Maybe I'm in a bubble but I'm British and I think it's just normal here. I wouldn't assume someone's sexuality or or wokeness if they used the word partner. I think boyfriend/girlfriend sounds quite childish in my social circle. I also think it sounds quite nice and not at all corporate to me. Companion on the other hand which is the normal french word brings to mind a very posh kind of carer.
It's an extremely American view on the word (which is not a criticism of the writer, just a fact). Most Anglo-Saxon countries have been using the word for decades with no implications about wokeness or sexuality.
It’s really interesting to look at this from a cross-language perspective. The administrative term for a domestic partner in France is, believe it or not, concubin / concubine. It has not made its way into common parlance!
People will typically use companion, or friend (boy / girl implied). There is also a distinction in common speech between a lover as in someone you’re in love with (amoureux / amoureuse), and a lover as is someone you make love with (amant / amante), and people like to use the former in a cutesy way.
Consort (confrere / consoeur) is strictly used by people who share a profession! It’s what doctors or lawyers call each other, whether they’re in business together or fighting. It feels like partner might feel in English.
Swedish has “sambo”, together-living, which has referred to something along the lines of “domestic partner” since the 19th century. These days it only refers to domestic partnership, but apparently back in the day you could use it for e.g. animal species living in the same area.
(Sambos also have legal rights! Some from 1987, many more from 2003.)
“Särbo” (apart-living) has been back-formed from sambo to refer to a serious partner with whom you’re not cohabitating.
This makes me wonder, the French use of re:companion, if we need to just develop a better culture of poetic insinuation in English, rather than another label. (People do occasionally use "companion" here, I think? But it sounds a tad pretentious right now. It's not being used for much else currently, maybe we could bring it back?)
Once you've been cohabiting for long enough you should just use husband/wife if you're not intending to get married and fiance if you are.
Few people these days think an actual legal marriage is an essential part of modern coupling, so if you're trying to sum up your relationship you may as well use the term which means "person I live with and would have kids with if I wanted kids and intend to love forever" which we already have. It's not misleading. Nobody is going to go "ah but she's not your real wife" because that would be crass.
My Spanish neighbours referred to each other as husband and wife when talking with others, but I learned they weren't actually married. They had three children, a mortgage and had been together for 20 years, so I considered them more committed than any given celebrity marriage.
My personal sense is that it's a sort of woke-ism to some degree, particularly when said by people who are married or who are referring to like, a new relationship. When it's used to indicate seriousness of the non-married relationship, tho, it just feels natural at this point.
Partner is a decent catch-all for "someone you're in a relationship with" if the status or gender are unknown. I don't think partner is a terrible word to use or hate it, but I think it's a terrible word to use if you know the status/gender or are married or engaged, because there are words for those situations that I would consider more respectful and higher status.
Using "partner," which is a general term, to refer to a specific person implies that you're hiding something about your relationship. Whether that's a sense of shame about not moving forward with marriage after X amount of time together, shame about your sexual orientation, valuing the comfort of the hypothetical gay community over that of your spouse, or something else, you're deliberately obscuring something about your relationship.
I consider it mildly disrespectful to the person you're spending your life with to use the term "partner" to describe them, but don't consider it disrespectful to use "partner" as a catch-all. (i.e. "People can bring their partners to this event.")
Personally, I think that marriage is an important way of demonstrating your commitment, though I also wish there was some distinction between a religious marriage and secular, gay, or purely legal marriages.
But setting that aside, I think long engagements should be normalized -- if you live with a person with the intention of having a long-term, committed relationship, I think being engaged is a good way to signal that you intend to stay committed to the best of your ability and hopefully get married. Of course, more engagements would be broken off if that was the norm, but I think that engagement is considered a transient state in our current society when it's actually the ideal state for "committed but not married" people.
"Broke up with my boyfriend" doesn't convey the gravity of ending a 3+ year relationship, but "broke off my engagement" totally does.
I think this framework would create a good way of separating "scared of commitment" partnerships from "waiting for more money/to finish college/to be totally sure" long-term domestic arrangements.
I mainly encountered it first through academia, where people whom I knew to be married would say "partner" because woke: you can't just assume I'm straight, haha, now I am an ally! So it always struck me as a sort of annoying way to try to be simultaneously woke and mysterious. I always just said "girlfriend", then "fiancee", then "wife". ezpz.
My girlfriend when I was 18 hated the term "boyfriend", and (mainly because that's who writes about this stuff) it still seems to me that women are much more perturbed by using "boyfriend" than men are by using "girlfriend". I wonder if that's because calling a man a "boy" is either much more contemptuous or much more affectionate than calling a woman a "girl".
“Significant Other” has a similarly corporate ring to it, to my ear, but I have heard people drop “esso” (for S.O.) in conversation. It feels inclusive; breezy without being disrespectful. I don’t hate it.
Anecdote: a friend of mine, a widower, recently started online dating. He used the term partner in his profile in reference to his late wife. That word stood out to me, so I asked him about it. He said his understanding is that the term carries a certain meaning to the type of woman he’s interested in meeting. Apparently it’s a positive valence in his circles.
The problem is that it’s less descriptive, and the election to emphasize the use of the more sterile term “partner” - the same word you would use for a business associate or study group - strikes me as yet another way to squeeze humanity out of exchanges, which always seems to inexorably lead to the alternative - “girlfriend/boyfriend”, “wife/husband” - being popularly construed as somehow untoward or offensive, which is where my blood pressure starts to rise.
Not only is it a form of linguistic entrapment meant to imply culpability of innocent terms, making people easier to control through vernacular; but it’s a blatant vitiation of love itself!
I use partner and don't feel any weirdness about it, but I'll also be getting married in the nearish future so obviously I'll be using a different word soon. Girlfriend just felt too unserious for someone I'd been living with since just before COVID, and there wasn't anything else in the space between "girlfriend" and "wife" that didn't feel archaic or pretentious.
Belatedly checking out the comments on this one, and surprised the consensus is that "partner" is bad because it's too corporate, rather than because it's too Southern. This is the complaint I've heard most frequently about "partner" in real life, that it's stolen valor a la Yankees saying "y'all."
In Ireland, it seems to be used ubiquitously by anyone (regardless of sexual or political orientation) to describe an adult romantic relationship. Anecdotally, I have heard straight people refer to a long term significant other as "partner", and these were straight people not at all politically minded or bordering on "woke". Maybe in the American context it's got different connotations, but here it's pretty natural to use to describe any serious but unmarried romantic relationship where people are over, say, 30. I can use the term "partner" to describe my relationship without people assuming I'm gay or straight either way
I buy kryptogals explantation. People unconsciously picked it up from corpo speak. When people/institutions who don't know you yet or are speaking generally, ask about your "partner", it normalizes the term and it enters common parlance.
I think it's good and fine to use the term in a general sense to be inclusive, but calling your own husband/wife/etc your "partner" annoys me because it's like calling your mom "parent/guardian" or calling your son your "child".
There's nothing wrong with the term boyfriend/girlfriend regardless of age or relationship duration. If you are dating exclusively and not married, that's what you are.
Maybe I'm in a bubble but I'm British and I think it's just normal here. I wouldn't assume someone's sexuality or or wokeness if they used the word partner. I think boyfriend/girlfriend sounds quite childish in my social circle. I also think it sounds quite nice and not at all corporate to me. Companion on the other hand which is the normal french word brings to mind a very posh kind of carer.
It's an extremely American view on the word (which is not a criticism of the writer, just a fact). Most Anglo-Saxon countries have been using the word for decades with no implications about wokeness or sexuality.
It’s really interesting to look at this from a cross-language perspective. The administrative term for a domestic partner in France is, believe it or not, concubin / concubine. It has not made its way into common parlance!
People will typically use companion, or friend (boy / girl implied). There is also a distinction in common speech between a lover as in someone you’re in love with (amoureux / amoureuse), and a lover as is someone you make love with (amant / amante), and people like to use the former in a cutesy way.
Consort (confrere / consoeur) is strictly used by people who share a profession! It’s what doctors or lawyers call each other, whether they’re in business together or fighting. It feels like partner might feel in English.
Swedish has “sambo”, together-living, which has referred to something along the lines of “domestic partner” since the 19th century. These days it only refers to domestic partnership, but apparently back in the day you could use it for e.g. animal species living in the same area.
(Sambos also have legal rights! Some from 1987, many more from 2003.)
“Särbo” (apart-living) has been back-formed from sambo to refer to a serious partner with whom you’re not cohabitating.
This makes me wonder, the French use of re:companion, if we need to just develop a better culture of poetic insinuation in English, rather than another label. (People do occasionally use "companion" here, I think? But it sounds a tad pretentious right now. It's not being used for much else currently, maybe we could bring it back?)
I'll stop saying partner when they come up with a better word for "guy you are in a romantic relationship with and live with but are not married to"
Once you've been cohabiting for long enough you should just use husband/wife if you're not intending to get married and fiance if you are.
Few people these days think an actual legal marriage is an essential part of modern coupling, so if you're trying to sum up your relationship you may as well use the term which means "person I live with and would have kids with if I wanted kids and intend to love forever" which we already have. It's not misleading. Nobody is going to go "ah but she's not your real wife" because that would be crass.
My Spanish neighbours referred to each other as husband and wife when talking with others, but I learned they weren't actually married. They had three children, a mortgage and had been together for 20 years, so I considered them more committed than any given celebrity marriage.
My personal sense is that it's a sort of woke-ism to some degree, particularly when said by people who are married or who are referring to like, a new relationship. When it's used to indicate seriousness of the non-married relationship, tho, it just feels natural at this point.
Partner is a decent catch-all for "someone you're in a relationship with" if the status or gender are unknown. I don't think partner is a terrible word to use or hate it, but I think it's a terrible word to use if you know the status/gender or are married or engaged, because there are words for those situations that I would consider more respectful and higher status.
Using "partner," which is a general term, to refer to a specific person implies that you're hiding something about your relationship. Whether that's a sense of shame about not moving forward with marriage after X amount of time together, shame about your sexual orientation, valuing the comfort of the hypothetical gay community over that of your spouse, or something else, you're deliberately obscuring something about your relationship.
I consider it mildly disrespectful to the person you're spending your life with to use the term "partner" to describe them, but don't consider it disrespectful to use "partner" as a catch-all. (i.e. "People can bring their partners to this event.")
Personally, I think that marriage is an important way of demonstrating your commitment, though I also wish there was some distinction between a religious marriage and secular, gay, or purely legal marriages.
But setting that aside, I think long engagements should be normalized -- if you live with a person with the intention of having a long-term, committed relationship, I think being engaged is a good way to signal that you intend to stay committed to the best of your ability and hopefully get married. Of course, more engagements would be broken off if that was the norm, but I think that engagement is considered a transient state in our current society when it's actually the ideal state for "committed but not married" people.
"Broke up with my boyfriend" doesn't convey the gravity of ending a 3+ year relationship, but "broke off my engagement" totally does.
I think this framework would create a good way of separating "scared of commitment" partnerships from "waiting for more money/to finish college/to be totally sure" long-term domestic arrangements.
I mainly encountered it first through academia, where people whom I knew to be married would say "partner" because woke: you can't just assume I'm straight, haha, now I am an ally! So it always struck me as a sort of annoying way to try to be simultaneously woke and mysterious. I always just said "girlfriend", then "fiancee", then "wife". ezpz.
My girlfriend when I was 18 hated the term "boyfriend", and (mainly because that's who writes about this stuff) it still seems to me that women are much more perturbed by using "boyfriend" than men are by using "girlfriend". I wonder if that's because calling a man a "boy" is either much more contemptuous or much more affectionate than calling a woman a "girl".
“Significant Other” has a similarly corporate ring to it, to my ear, but I have heard people drop “esso” (for S.O.) in conversation. It feels inclusive; breezy without being disrespectful. I don’t hate it.
Anecdote: a friend of mine, a widower, recently started online dating. He used the term partner in his profile in reference to his late wife. That word stood out to me, so I asked him about it. He said his understanding is that the term carries a certain meaning to the type of woman he’s interested in meeting. Apparently it’s a positive valence in his circles.
This is my joint tenant
The problem is that it’s less descriptive, and the election to emphasize the use of the more sterile term “partner” - the same word you would use for a business associate or study group - strikes me as yet another way to squeeze humanity out of exchanges, which always seems to inexorably lead to the alternative - “girlfriend/boyfriend”, “wife/husband” - being popularly construed as somehow untoward or offensive, which is where my blood pressure starts to rise.
Not only is it a form of linguistic entrapment meant to imply culpability of innocent terms, making people easier to control through vernacular; but it’s a blatant vitiation of love itself!
I use partner and don't feel any weirdness about it, but I'll also be getting married in the nearish future so obviously I'll be using a different word soon. Girlfriend just felt too unserious for someone I'd been living with since just before COVID, and there wasn't anything else in the space between "girlfriend" and "wife" that didn't feel archaic or pretentious.
I think the main source of the change is that people are getting married a lot later, and like others have said, boyfriend and girlfriend is childish
Belatedly checking out the comments on this one, and surprised the consensus is that "partner" is bad because it's too corporate, rather than because it's too Southern. This is the complaint I've heard most frequently about "partner" in real life, that it's stolen valor a la Yankees saying "y'all."
In Ireland, it seems to be used ubiquitously by anyone (regardless of sexual or political orientation) to describe an adult romantic relationship. Anecdotally, I have heard straight people refer to a long term significant other as "partner", and these were straight people not at all politically minded or bordering on "woke". Maybe in the American context it's got different connotations, but here it's pretty natural to use to describe any serious but unmarried romantic relationship where people are over, say, 30. I can use the term "partner" to describe my relationship without people assuming I'm gay or straight either way
I buy kryptogals explantation. People unconsciously picked it up from corpo speak. When people/institutions who don't know you yet or are speaking generally, ask about your "partner", it normalizes the term and it enters common parlance.
I think it's good and fine to use the term in a general sense to be inclusive, but calling your own husband/wife/etc your "partner" annoys me because it's like calling your mom "parent/guardian" or calling your son your "child".
There's nothing wrong with the term boyfriend/girlfriend regardless of age or relationship duration. If you are dating exclusively and not married, that's what you are.