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 would find it very weird if my 75 year old mother called her 80 year old partner her boyfriend!

My partner and I have a joint mortgage, we are beneficiaries on each others pensions etc. It's unfair to say we are just strangers to each other. Marriage on here seems to be all about women wanting to sit at home and not work whilst the kids are at school and then financially fleece the husband for as much as possible when the shit hits the fan and not working or being independent bites them on the arse!

I did say legally tbf, not socially.

I don't think wanting legal protection for years of contributions, which child rearing is, is "fleecing" anyone. And I sat this as a child free woman.

Maybe on legal forms if it’s different boxes for spouse and civil partner.
but everyone I know refers to the other person as a wife or husband. But they partnered before marriage was allowed. It would be rude as hell to say “that’s not your wife, that’s your civil partner” (bar very strict legal situations where the exact legal status is pertinent/say divorce /dissolution)

Quite interesting that. Does the word wife or husband have religious connotations? Bearing in mind a civil partnership is a non religious concept.

But you aren't rearing kids when they are out at school, times have changed and I think women need to see the importance of having some sort of income. It's like this surging trend of mothers that want to pull kids out of school and home teach, do they ever think about what would happen if hubby lost his job or left the relationship! The home teaching would grind to a crashing halt because mum will suddenly need a job. Marriage shouldn't just be about making sure a partner has to pay you to not work, that's why a lot of marriages go wrong because it was done for mercenary reasons.

You can call each other what you want in private, but legally you cannot call each other husband and wife. You're told this at the civil partnership signing.

I would find it odd calling my 51 year old sisters 59 year old partner her boyfriend. They’ve been together for 7 years and lived together for 6 years. 🤷‍♀️

I like the word partner for committed relationships. It’s gender neutral which means people don’t have to out themselves if they don’t want to. I also don’t associate it with business partners. I think of it as suggesting a true partnership of equals.

I can understand why people don’t like it being used for those who are dating but I associate those on MN who don’t like it full stop as being very old fashioned. People who also don’t like vegetarians, or the term ‘Ms’ and are proud of being married

Presumably though in most cases the women staying at home or working reduced hours/scaled back career are a mutual choice.
Childcare is an absolute fortune, plus someone in the home generally means the working partner doesn't have to worry about clean pants and meal planning.

I haven't a clue why partner became a thing.
What's wrong with husband/boyfriend/live in boyfriend? It's so ambiguous.

Why on earth would you use husband or wife if you’re not married? Apart from anything else, the “proud to be married-being married is an achievement” brigade would surely call it “Stolen Valor”! And there are many who would say a woman doing it was concealing that the man
won’t marry her.

I’m single at the moment and divorced so have no skin in this game, but do find that the people (ok, women as I find men don’t care) who object to what another person (woman) calls the person she is currently in a relationship with are the ones who think that marriage and/or a long term relationship is an achievement. It would be nice to move on from that old fashioned thinking and stop describing women in terms of their relationships to other people, but I guess we’re a long way from that.

Because as this thread and others shows, a lot of people consider being married to be their biggest success in life.

Because not everyone gets married. And long term relationships sound ridiculous when you state boyfriend.

There's beauty in ambiguity.
As above many people wouldn't describe themselves as a boy/girl past a certain age so dont want to refer to their 60 year old partner as a boyfriend.

Again imagine you are a 50 year old lady, or indeed a gay 50 year old bloke picking up your spouses car from a garage. You probs aren't going to say I'm here to pick up my boyfriends/lovers/ companions/ car as suggested above. The garage might not need to know the specifics!

As someone in a queer couple the use of partner is massively helpful in not needing to out myself in all sorts of random situations that may not be safe

Its really helpful to have a vague term that covers spouses of all types. I run nhs groups where I dont recall if the person they are with is just someone they've been in a relationship with for 30 years, if they popped off to get married at some point etc, just that they are their romantic partner.

Really? you would introduce someone as your "live in boyfriend"? I would think that was weird as hell if anyone said that to me. I really dont need to know the specific details of your living arrangements. I mean, why stop there if you dont like ambiguity?- "this is Dave, he is my boyfriend and we dont live together but we do have regular sex just in case you're wondering"

I far prefer "partner".

What about if you hate the terms husband and wife?

My partner and I have been together nearly 20 years which is now longer. He has been may partner since we started living a joint life which was about 5 years into the relationship.
We both found it amusing that the moment I fe pregnant other people stopped referring to us as boyfriend/girlfriend and switched to husband/wife

We both have a strong dislike to marriage and were waiting for civil partnership be available for heterosexuals relationships. Once it was we got a civil partnership solidifying us as one anothers partner. We have made a conscious decision to share a life together and to live in a fair and supportive relationship. To me this is the meaning of partner, my wants and needs in life take into account his. I see too often the term husband or "DH" used as a reason to accept unfair and unreasonable behaviour from the other party in a relationship and too many men seeing a wife as term of ownership and a reason to treat them poorly.

A lot of people have a lot of big feelings about this, clearly.

I have a boyfriend and I don’t care if people think I’m too old to use that term. We live together and I don’t care if people think that’s too formal to use that term. we’ve been together for many years and I don’t care if people think our relationship is too longstanding to use that term.

The whole point is that in a lot of contexts it is irrelevant, and language is evolving to reflect that.
Live-in boyfriend to me sounds like something from a bygone age (when it was daring to live with a partner without being married)

My whole point in the 'annoyed' bit was that I was analysing my own reaction ie why does it matter to me if someone socially uses 'partner'?(and I think he was using it consciously to be polite so as not to make an assumption that I am married)
And the answer is probably that actually I do believe it is a superior state to being in a long-term unmarried relationship (on account of being legally recognised) - otherwise why would I have bothered to go to the trouble and expense? I don't care what anyone else does - that's up to them

actually I do believe it is a superior state to being in a long-term unmarried relationship (on account of being legally recognised) - otherwise why would I have bothered to go to the trouble and expense?

Fine, but a lot of us don’t put the same store in marriage and don’t want it for ourselves for numerous reasons. Why should we be considered inferior to married couples?

And why the hell should other people get to tell us how to describe our relationships?

I don't care what other people want to use to describe their relationships, but I dislike "partner" when it starts being foisted on you, since I have literally never referred to anyone as "my partner" (I always used boyfriend/fiance/husband). It's the same with titles, I notice. Some female teachers at our school choose to use Miss, some Mrs, and some Ms. It's really not that hard to remember and respect their personal choice about how they want to be addressed, yet some parents absolutely insist on "Ms"-ing everybody. I think it's rude, a bit like never bothering to learn to spell the teacher's name correctly.

No, he is not a boy. He is in his 50s.
He is my partner.