Partner, boyfriend,sigificant other,girlfriend,lover: Which to use?

That is soo funny. i sort of always liked to shock people to. i hate an ol' nosy gossip.

Yassou Aunty, a very sensible approach. I stick with the Greek style of 'my man' and don't use his name in referring to him. My son calls him by his first name or Sweetie, and his older son calls me love. The older son adds to the confusion by calling my son his son in a deliberate attempt to confuse the neighbours in his area who already confused beyond belief as we refuse to subject ourselves to gossip and as far as we all think deserve to be utterly confused and may well imagine I am a terrible older woman since the son of said man and I once entered a pharmacy together. We like to imagine we are throwing a total spanner into the whole world of greek gossip but somehow the telephone wires burn with news of our every meeting in our respective villages even though they are two hours apart.

Hi Humbug, I agree that being referred to as 'The Mrs' is not particularly endearing in any way at all, and rather typifies the type of man who expects his egg and chips on the table at 6 sharp before retiring for a 'jar with his mates' while the 'mrs' stays at home to attend to the important business of darning his socks. I presume you repaid the endearment with something suitable such as 'the chauvinist pig'.

Good one Zeph. I realised after posting this that I do actually, without noticing it I suppose, use the Greek term for 'my man' when referring to him which can also be handy when a change is fancied. I was over in LSP last night and today, think I held my own.Speak to you tomorrow, I'm off for the day in a minute, have fun.

Hi Wizzywig, so this is the current UK take I take it. Parner does rather imply to me a business relationship but it doesn't seem anything to take particualar offence to. 'The other half' is a vast improvement on the days of 'her indoors' 'or the little woman', both insulting in the extreme to the woman concerned. 'The bride' is a new one on me and adds a nice air of youthfulness.

Hi Iriene, I must say that's a first, not the Malaysian term for boyfriend/girlfriend but the darling and honey bit. What a refreshing change, so nice. It's further complicated over here by the fact that the word for a male friend is exactly the same as the word for boyfriend, and I have many friends of the male type, so when someone asks me where is my'friend' it confuses it. The same word works the other way for female friend too. Thinking about it 'my man' only addresses me as 'sweetie' or 'love' and when my son answers the phone to him he'll call me and say'mama, sweetie is on the phone'. But I couldn't refer to him as that in the cafenion to other people, they'd think I was deranged

Hi dear! It look bad to show disrespect. We should always give due respect to our brothers and friends' wives, calling them by inappropriate titles looks disgusting.

Hi deepak, how nice to see you refer immediately to your wife as your 'better half' rather than your 'other half' showing due respect to her. It's good to see a specific name given to wives of friends rather than the term 'wife of friend' or brother. I noticed last night that the wife of a mutual friend was simply referred to as 'the noisy madwoman' which obviously indicated complete lack of respect, whilst at the same time being totally appropriate.

Indeed it is disrepectful deepak, I agree totally, especially is such a comment was made publicly, but behind closed doors I expect many people vent about a relative or person known to them, with one other person. We can't be held responsible for another persons comments.

Me personally Address My Wife By Her Name Out in Public .. When We Are In The House All The Sweet Names Hit Her .. Am Quite Romantic At Home ..

Hi Prash, I can think of two reasons why your custom of referring to someone as Mrs followed by surname is not used here. Firstly no one uses surnames in introduction at all, perhaps because they are so long and unprounaceble, and secondly because within a small area a lot of the people there will actually have the same surname, and first names are more commonly used with the epitaph Kyria, very like Mrs. So you would be Kyrios Prash, or Mr Prash, over here. Naturally it is usual to use endearments when speaking to your loved one, possibly the man in my life believes my name actually is sweetie.

Once again, thea09, Good morning (3;25 a.m.) and know that I respect the customs of all countries...and appreciate their reasons! I guess I wandered away from terms like "my husband", "my love" etc., as it denotes ownership! "Significant" other elevates them to a respective pedestal! So that's my reasons, and just me! But once again...I do respect each/every persons position. Hope your weekend is unfolding delightfully, and I saw you posted on "Jo's" discussion, that you were heading off to the Dentist....and now you are SMILING again, and so is your son! Cheers!

Hello pergammano, smiling but not biting! Well at least not for another few days. My weekend went most swimmingly thank you, the only spanner in the works being 'my significant others' wish to feed me up last night with a good piece of steak which he assured me is available in his area, and which I really longed for, having to be replaced with baked aubergines to satisfy the dentists requiments of no biting. Still I proved more than a cheap date as the taverna owner insisted on providing said aubergines on the house, after declaring first he had no aubergines that day and failing to persuade me to go with a nice piece of grilled pork instead. Not a word was raised about a tooth as a reason why said pork was rejected, and some worker was sent along to purchase aubergines. The great advantage of dining in places without menus. I hope you too are enjoying your weekend but judging by the hour you have much more of it left than I do.

Good morning pergammano. Is this early or late for you I wonder. Very glad to see you found the grape tip useful but do hope you tried a few first to see if you like the results. I should have added I've only ever done it with green ones, but they are wonderful to eat like sweets on a hot day. Now we part company on this one, I don't like the term significant other at all and if I did use it here no one would know what I was talking about anyway as one must conform to the Greek way at all times or be outcast. I suppose on reflectio I would refer to be known as the woman of Estaphious rather than his significant other, but as I expalined to Iriene above it can all get terribly confusing. Also I should add that a man generally refers to his significant other in the Greek way of 'my woman', married or otherwise.

I have no idea on the origionation being English. It does depend on the tone such slang remarks are said in as to if they are a joke or seriously view their spouse as such.

Hi snuggle bunnies, you've suprised me in your response as your terms 'ball and chaind' 'old man' are all English terms which I hadn't realised had caught on across the pond. All of them are old fashioned and chauvanistic though even if meant in a jokey fashion.

Hi Thea, You do indeed often refer to your late husband with pride and that is so good to hear, and probably why it lasted. I had one too once but wasn't old fashioned enough to put up with a tradition for life, in case it turned out to be a long one, even though that might have been the original intention. My man and I live independantly, not together, and the idea of marriage with a Greek really does involve an awful lot more than just marrying a man, one automtically marries his whole family too, so the sensible thing would always be to study the family in great great depth before any rash decisions are taken. One of the Greek traditions I love is that almost all grown up children, no matter how old they are, still call their Mamas Mama, we don't go through the Mummy, Mum, Mother stage. And my boy will always be my baby though obviously he does not allow me to say that.

Ah, so Mr Rabbit it shall me jb

and indeed it would if i used 'rabbit' as a synonym for 'me'. since i am not actually a rabbit and my name is not 'rabbit' this is very unlikely to happen.

Sunny, the gender relations activistsWe absolutely don't have any of those out here as are a pretty tolerant place. If two male tourists are together on holiday and obviously a couple one would just presume there are two husbands, whilst two women would be two lesbians. The Greeks in the rural areas keep their relationships like that behind closed doors for some reason, but usually because one of the men involved will be inevitably married. To a woman. I think that was what you were referring to in your remark about activists.

You have a law against itThat's pretty dark age stuff Sunny, but I can imagine it wouldn't go down very well there for a few years yet. Here the Greeks are greatly amused by the idea of two men marrying in the UK but would certainly send them drinks over in the cafenion. Very tolerant race the Greeks are, well apart from towards two other nations

you are right...well you see i have not opted for mature content...so cannot use the 'g' word.... here in India we are having a legal issue in this regard. we have a law against it and the activists are working hard to have it repealed. except for the activists no one else is interested in this topic. even the government has no 'opinion' in this matter and has left it for the supreme court to decide.

Malpoa, you never fail to astound me with your revelations about Indian life, you are a brilliant observer. Wives don't like to call their husbands by nameI have never heard of this as other than a centruries old practice. Yes, a woman should have her own identity, always, and never be a chattel. Whether or not I would take a mans surname as my surname would depend entirely on it I liked it better than my own but it would be an irrelevance anyway as they aren't used here.

Newly married couples who wish to call their spouses by name, do so in the absence of any acquanitances...Infront of relatives and elders, wives are supposed to look up to their husband in respect!!! So calling by their name is an act of disprespect!!! ha ha LOL Some even dont look onto their husband's face, they just stare to the ground and speak, ofcourse in rural areas not here...may u might find some like that here too... I had decided in my teenage itself that I would call my hus by name...Only one or two of my cousins and most of my friends join me, rest are with the oldies hi hi

Hi hi hi i actually opened two of your discussions and responded to both in one box in one discussion ha ha...Okay I am not typing the same thing again there...:))

Hi SomeCowgirl, you're obviously getting excited about tying the knot, good luck to you both. We don't use the word fiance out here, they'd be wife and husband long before they actually were as many people will refer to a womans man as her husband just because they are a couple.

That's very interesting to hear that fiance isn't used. It's kind of romantic in it's own way, with not using the word Fiance. My fiance and I do call ourselves "fiance" but we consider ourselves already married too! lol!

Hi neil, although there is plenty of extra marital activity going on here there is no special name given to the parties involved, the gossip would just be about what they were doing. There's definitly no term for it. About the people who live together the woman will usually refer to the man as her husband, which he actually isn't, until the day he gets thrown out and an ultimatum given, then a few days later after hiding out in the hills he'll be back and they'll go to the town hall to make it legal.

Excellent one Kitty, never come across 'insignificant other' before but am liking it.

Hello my friend Make sure you let them know kitty started this Thank you my friend, smoochess

Hi Xzcess excellent and amusing response there if I may say so. And I love the way you suddenly realised the way you do end up using a word, partner in your case, more than you realise. I posted this quickly as I tend to and then as I started to read the responses I realised I never refer to my man as b/f at all even though I automatically presumed I did, I use the Greek term 'my man'. I like the way you can use the word 'lover' about your girl friends guys. Here the main confusion of using the term b/f/g/f is that the same word also means friend. So if I do refer to a friend who happens to be male I could end up being completely misunderstood and people may presume I've changed 'my man'. Complicated business all round.