Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
“Art is not a making-oneself-understood but an urgent understanding-of-oneself. The closer you get in your most intimate and solitary contemplation or imagination (vision), the more has been achieved, even if no one else were to understand it.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “On Solitude,” The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke, ed. and trans. Ulrich Baer (Modern Library, 2005)