Oh god, the life partner game drives me batty sometimes. Of course, it doesn't help that I've complicated it for myself by being poly.
I call Marna my girlfriend, but that's not really accurate. I think technically she's my fiancee, since I asked her to marry me and she said yes, even though there'll probably never be a state-sanctioned certificate and ceremony to go with it. I think we're counting "when I move to Canada" as when we'll consider ourselves married. But fiancee requires a whole lot of context and explanations. When she's with me, I sometimes introduce her as my partner and vice versa, but that always just feels odd when she's not there, it's just such a clunky term.
And that's even before you add in the boy, who is my somethingorother (boyfriend? partner? I can't find a term that really fits) and Marna's common law husband. The whole thing leaves me kind of beating my head against the wall and has lead me to just referring to them as "my girl" and "my boy" in casual conversation. But that does nothing to solve the formal situation conundrum.
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I call Marna my girlfriend, but that's not really accurate. I think technically she's my fiancee, since I asked her to marry me and she said yes, even though there'll probably never be a state-sanctioned certificate and ceremony to go with it. I think we're counting "when I move to Canada" as when we'll consider ourselves married. But fiancee requires a whole lot of context and explanations. When she's with me, I sometimes introduce her as my partner and vice versa, but that always just feels odd when she's not there, it's just such a clunky term.
And that's even before you add in the boy, who is my somethingorother (boyfriend? partner? I can't find a term that really fits) and Marna's common law husband. The whole thing leaves me kind of beating my head against the wall and has lead me to just referring to them as "my girl" and "my boy" in casual conversation. But that does nothing to solve the formal situation conundrum.