You Say Potato, I Say Po TAH toe

I'm always struggling with what to call the man I live with. We've been together for five years and have lived together for four.
"Boyfriend" sounds a bit temporary and flighty, and "husband" - well, we're not married and I'm not sure that marriage is my thing. (I definitely don't see myself starring in a Big White Wedding; I've never had that particular dream, and all my experiences as a flower girl or a bridesmaid have shown me that brides are ordinarily nice women who get selfish, mean and nasty when trying to plan their big day.) And "husband" just sounds like some doddering asshole who is permanently attached to the TV remote and whose only skills are barbequeing and mowing a lawn.

"Partner" seems the most neutral, but that's exactly what's wrong with it - it's SO neutral. It can be mistaken for business alliances, as in, "My partner invested the initial 15k in 1999, and now we're millionaires!" (See, those are the dreams I have, not Vera Wang cream-colored sheath dress dreams.)

You could say "my man" but you might as well say, "my caveman" because that's how primitive and backward saying, "my man" sounds. "Yeah, MY MAN gave me my allowance today."

I work with a very young woman intern who called her boyfriend, "my special friend." Aww, sweet. Too bad they broke up.

Another woman I know through work startled me by coming to pick up vegetables ordered by the chef at one restaurant; not her restaurant. I expressed my confusion and she cleared it up by stating clearly that she and that chef are LOVERS. "He's my LOVER," she said, with a smile. An image of them DOING IT (not cooking... doing IT) flashed in my mind, despite the fact that I've never even met the chef, only spoken to him on the phone!

Okay, so I've decided to refer to him as Dear Daniel, after Hello Kitty's boyfriend. Dear Daniel's name is actually "Daniel Star", and like my LOVER he's lived in New York, is a great dancer and he loves fashion.