It’s hard to explain — or contain — the excitement I felt when I ran across this news article today that explained how the word “partner” is becoming the growing preference for romantic couples.
What I also loved was this paragraph, buried way down in the middle:
“For a long time, a wedding was the only way to signal the depth and seriousness of a romantic relationship, said Amy Shackelford, founder and CEO of the feminist wedding planning company Modern Rebel.
“But we work with couples who get married six years, nine years, 12 years, after they started dating,” she told me. “You think they weren’t serious before then?” The word “partner,” she said, gives couples the power to publicly announce a lasting adult commitment, without an engagement or a wedding. If the couple does decide to get married, the ceremony itself serves not to solidify the relationship, but to celebrate it, surrounded by family and friends.”
I couldn’t have found a better of describing what MOST wedding ceremonies I officiate these days are like. They aren’t what solidify the relationship; they are what celebrates it!
I first was introduced to the “partner” idiom in 2004 when I was applying for rabbinical school. As always a very pro-GLBT seminary, the Reconstructionist Rabbbinical College had a concrete, unified pattern of always referring to people’s romantic partners as ‘partners’ whether they were married, cohabitating, just dating, gay or straight.
Once I got immersed in the culture, it became second nature and I never though twice about it. But I recall several instances when, talking to a stranger outside my little cultural bubble, I experienced a rude reawakening just how much of a bubble I was in.
On several occasions I remember speaking to someone out in the “real world” and almost referring to my partner as my “partner” and then having to stop myself and say “husband” because I knew if I didn’t — they would assume I was gay.
There’s nothing wrong with that assumption, of course, but if you are trying to get to know someone and reveal yourself and your life — saying something that would create such an obvious misinterpretation of that life does nothing to further the social transaction. Instead, all it does is create some awkward moment in the future when that person invariably would refer to my “he” as a “she” and I would then have to correct them with a … “oh by the way … I’m not actually married to a ‘she’ … “.
That’s the funny thing about living in social bubbles. It’s easy to forget how the rest of the world does things!
There was another time I remember making that bumble on the other side of the table. In 2005, I had been admitted to RRC but was still living in Denver — I hadn’t moved out yet to Philly. I met an RRC-grad, we were having dinner, and she made a reference to her partner (assuming, understandably, that I was “hip” to the shared understood RRC lingo.) Alas, I was not. (I mean, I knew it in my head, but it hadn’t made its way into my kishkes yet and become second nature.) Not 5 minutes later, I asked her some question about her “wife’ and she took a measured breath and had to calmly say … “Well, umm, my partner is a “he” actually”.
Whoops. Duh. Of course. But see, I hadn’t been immersed in that culture long enough for it to be second nature.
What’s COOL to me now though, is to find out that 15 years later, what was once this small little linguistic quirk — this one tiny little act of solidarity to our GLBT brethern in a tiny liberal seminary in suburb Phliadlephia — that this little “quirk” is now going mainstream.
In case the reasons aren’t yet obvious, here is why EVERYONE should use the word partner: No. 1: Because we should never ASSUME that the beloved a person is talking about is a member of the opposite sex. There’s just no reason why we have to speak in a way that constantly makes GLBT people feel like the “other.”
No. 2: In a world where legal marriage often says very little about the actual emotional reality of a relationship, designating whether any two people have legally signed a marriage document is beside the point. Why should that small legal fact alter the very language we use to describe the relationship between two people?
So let’s all just agree, here and now: Partner it is! For the good ol’ tried and true “husbands” and “wives” of yesteryore — we thank you for your years of stalwart service.
Now, if you would so kindly retire yourselves to the rafters, we have a world to transform!
WanderingHebrew.com 