No One Over the Age 25 Should be Referred to as Boyfriend or Girlfriend

Hardly a boy or a girl

When you get to your mid forties, you end up with a lot of friends who are no longer married but in long term relationships with others. Some of them live together, have children together, and even own property together. Some are geigh and some are straight. The problem is what to call their significant other. I positively cringe when someone says “he’s bringing his girlfriend” even though he’s 45 years old and they’ve lived together for years. No one over the age of 25 should refer to their significant other as boyfriend or girlfriend. It sounds silly and juvenile. It’s almost as stupid as, well, significant other.   

But what do you call that person who has spent a great deal of time with the other person and is practically married, yet doesn’t have the paper certifying them as a spouse. They may or may not live in a state that recognizes common law marriage, or they may be geigh, which means that they are pretty much out of luck in most states. (Every time I hear common-law I think of the supercheezy Russ Meyer flick.)

I put this question to my friends the other night. We were sitting in a bar in Kansas City talking shit like some kind of lowbrow Algonquin Round Table so it made sense to ask.

"My personal opinion is that they should be called partner." I said. 

“Too queer” replied my friend Cain, which is ironic considering he’s gay and has been with the same guy for fifteen years. “It’s sounds as if we’re back in the 1980’s and I’m reading the obituary of some closet case.”

“Then what?” I replied.

“How about co-habiter?” or “cohabitational conspiracist” Cain put forth.

Badass Gyno-Americans

‘Oh my god, Cain, that’s as bad as when you called the Women’s Studies majors, Gyno Americans.” I said. (In the early 1990’s the women’s studies majors wanted to take the man out of woman and used the term womyn, so Cain cobbled together a hyphenated moniker free from any semblance of testosterone.)

The once-divorced, currently co-habitating Jillian replied that we should keep it as it is since we were describing the 

relationship. 

“They are boyfriends and girlfriends, just older.” She said. “It works for me. Besides partner is too clinical. It sounds like they own a law firm,”

I reiterated: “But grown women use the term for their platonic friends which annoys the shit out of me solely on the basis that it is so fucking twee and makes them sound like 8^th graders at a slumber party.”

“We have to have something different. I can no longer endure the idiocy that these terms engender!” I pronounced through a mist of Pappy Van Winkle.

Sidekicks?

Everyone went silent. There was a joke about buddies but since it’s also the name of a gay bar in Kansas City it was taken off the table. Sidekicks was out for the same reason.

We never came up with a suitable label for these people, but we need one. If the Geighs can’t marry, and if more people are choosing not to get married, then we need a name that suitably describes the relationship. Girlfriend or boyfriend sounds as if they could one day throw back your silly class ring in a fit of pique and storm off with the quarterback of the football team.

 

I've thought about old lady, but my own wife gets pissed when I refer to as that. 

Oh no you didn't!

Helpmeet is an old word from a bad biblical interpretation. It’s big among weirdos like the Duggars and their Jesus army. Ironically it turns up in a lot of Jim Thompson’s crime fiction, but it sounds more like someone who gives you a sponge bath after an accident or helps you lance a boil than a spouse.

Whatever the case, we need a better word to describe these relationships. I refuse to refer to a 72-year old man as someone's boyfriend. It's just un-fucking dignified. We need to put a stop to this madness immediately, otherwise we’ll all continue to sound like a bunch of 8^th grade girls at a slumber party.