Why I Call My Wife My Partner

[WARNING: This is a love letter involving vomit]

I call the woman I married, "my partner." If you know me, you will know I do refer to her as my "wife" sometimes, but I really prefer to think of and call her my "partner." I suppose many times my decision to refer to her as either one is a matter of code switching. If I find myself in a place and a mood where I can use language however I want without looks or explanations, I call the person I spend my life with my partner; it just seems to make the most sense.

I should add, there are lots of good reasons I use the word "partner" over wife/husband. To be brief about it, lots of people are in a committed relationship with someone they cannot or have chosen not to marry. Given the realities of couples, straight and queer (or however they may define themselves), who build lives together without filing papers at a courthouse or who are in a pretty serious relationship and want a term that sounds less adolescent than boyfriend/girlfriend (which always sounds to me like you are passing notes in class), the term "partner" seems more inclusive; I use it often in my classroom as a way of modeling language choices that respect the broadest range of persons. Good reasons those are, they are not the true reason I call my wife my"partner."

Word choices matter to me, despite my sometimes careless and unfortunate use of them. The importance of word choices explains why I rarely can be heard to use "God" of "Jesus Christ" as an exclamation, owing to issues of my faith, which I will spare you from reading.

I have observed to my partner many times, "we are at our best when we're a team." Some of the moments when I have felt our bond strongest have been those moments when a problematic situation arose and we had to divide and conquer: "You grab the X, and I'll get the Y taken care of"; "OK!" I have always felt life contains such doses of chaos and doubt, a person needs support to get through it (My respect, by the way, to those who disagree). For me that's my partner, the one I experience life with.

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Two nights ago we were woken by our twenty-month old crying. When I went up to her room I found her covered by her own vomit—pretty picture, I know. Taking advantage of the baby monitor in the room I paged for back up: "I'm gong to need your help. She's thrown up." In a minute it was now a two-on-one situation. The child had to be washed and the bed stripped and cleaned, so we divided and conquered. Two hours later and a fussy, sick toddler to tend to, I went back to bed while my partner stayed up to sit with the little one. After three hours, we switched places.

It reminded me of the days of our daughter as a newborn. We worked as partners in shifts through the day, generally doing two feedings and then sleeping through the next two. The work left you exhausted, but, even now, my partner refers to that as some of the happiest days together; we worked together as a family for eight solid weeks, further forging our bond as partners.

Whether it's a sick child or the hectic hour before dinner guests arrive, some of the times I feel most the love between my partner and me, occurs when we work together. Fear not, I'm overcome by the love I have with my partner when we enjoy quiet times together, have the same response to an event or moment, support one another through a difficult spot, or get a good laugh from a silly movie. In the moments of stress, though, when being alone can be the hardest, I find myself feeling the strong connection to the one with whom I want to face the challenges and joys of life, my partner.