Even though I’m cis, I hate using the term boyfriend to describe myself in relation to the person I love. It feels icky to relate myself to another person in terms of gender or possesion. Is there any gender neutral lingo you know of which describes comrades who are also lovers in the night?

I love the fact that a lot of cisgender people are starting to realise how limiting it is to gender all their experiences and to describe their relationshipsin possesive terms. So yaaaaay, good on you. 🙂

So here’s some gender neutral lingo. Some may sound formal or possessive to you or some may sound very weird to you, I’m just listing as many as I know:

• Partner
• Lover
• Significant Other
• Sweetheart
• Goyfriend (mixes up girl/boyfriend)
• Birlfriend (mixes up boy/girlfriend)
• Boygirlfriend
• Bothfriend
• Enbyfriend (non-binary friend)
• Beloved
• Love
• Soulmate
• Companion
• Datemate
• Paramour

And if you use ‘comrade’ a lot you can play with that word to make Datecomrade, Cuddle Comrade, Significant Comrade, Comrade Companion, Comrade-Lover, etc etc. Or just invent new words. My partner lovingly calls me his ‘friend-thingy’ and it’s the cutest thing. ^_^ 

The words ‘ Boo’ and ‘ Bae’ get thrown around quite a bit but unless I’m mistaken they’re African American Vernacular English so if you are not African American I wouldn’t use them. There are more words like that out there.Check whether it’s respectful to borrow a word from a language or dialect before using it.