Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
Give op their hard-earned notes
Tbh I hear “partner” and assume gay, I didn’t know straights used it. Very fair point, OP
I hear ‘partner’ and think ‘gay’ too. A girl at work used it for months and I just went with it. When she would say ‘he’ I even thought maybe he was trans*. Anyways, someone using partner makes me more comfortable and I came out to her. She was just an intelligent straight girl that liked the term and was knowledgeable in human sexuality so definitely someone I should have felt comfortable coming out too. It’s a good sign of a straight person uses it IMO.
As a mental health clinician, this is actually my blanket term when discussing any romantic relationship. I agree it normalizes it, but I also think it’s a relatively safe term to use to describe most romantic relationships without making any assumptions about the person’s orientation or identity. I also use the word “partnered” when describing a monogamous relationship status.
The term “partner” also removes the implied hierarchy of boyfriend/girlfriend vs husband/wife. This is relevant both to non-monogamous people, and unmarried individuals for whom the importance of their relationship isn’t dictated by its legal status.
*plays assassins creed to study for my ap history exam*
This is actually really funny. In high school my humanities teacher told us a story about one of the Europe trips he had gone on with the school a few summers past. So him and the group of kids were in the middle of Rome and the tour guide had gotten lost. They could figure out how to get to some church they were going to see. All of a sudden one of the students like call attention to himself. He says he knows where to go and just start walking around the streets, taking back roads and side streets and within 20 mins they’re at the church they needed to get to. My teacher asks the kid if he has every been to Italy before. He says no, he just knew where to go because he played Assassins Creed Brotherhood.
I once pointed this out to my mother and she just stared at me, in stunned silence for ages.
There will always be a girl who is less sober, less secure, with less friends walking in a darker part of town. I want her safe just as much as I want me safe.
What’s better— the thread is filled with people giving some good advice on how to respect a woman’s boundaries and how to ask what she would be okay with, publicly. Lots of trans girls thanking him for being so patient and thoughtful with his words, and lots of people cautioning him that his purpose as a boyfriend would be to keep her safe, even from his own friends and family if need be. A+ shit right here.
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
Thank you thank you thank you bless this post ohmygod thank you
