What to Call Us

22 May 2023

I am not married but live with someone, going on nine years now. We are both sixty and have been married before. We both have kids.

What to call us? We have had this debate as neither of us like partner as a sobriquet. Too many such descriptions are narrow, specific, have connotations that are not quite right. I will discuss the ones I can think of here. In the end I will propose one I think should be used.

Partner:

This is the, shall we say, traditional moniker. At least I know this is what my mom and Ralph called themselves. They were together for thirty-five years so—partner?…Really? My first thought when someone says partner is a business partner. Although there is nothing preventing it Leah and I are not in any sort of money-making business together. We are partners in many things, life being one, but we are not partners in all things. She has a life, I have a life, though all is intertwined they are not ‘all together’ in a partnership sense.

Paramour:

Often used to refer to a ‘kept woman’, a lover who is supported by a man. My reading indicates there is a bit more of the ‘kept’ part than the lover part in the usage. Merriam-Webster.com has this description, (“Paramour.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paramour. Accessed 22 May. 2023.)

“Paramour came to English from French (a language based on Latin), though the modern French don’t use the word. Since par amour meant “through love”, it implies a relationship based solely on love, often physical love, rather than on social custom or ceremony. So today it tends to refer to the lover of a married man or woman, but may be used for any lover who isn’t obeying the social rules.”

One can see why this is not right for my situation. Lover, sure, but not in any unconventional social way and I do not ‘keep’ her, she does not ‘keep’ me in any financial sense.

Lover:

Ah, lover. I had a friend refer to his live-in boy friend, ‘he’s my lover’ and everyone in the room was a bit taken aback. Not that it was not true but that it seemed, say, too much information. Not that we were all prudes either, it just hit us all as not the socially acceptable way to refer to someone but also, ‘but how would one say that’ was on my mind too.

I would say this is not a good descriptor, partly, because it is too limited in scope. We don’t just have sex in relationships though some are surely just that for a time. Some, e.g., Friends with benefits, are that for a purpose but one does not usually announce it in a general public setting. One hopes there is more to a relationship than just sex and so, obviously, lover is not the word to describe a live in relationship with someone one cares about on other levels.

Boyfriend/Girlfriend:

What are we, twelve? Maybe when you first meet, any age under forty, girlfriend may make sense. But very soon one is not dating anymore, or one is more than just a girlfriend or boyfriend. Then what? I know ‘seeing’ has replaced ‘dating’ in the ‘I’m seeing someone’ sense but boyfriend and girlfriend does not cover depth or intensity. Knowing what we all know about dating in our early teens the phrase also implies a short-term situation. This is not a part of the concept itself but, call it, an experiential overlay—or the more cynical idea of PTSD.   

Better half/Other half

This one I have a gut reaction to. There is an underlying degradation to ‘Better Half’. I know it is meant as self-deprecating. I never see it as completely serious. Almost a formal speech of platitudes. If the relationship is equal there is no ‘better half’, if not equal then there are deeper issues.

‘Other half’ does not have a completely identical effect on me. It almost has the effect of not giving either side enough credit. There are three parts to a marriage type relationship, in fact to any relationship that can be described as ‘intimate’ in its definitional usage (“Intimate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate. Accessed 22 May. 2023). I can describe the parts this way; there is one and the other separately and one and another as one. Not halves but wholes in relationship together (Think the Christian Trinity concept), at times working completely separately and at times working completely as one (Reality shows that at times the opposites are also true—we work against ourselves and against each other—albeit unintentionally).

In short, neither phrase completely covers what one is describing. One could say half heartedly so.  

Significant other:

This one does not even come close though often used and commonly understood. Think about who is a significant other: your mother, girlfriend, sister, cat…. The common use of the phrase is in this vane: you are invited to a party, bring your significant other. In other words, you, and someone you would like to bring—I supposed they don’t mean your cat. We have too many relationships that are significant for this to have enough specificity to refer to the person we live with intimately on so many varied levels.

Wife/Husband:

Freaked my kid out the other day by using the ‘wife’ reference—“Did you get married?”, she asked in a surprised tone. Rightly so, as we would not have done such a thing without all our kids involved. This is not the right word on many levels but is universally understood.

British Columbia is a common law province. Therefore, if we live together for more than six months, we are subject to all the same laws that legally married people are, including splitting assets upon a breakup. Washington state is not a common law state. When Ralph died, even though he and my mom had lived together for thirty-five years she had no say whatsoever in the arrangement with the funeral home. Even though she and my sister and I were the only ones there at the time of his death, his kids were the only ones that had any legal say. So, the six-month rule is not long enough to establish common-law, but thirty-five years should get some say.

Married, in the biblical sense, would mean we are both married to someone else, since both are still alive. But that is not the sense one usually uses the word husband, wife, or married.

Husband and wife implies a church or civil ceremony. I have heard that Quebec has made only civil ceremonies valid for marriage but I have not confirmed this. Short of a ceremony husband and wife says too much and does not actually describe the situation but implies events. For common conversation with people who do not know us husband or wife is just easier. Most of these people do not need to know. I still feel funny using it as it is no accurate though in traditional usage it does get the atmosphere of the relationship across to most people.

Living in sin:

This is quite the archaic term as it is both biblically based but also misses the point of the biblical marriage standard—as a relationship descriptor it is not just dated but horrible. Church weddings and marriage ceremonies are old and up until the last few hundred years consummation was part of, and in fact, the only act that made the marriage real in the eyes of God (the original purpose of the best man was to confirm the marriage had in fact happened). Civil marriages, roughly Napoleonic in western tradition (1792), 1880’s in Germany, 1913 in the US, did not have a reference to consummation unless annulment was sought later—too late Henry.

The hold over of living in sin is from my parents’ generation and before. Divorce was not common nor were single parent families. People living together without marriage was held against the woman more than the man. The phrase is typically used more as an attempt at shock. People living together, no matter what generation, did not themselves let living in sin detract from their lives but the society around them would when convenient. I suspect that Catholics had the hardest time here since neither divorce nor sexual activity were allowed outside the original marriage without an annulment. The church in general has a lot to answer for on this, even outside the Catholic church, since they made up rules denigrating and restricting women if they were divorced.

Co-Habitation:

A descriptor that is so vague as to be useless. The possibilities are endless as to whom we co-habitate with from siblings, college roommates, to tent mates on a camping trip. No relationship other than convenience is implied without a nudge-nudge wink-wink. POSSLQ, from the 1980 US census, Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, since living in sin was not on the census and unmarried co-habitation was increasing. But the same problem occurs–siblings? Roommates? I remember when this hit the news while I as in high school, entertaining but not useful.  

Leaving off:

A few I am leaving off as indelicate: Friend, wink-wink, too many possible meanings; Friend with benefits, crass and usually not for the over forty crowd to speak out loud; Fuck buddy, is even more unlikely outside a very small group of one’s close friends with very similar ideas of crassness.

This is it:

I am sure there are more possible phrases to use but the above are the ones I thought of today. The word I think comes closest to what I wish to describe my relationship with Leah is this:

Covivant

This word allows for all aspects of the collective words above. Together (co) and living (vivant) covers as much or little of a relationship as may be. Two quotes below explains more of the origin and meaning.

Donald Hunter, Works Shared: The Social Forms of Vancouver Poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, Doctoral Dissertation, 2018 UBC

“…Turner uncovers a fresh perspective on the topic of collaboration, one that addresses a newly-emergent social dynamic of the early 1960s. The term “covivant” was coined later [1970’s] to describe the situation of unmarried, cohabiting couples: an arrangement, as Richard Lederer notes, that used to be described as “living in sin” (65). Lederer avers that the word – a blend of French and Latin which simply means “living together” – expunges this moral judgment and instead “captures and coalesces the intimacy of lover and significant other, the cohabitual accuracy of roommate [and] the sexual equality of fiancé(e) and partner” (ibid).” Quoting, Lederer, Richard. The Miracle of Language. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.

The attribution continues in The Miracle of Language (pages 70 and 71 in my copy).

“Fashioned from the Latin co-, “together” and the French vivant, “living.” Covivant is bilingually enduring and endearing. Its Latin form communicates a sense of permanence and stability, and its Frenchness lend the perfume of romance.” Although I really think Covivant covers our situation I generally don’t use it unless I have the time and will (the listeners perceived interest) to explain a lot of what I wrote above. I wish for a revival, and I should just jump in and use it all the time to see if eventually that will work.