Gay partner

[tooironic]

In English, gay people often use the word "partner" (just as straight people often do) to refer to the person they are in a relationship with - quite often because "boy/girlfriend" is too casual, I guess. But when I talk about my partner in Chinese I'm often at a loss as to which word I should use. 配偶 ("spouse") is too formal and 愛人 often gives Chinese the impression I'm straight and married to a woman. So what options do I have? I'd prefer a gender-neutral term, perhaps something like 對象 but I'm not sure if that's altogether appropriate. Any suggestions?

[fanglu]

When I worked at a law firm we used 男朋友/女朋友 as appropriate, or 配偶 in a more formal context.

[skylee]

Consider 伴侶 on more formal occasions, and just 我朋友 informally.

[外国赤佬]

对象 should be fine.

[esoyohoo]

To be honest, I think 对象 is only mentioned by old people or the exam books. Seldom people will call their boyfriend or girlfriend 对象.

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[陳德聰]

If you're looking for a word in Chinese that signals you're gay like the word "partner" does in English, you're probably not really going to find one outside of just calling him 男朋友.

[tooironic]

Actually, quite the contrary. A non-gender-specific term like "partner" allows me to talk about my partner without specifically signalling I am gay. Plenty of straight people use it too in my experience.

[Kenny同志]

我那位 can be an option in your case.

[xiaocai]

我那位

This is quite common in mainland. Or you can consider 我的另一半.

[外国赤佬]

基友

[陳德聰]

Interesting, here "partner" is pretty much exclusively used by the LGBT community.

[li3wei1]

Here (UK), it serves as a substitute for spouse or boy/girlfriend when a) you don't know the sex of the person described, and/or the extent of the relationship, or b) you don't want to give this information away, or c) you are referring to plurals, and there could be many variations of both.

[陳德聰]

That too.

[tooironic]

@外国赤佬 Haha, I was waiting for that! 基友 is an interesting new term in Mandarin, but I think it's usually restricted to the structure A跟Bxxx基友, I don't think you can say 他是我的基友/我的基友是xxx though I may be wrong.

[外国赤佬]

Yes, you are wrong. The noun is 基友, the verb is 搞基.

[Lu]

Or just call him 他. Seems to work too.

As to partner, I don't think I've ever heard a straight person describe their boy/girlfriend with that word. Was highly confused when once a woman introduced another woman as 'and this is xxx, my partner and my girlfriend'. The double description seemed to me that they weren't a couple after all (they were both straight, it turned out).

[creamyhorror]

Actually, quite the contrary. A non-gender-specific term like "partner" allows me to talk about my partner without specifically signalling I am gay. Plenty of straight people use it too in my experience.

Yesterday I used 'partner' to refer to my business partner, and my friends started laughing. In my circles (UK/US college-educated) it would signal a gay partner.

[Demonic_Duck]

"Partner" is always going to leave a little bit of room for ambiguity - in a business context, it would indeed generally refer to a business partner. In a social context, it's usually, but not exclusively, used for homosexual relationships, or for cases where the gender of the partner is unknown, or where there are multiple partners of mixed genders.

[li3wei1]

In the UK at least, there are many hetero couples who have lived together monogamously for years, have kids, jointly own a home and bank accounts, etc. but they're not married. They have moved well beyond boyfriend/girlfriend, but they will not call each other husband/wife. Partner is normally what they use.

[imron]

It's the same in Australia.