What do "family" and "partner" mean to you?

[brooksmoses]

The word "family", in the sense of "chosen family" (which may or may not include one's "blood family"), can mean a lot of different things to different people. Likewise, especially in the poly world but even in the world of standard-appearing monogamous relationships, "partner" (in the relationship sense, not the business sense) can mean a remarkable lot of things.

As a result of some recent miscommunications, I'm chewing over what these mean to me, and I'm feeling very curious: What do these words mean to you, if and when you use them for your relationships? Do they have implications about what sorts of things you can rely on someone for, or what they can rely on you for? Are there expectations of willingness to perform emotional labor, or physical labor, or provide resources? (In exceptional circumstances? As a normal pattern?) Are there expectations of where the relationship fits in daily life? Of there being particular emotions that tend to come from the relationship?

Comments

[rosefox]

Power asymmetry doesn't mean relationship asymmetry, though. There might be a situation where a parent says "You, child, are my family" and the child says "No I'm not", or vice versa, but those are pretty rare edge cases. For the most part, person A and person B either are family to each other or they aren't.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean that the "yes, you are family" part was asymmetric -- just the way the people in the dyad relate to one another. Partners (to me) are equals operating on roughly equivalent terms; parents and children aren't, even when the children are grown up, because the roads the parent and the child took into the relationship are so radically different.