In conversation, I refer to Ian as my “boyfriend,” despite the fact that he’s well past boyhood and our relationship is more than friendly. Manfriend? “Lover” might be more accurate (if soppy), but I’d be afraid to say it in most social settings. Should we resurrect POSSLQ? “Partner” is succinct, though vague— business partner, sex partner, life partner, some combination of the three? Male or female? Is that anyone’s beeswax but ours?
Sometimes even married folk seek new titles: one of my sisters refers to her spouse as “husbadude.”
What do you call your…. your whatever-you-call-them?
I am still getting used to “husband”. Nick was “boyfriend” for a very long time and to my own surprise, I dug the lightness of the term. Boyfriend is fun and sexy, but partner and spouse are so heavy and clinical.
I mostly call him my dude. Husband works too these days. I still think it’s funny that I’m technically a wife. A wife!
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I struggled with this, too. I was always at a loss as to what to call my long-term boyfriend. “Boyfriend” had a ring about it as though we’d just hooked up, and we’d been together for 12 years. “Partner” was too neutered. “Paramour” sounded douchey.
Maybe that’s why we finally just got married. “Husband” is just about perfect.
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Well, online I call him “The Rocket Scientist!” ;)
I do find that once you reach a certain age and/or length of time in a relationship, “boyfriend/girlfriend” doesn’t seem significant enough. T.R.S. and I are both grown adults in a committed, 4-year relationship, and calling him my “boyfriend” can feel somewhat flippant and immature.
When I lived in Canada, I got really used to the term “partner,” but out here in the cowboy-loving West, there’s often an automatic interpretation of the term to mean “homosexual partner.” I don’t care, and it’s no one’s business, but the reaction is often negative.
As T.R.S. has been looking into the possibility of me joining him in Europe, he’s taken to referring to me as his “frau,” or wife, just because it’s easier than trying to explain the long-term, long-distance girlfriend situation.
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In her presence I call my fiance ‘Sunshine.’ I’ve used other pet-names in the past like ‘Retard’ and ‘F—face’ but ‘Sunshine’ always seemed to be the best moniker. Also, you get mixed reactions when signing off a cellphone call in public with: “I Love you, F—face.”
When speaking about her to other people (not the children) I refer to her as “My Lady.”
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I call him husband now, but we’ve only beem married since septemeber, so it still feels weird. Before that I called him boyfriend among young people in the friend category, and partner among older, work type people and when speaking to businesses. On my blog I call him Dave or occasionally boyfriendpartnerperson. I like ladypartner as a term for women.
Partner got us into trouble at US immigration once when Dave said he was visiting with his partner. He ended up being interrogated for ages cos they thought he was gay. When it transpired I was a woman, the officer actually went ‘Oh, that’s alright then!’. At the same time, I was also being interrogated in a slightly threatening flirtatious manner, and there was nothing I could do but smile. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of US immigration!
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I go with either partner (I like the implied…. partnership), dudefriend (in casual situations), or gentleman friend (in pretty much any non-official situation, and some official ones too). I get a kick out of “gentleman friend,” and it usually elicits an amusing reaction too.
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I call my Significan Other Daniel.
Then there’s the man I live with:
AS a woman long known for calling Her Own Children by the wrong names this what-to-call-HIM thing is an issue for me.
Online I refer to him as The Manimal. Or My Honeylamb.
In person I call him by his first name,like 99% of the world does, or I call him “Mr. C______” because I think it’s cute and because in this increasingly casual world no one in business ever calls him Mister, which makes it all the more fun.
Random children out in public call him Santa, always said in whispered reverential tones. Teehee.
Mr. C_____ generally calls me by my first name, which is a nice change.
In my previous incarnation in which I was legally married my official husband NEVER called me by my actual name. Mostly he didn’t call me any name until we had kids, at which time he took up calling me “your mother”. To others than our children he referred to me as “The Wife” which to my ear has all the intimacy of “The carburator” or “The Game Warden”. On occasion he would call me “Fairest flower of the Nile” which made me want to poke him with a BBQ fork, because that is what he called his mother. I think she found it annoying too.
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Good question!
In the past I used “manfriend” to describe Chad. Ironic because he is much more boy than man, but, ah well. Somehow it fit the spirit of the relationship (if you can call it that).
I like the term “partner” for a lot of reasons… hadn’t used it in the past, but I plan to in the future (just gotta find one first). I like hearing people call their significant other their partner.
I can’t pull it off myself but I thought it was kind of sweet when I heard women I knew in New Mexico call their boyfriend/husband their “honey.”
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“Partner” for me. Largely because:
1) I like(d) not needing to switch back and forth between gendered terms, depending on who I was involved with at the time.
2) When applied to poly relationships, it’s been a natural way to distinguish a primary partner.
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Ooh, POSSLQ! I’m all for bringing it back. Until then, I use “boyfriend” most liberally but dislike it for the reasons you cite. I like “gentleman friend” but that’s also a little tongue-in-cheek, whereas “partner” seems too somber. I also use “fellow,” but again, a hint tongue-in-cheek. Isn’t it the French that has particular words for such situations? I just feel like “boyfriend” means that he’s taking me to the prom. We’ve been together four years, you know?
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Mike. Or Michael. Or Miguel. Or something stupid if I want to be annoying. I do refer to him as my boyfriend still, because even though we’re in a commited, four-year-plus relationship, neither of us are interested in marriage as an institution, and “boyfriend” seems like a good way to sort of push back on the way all our older coworkers keep dancing around the “tee hee hee when are you guys getting married” thing. Which, bleh to that.
I also kind of hate the sound of the word “husband.” And “hubby” is absolutely vomitous. Although I did realize while doing notes on my work research today that I like the sound of saying “husb” out loud. The abbreviation just may become the noun for me now that my friends are starting to get married. “Hey, Tia, how’s your husb?”
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Husbadude. I like that. I call him my husband or my boy. He is a boy. A big man child with a love of Star Wars and Legos. I doubt he’ll ever grow up.
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In the past couple of years I’ve begun to use the word “partner” as it seems more inclusive to me in the circles I travel in. And if it is deliberately vague, the listener needs to wonder why I use the term.
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Such an inspiring topic! On my blog he’s Squirrel, but in real life I prefer “the man I married,” that way, when he’s behaving badly, people are more likely to assume it was just a flight of fancy back in ’99 and not something I can be held accountable for all these years later.
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I’ve struggled with this one too since I’m not 15 anymore and not married, and the boy and I have been together for five years. I refer to him as my boyfriend or the boy (the man just has difference connotations, doesn’t it?
My mom has sometimes called him my friend during introductions, which is also weird since we live together. When I brought this up she started introducing him as my lover instead. Yeah, my mom is a smart a**.
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Partner has always seemed like “business partner” to me. So I love the idea of using it. It throws me off when people say it. I like that. I haven’t changed over yet from saying “boyfriend” but definitly at some point adults can’t be claiming to be girls and boys anymore.
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Adam and I got married 2 years and 2 months after we met, so sliding from pen-pal to boyfriend to fiance to husband hasn’t been complicated. We rarely talk to people more than once without them knowing we’re married, after which point it’s first mostly names. To strangers he’s my husband. To his face he’s Adam, sweetheart, Beastie or lover. I’m usually Rach, pumpkin or Kitfox.
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