Re:Boyfriends/Girlfriends tara: I hate the term "boyfriend." It seems so teenagery. (Perhaps it's because of what Sully and timetobefree mentioned -- it's weird having a boyfriend after having a husband.) I don't mind being a girlfriend, though.
(Strangely, I have a good gay friend -- he's 48, and he calls his partner his boyfriend, and it works well for them. Just not for me.)
Re:Boyfriends/Girlfriends JimB: Different for everybody. For JimB the commitmentphobe, "the girl I'm seeing" morphed into "the girl I'm dating" and "the girl I'm hanging out with". Took about six months to finally reach "girlfriend".
Funny thing - we never discussed terminology, but she didn't start using "boyfriend" until I started using "girlfriend". She's not someone who gets too wound up about titles, which is one of the many reasons I dig her.
Re:Boyfriends/Girlfriends in_search_of: This is an interesting question, because I thought about it a lot in the recent progression of my dating relationship.
I, like JimB, am a commitment phobe, and the whole BF/GF thing is just more than I can handle at times (though I have come leaps and bounds lately in dealing with all sorts of relationship issues)...
But I am pretty much of the opinion, that I start with "my friend" and eventually after a few nights goes to "the guy I am dating/seeing" then I usually end up just going with their name, and finally, eventually he will become the boyfriend.
Well, here is how it worked out lately. I had dated George for a while, moved through the guy I am dating, friend, etc stages, and one night, we were out at a party and someone asked me about my boyfriend and I just gave them a dumb look, and then a week or so later, one of the guys that I know from school, was standing around talking to a bunch of us, and said "hey R, you have not introduced us to your boyfriend" and I introduced them without missing a beat. Well, I didn't even think about it then, but later he said just asked me if he had moved to boyfriend status because he noticed I didn't miss a beat on that one...
It all works itself out in the end I suppose.
Re:Boyfriends/Girlfriends ChristyM: [quote"> What are you calling your guy at this point?[/quote">
Well, that's just it ... I'm not really calling him anything except here on the board I refer to him as "boyfriend" for simplistic reasons. IRL I just say "the guy I'm dating". My problem being a lot of guys seem to want to pin that label on my right away. It makes me uncomfortable b/c to me that label is indicative of a certain level of commitment and expectation. A level I'm not willing to aspire to right now.
However, I did have what would definitely be considered a boyfriend as we lived together briefly and it always felt odd to use that term. I mean, here I am a 36 year old divorced woman with a 13 year old daughter and I'm going to introduce him to her teachers at parent night as "my boyfriend"? Seems too high schoolish. But, what's the alternative ... my current shagmate ... boytoy ... distraction ... friend ... lover ... ugh. There isn't any good alternative that won't trivialize the relationship too.
Christy
Re:Boyfriends/Girlfriends Beren: Hmmmmmmmmmmm..............
You'd think with divorce so rampant in this culture, we'd have come up with a solution to this by now. Hey, people invent new terms all the time, so why can't we?? I'll have to think about it for a while. Until then, Chrisy, you'll just have to go with "shagmate."
Sugar Beren
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