UPDATE 01-SEP-03: The Girlfriend / Partner debate has become a runaway success! Loads of people have given me their opinions and they all contradict each other! This hopefully makes for exciting reading: The original item is below and the feedback underneath.

Dave is lucky enough to be sharing laughs and living space with the lovely Sarah. Being imminently 26 and having been together for nearly four years it seems odd talking of girlfriend and boyfriend.

However, the use of the word 'partner' still seems to be associated with gay relationships (an ex-boss was widely thoguht to be gay because he spoke of his 'partner'). So whilst wishing to be accurate, but whilst not having the money / belief structure to get married what should the young, committed couple refer to themselves as?

Currently Dave gets around this confusion by simply referring to Sarah as Sarah (she is her own person after all!). However this does often lead to the question "Who's Sarah?", whereupon I seem to be compelled to say "my girlfriend" and feel like I'm 16 or something (I should be so lucky…)

Your thoughts and suggestions are, as ever, much appreciated.

Suggestions so far include:

• Co-hab (or co-habitant - have you noticed this appearing as a new option on forms under the marital status question?)
• Significant other
• Rather scarily thesaurus.com suggests freak as an alternative to girlfriend! click here
• Chris (who has been in a similar situation) told me that I was talking rubbish and that partner was the best term to use. He also extolled the virtues of the concept of partnership that it implies.
• Controversially, Charlie would like to suggest "Her Indoors"
• Kelly loves the debate and thinks that "better half" is not only a good idea but an accurate description in most relationships (if used by the man)
• People suggesting "life-partner" have been ignored on account of it sounding far too cheesy
• Helen agrees entirely with me that partner implies a gay relationship and would be misleading to people…
• Ibi thinks that the debate would be most easily solved if we just got married!

WWW www.arrod.co.uk