partner as 'his ladyfriend'.

You're not wrong OP and in another thread, people are losing their shit over the OP describing a room in her house as the orangery. Its about a parenting query, not a household/property query.

I think it's becoming much more common . Divorce, children who don't need "blending", financially independent women ..all mean there are many more couples now who fit exactly into the demographic of long term commited partners but don't yet live together. And yes, boyfriend sounds ridiculous at 30+.

I am married and say partner, so does my…partner!
sometimes I call him my boyfriend cos it’s funny.
my mum called her partner her boyfriend before they got married, they were late 70’s, it was hilarious.
i don’t care what people call their other half, at all.
the one thing i like about partner is, it doesn’t disclose my sexuality or marital status, and why should it?

I'm not sure why but I hate the word. I swear part of the reason for getting married was so I could say "husband", up until then we were young enough to get away with boyfriend/girlfriend.

I really hate when I'm dealing with some sort of officialdom and they insist on saying "partner" even though I've said I'm married. Rude.

LOL, thanks for the advice but neither of us are in care home territory quite yet. My goal is to deadlift 100kg this year and I doubt that's permitted in "Dun Roamin'" ;)

Each to their own.

For me, you don't live with a boyfriend, you do live with a partner, and having a dh requires a marriage certificate.

So much clearer that way.

I'm rather fond of the Scots 'bidie-in', but that only works if you live together.

Someone of my acquaintance lost their partner to cancer. The partner's children wouldn't allow 'partner' in the death notice and would only agree to 'companion'.

When the notice came out, the funeral director had inserted the word 'loving'. [That's the version that I was told.]

I've known people who used 'friend' in that way and it honestly never dawned on me that they were an item. It's taken me to reach my mid-sixties before the penny finally dropped.

Or " my Julie"? May I introduce you to my Julie?

Don't know what the equivalent for a man would be.

Partner implies something very serious with intertwined lives. It means you plan together. It doesn’t have to mean living together. People can structure their lives and their relationships however they wish.

however, there are people using the word partner to describe someone they have met once for coffee.

if the word loses all meaning, it becomes impossible to have a conversation.

A boyfriend is exactly what he is.

Exactly!

I've been asked about my partner. Why are you asking me about my partner when you know I don't have one? You know I am married.