I had a message from a friend today – “enjoying your date?”

“Huh?”

“With your boyfriend”

I do not know why, but this really winds me up. Funiculosus isn’t my boyfriend. We are friends and we are Dom and sub. He has a partner who he’s been with for over twenty years. Theirs has always been an open relationship.

I might be close emotionally with Funiculosus, we are physically intimate, but we are not boyfriends!

Why does this upset me?

Let’s unpack this a bit…

1. It collapses carefully considered nuance into a default box

I’ve put a lot of thought into what this is: friends, Dom/sub, emotionally close, physically intimate, but not romantic partnership in the conventional sense.

My friend basically went: “Ah yes, man + intimacy = boyfriend.”

That’s not just inaccurate – it erases nuance I am actively trying to live inside.

2. It implies a claim or status that isn’t mine

“Boyfriend” isn’t just a label – it carries a bucket-load of assumptions:

• that I have priority – and have to give priority
• that we have exclusivity (even if people claim otherwise)
• and that there is an emotional hierarchy

But Funiculosus already has a long-term partner and I am quite clear (intellectually and ethically) about where I sit in that structure (see Learning My Size in Someone Else’s Love Story).

3. It misrepresents me

If someone hears “boyfriend” they might assume:

• that I am competing with or replacing his partner
• or there’s a conventional romantic claim
• or that the structure is simpler (or messier) than it actually is

I value clarity, consent, and explicit boundaries, and this kind of sloppy shorthand feels morally irritating. C’mon! Make an effort to understand what’s going on here – don’t grasp at easy clichés!

4. It doesn’t see me properly

I have done quite a bit of internal work to understand:

• what I feel
• what I don’t feel
• how I relate differently (especially around jealousy, attachment, etc.)

And then someone just… flattened it. And flattened me and my emotional distinctiveness.

That can feel dismissive, even if it wasn’t meant that way.

And it acts as a stark contrast to something Funiculosus says to me: “I see you,” and I do feel seen by him. He meets me where I am at, he accepts my complexities and contradictions, and respects my internal interrogation of who and what I am – and then reassures me. And that is priceless.

5. It makes me feel defensive

It gets my defences up and I further withdraw from this friend.

I do not want to be seen to be striving for to achieve the theft of another’s partner. I work hard to protect their relationship from any destabilising effects of my relationship with Funiculosus. I took the time to understand my position and I rather cherish it at the moment because I have worked to understand it – and therefore I feel held and safe in the relationship.

Besides, I don’t have the emotional stability or bandwidth to be anybody’s boyfriend right now. I need good, solid, reliable friendships.

6. It is just being lazy with language

Was he reaching for the nearest familiar word? “boyfriend”, “girlfriend”, “dating”.

Because explaining kink dynamics + poly structures + emotional nuance is cognitively expensive.

So they compress it.

Unfortunately, that compression distorts things – and that distortion felt distinctly uncomfortable.

7. It’s not just “teasing”

There is something sour in the expression. He’s used it with be before. Sometimes it has felt like a gentle ribbing, but at others it has felt much more barbed.

One time this friend had a bit of a rant about people being unfaithful and getting away with it. I can’t hear that and not tie it to the word.

I felt judged.

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So there may be a few layers to this onion. And like an onion, it stings.

Whilst there has to be an element of acceptance by me that our relationship is unconventional and doesn’t fit standard categories, any shorthand word or phrase will always smudge, or maybe even delete, the actual reality of the situation.

However, shorthand saves time. How would I feel if Funiculosus was simply described as a friend? That would be fine. Or as my Dom? I’d prefer this one, but it mightn’t be as comfortable to use when talking over dinner to strangers. Boyfriend carries completely the wrong message: it is not just inaccurate, it is wrong.

But what I come back to isn’t the sloppy use of language, but the perceived barb in the word.