Let Me Count the Ways to Refer to a Lover . . . Help?!

Alright, I am taking Za's advice and soliciting my reader's help in coming up with a better way to describe Za's relationship to me besides: "boyfriend" "partner" or "significant other." Za and I live together, our financial lives are intertwined, and so to call our relationship a "dating relationship" is silly. Once, when I referred to our relationship as "dating," Za sort of laughed at me. Do people who are "dating" live together? Ok, fine.

But, this weekend, while I was judging mock trial competitions, I found myself in that uncomfortable position of refering to your "honey" (a word that I don't see myself using) as a "significant other." I was a bit nervous before uttering this phrase, since my co-jurist was a Naval Intelligence officer, not likely to have much patience (I assumed) for such PC labels. I wanted to explain to him that Za worked near where he lived. I could've punted and just called him my "husband," but I have some principles left. I am not going to call Za my husband, nor make the sole decision to marry Za, hinge on how much more socially acceptable it would be to refer to the nature of our relationship.

I also hate the word "partner" because it makes your relationship sound like a business relationship. Some brave souls might use the word "lover," which reminds me of the Sex in the City episode where Carrie starts dating Aleksandr Petrovksy (Mikhail Baryshnikov) and tells her friends: "I have decided to take a lover." She is clearly making fun of the antiquated nature of the term, and demonstrating how affected it is. It's not me.

So what's a feminista to do?