A frolic in Cambodia

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
The discussion of marriage and whether it is relevant any longer if kids aren't involved on the PB has reminded me of something that I find irksome. I'm in a pretty serious relationship with my boyfriend (yes, I'm tired of this term, but have not found a suitable replacement) and we live together (but this came up even when we didn't live together, I guess becuase of our age, career level, etc.), but quite frequently people refer to him as my husband. These are obviously not people I know particularly well or they would know we aren't married. I don't tend to correct them when they call him my husband in passing (I also typically don't correct mispronounciations of my name or other things of this nature in casual conversation unless it seems like I'm going to have a past-the-end-of-this-cocktail-party relationship with someone). So one night recently we were out and someone referred to him as my husband, and I didn't bother to correct them, and the conversation went on ... and at some point it came up that we are not married. So the person I was talking to got all offended like I had held us out as married because I hadn't bothered to correct the earlier misinterpretation.

What am I supposed to do in these situations? Isn't my method ok, I mean is it my responsibility to correct people when they ask about my husband and they clearly mean my boyfriend? It seems to me that is stopping otherwise pleasant conversation to point out a technicality. I mean who really cares if they went through an evening thinking people they met were married, only to learn that (gasp!) they're only co-habitating?


Ps. What is a better term for boyfriend? I know this has been discussed before, but I don't recall any good alternative. I feel like I'm still in high school when I call him that. Fuck Partner doesn't seem to go over well on the cocktail party circuit.

As long as you feel comfortable correcting their grammer and punctuation, you should feel comfortable correcting their substantive errors.

Possible names for the beau include mate, hyphen, plaything, main squeeze, love slave, life partner, mid-life partner, temporary partner, poosslq (pronounced Poss-L-Q), better half, lesser half, other half, significant other, insignificant other, co-habitant, roommate, and, of course, your "Daddy".

Or you could call him your beau.