Relationship experts say using the word partner is vague and smug
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The One ‘Snooty and Annoyingly Vague’ Term You Should Never Use in Relationships or the Dating World: ‘Just Cut It From Your Vocabulary’
- Heterosexual couples should avoid the term ‘couple’
- He has been described as ‘snooty, annoyingly lazy’
People in romantic relationships should avoid calling their other half their ‘partner’ according to experts who claim it comes across as ‘conceited and lazy’.
According to relationship experts at The Cut, the term should only be used when you’re “trying to get something out of it,” are a feminist who refuses to marry, or are part of the LGBTQI+ community.
The publication’s most recent etiquette guide for “friends and lovers” banned the term at number ten and stressed that it’s rarely okay for straight people to use it.
‘A few examples of when it’s acceptable: trying to get an apartment or a seat next to your, ahem, ‘partner’ on a plane, and in negotiations with bosses about relocations.’
He same list asks people to stop using the ‘private pet voice’ when other people are around and says it’s okay to cancel almost any late-night plan before 2 p.m.
Straight people should never call the person they’re in a relationship their ‘partner’, experts say
While some of the rules of engagement seem so specific that they would rarely be useful, the term partner seems to be popping up everywhere as a term to be avoided.
On Reddit, people are criticizing the term, putting it alongside the horror “significant other.”
‘Sounds weird to me too. I don’t like to use it. Of course I’ll use it if someone wants to be called that, but other than that I like to use real names if I can,” said one man.
“My girlfriend hates girlfriend because she thinks it makes her sound like a teenager, but she’s a killer when I use a partner because then she sounds old and boring,” one man laughed.
“I think the partner takes all the passion out of describing the person you love,” said another.
“For a long time I always associated ‘partner’ with ‘hello partner,’ like cowboy movies and stuff, or buddy cop movies, so it sounded really weird to me to hear couples refer to each other as their partner. Although it sounds even stranger to hear ‘significant other’. Like… oh my gosh, at least the partners are equal. But are they just ‘another’ now?’ a woman added to the conversation.
And even people in the queer community, who The Cut claim to be free to use the word, have begun to disavow it.
One woman said that she and her wife hate the ‘trade deal feel’ of the term.
“For us, when we talk about each other in the third person, we refer to each other as ‘my wife’ or by name. To us, ‘partner’ feels more like a trade agreement,” she said.
But others were willing to defend the term ‘useful’.
‘What are we supposed to call them if we’re not married and too old to go with something youthful as a lover? I can’t think of a better term than partner,” said one woman.
The term was popularized by gay couples in the 1980s when they were trying to escape stigma and persecution based on their relationships.
According to LGBTQI educator and coach Dr. Sophia Graham, the term gained popularity in the queer community in the 1980s.
She explained that in the depths of the AIDS crisis, men used the term to show the depth of their relationships, so they would be allowed to see their boyfriend in hospital or attend his funeral.
It then became a popular term to avoid stigma and persecution in the larger gay community, he said. newscorp.
Before that, although it was used intermittently to describe heterosexual relationships, it was used more often to describe people involved in business.