Most of us insist on labelling our relationships: marriage provides a label written in law, and a relationship without a title is treated as if it doesn’t exist. If we’re introduced as “just a friend” by the person we love, we feel erased. Even those who reject labels invent their own: ‘open relationship’, ‘friends with benefits’, ‘situationship’. But the word and the relationship are not the same thing. We can love someone but not be able to call them our “partner”: nearly four in ten Americans have been in an undefined romantic relationship. And words don’t just describe the world; they change it. As J.L. Austin noticed, saying “I do” makes a marriage, while, as bereavement expert Kenneth Doka observed, an unmarried partner’s grief often "goes disenfranchised".
Should we live first and let language catch up, rather than bending our relationships to fit the words we already have? Or do our relationships need labels to pin down the chaotic flux they would be without them? And can language ever describe a relationship without immediately changing it, or is every name already a verdict?
