When did people start calling their boyfriend/girlfriend their partner?

[Anonymous]

My paramour

[Anonymous]

My concubine.

[Anonymous]

It's not any stranger than calling a grown person "boy" or "girl".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you're north of 30, talking about your "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" just sounds immature.

Bingo

Who cares? It's pretty direct, whereas partner isn't as clear. I like saying boyfriend, regardless of the fact that I'm well north of 30. And I like being a girlfriend. YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this OP. I have also noticed the growing use of the word partner, and I despise it so much that I actually spent time once doing some internet research on where it came from. I don't take people who use the word "partner" seriously in the slightest.

It's a grotesque word, symbolic of a modern soulless, sterile worldview in which men and women are interchangeable and indistinguishable, and aspire to transactional "partnerships" instead of loving marriages.

Things have reached the point where, when a woman uses the term "boyfriend", it's a green flag that she has a healthy view on male-female relationship dynamics.

[Anonymous]

Worst is significant other. I knew a woman who had been with her boyfriend for 12 years and called him that. Don’t get it.

[Anonymous]

I am heterosexual and married and I use partner or spouse (never husband/wife). I also use "parent" when completing kids' forms for school and such instead of mother/father.

[Anonymous]

We use the word “partner” in some situations to introduce each other to someone that one of us doesn’t know.
We’re older, at 64 years and BF or GF doesn’t seem to define our relationship. We have a legal domestic partnership and we’ve been together for about 10 years. She is a widow and I’m divorced. It seems to work best for us to use the term “partner”.

[Anonymous]

First heard it in the UK in the 80s... "my pardner." It's got a hippy vibe.

[Anonymous]

Personally, I started when my spouse came out as trans and changed gender identification. Husband feels weird for someone I married while they were identifying as a woman, so I say partner.

[Anonymous]

I’ve never felt drawn to be married. But I hope we stay together for life. He’s my partner. In life. It fits.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this thread. I didn't know the connotation, when my male colleague referred to his female significant other as his "partner".

Had just this very question.

[Anonymous]

I'm married and sometimes I will say husband but most of the time I say partner. Its a common phrase in other countries.

Definition for partner is "either member of a married couple or of an established unmarried couple".

But people love labels, they need people wrapped up in boxes all labelled up. Meh I don't say it to be woke or PC, to me its just a phrase but being married also doesn't mean commitment to me. Look at all the divorces that happen, so I guess commitment to me means being a partner in life which is probably more why I say partner.

[Anonymous]

It's stupid. It sounds too p.c.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm married and sometimes I will say husband but most of the time I say partner. Its a common phrase in other countries.

Definition for partner is "either member of a married couple or of an established unmarried couple".

But people love labels, they need people wrapped up in boxes all labelled up. Meh I don't say it to be woke or PC, to me its just a phrase but being married also doesn't mean commitment to me. Look at all the divorces that happen, so I guess commitment to me means being a partner in life which is probably more why I say partner.

Well said. Thank you for a concise, on target response.