Can Someone Be Your Significant Other Without Being Your Romantic Partner?

Just over a year ago, I moved in with my son’s dad - whom I call Egg. Before you get the wrong idea, we’re not getting ‘back together’ because we were never a couple in the first place. We were best friends, then – for want of a better expression, which incidentally is what this piece is about - ‘friends with benefits’, then friends with a child whom we co-parented between two houses. The move was largely financial. We were both struggling to afford to run two houses on freelance incomes, but also, we get on so well, it just made sense.  

Now, our son is twenty-one and about to graduate, moving to Manchester in September to start a Master’s. You might say we moved in just at the point that he moved out, and yet we are not romantically together (Louis has a girlfriend). So, it begs the question, what are we now? Co-parenting empty nesters? Empty-nester housemates? Herein lies my problem: I have no idea what to call us, what to call Egg, the man I share a son, much of my life, and now my home with. My co-parent? Sounds like we’re exes. My Ex then? No, he’s not that. My friend? Seems inadequate to convey what he means to me.  

For he is my significant other, and yet, when I reach for a label that adequately recognises that I am stumped, and usually end up giving some long-winded unnecessary and tedious explanation like, ‘he’s the father of my child / baby daddy, we’re not together romantically but we live together. Oh, and we’re best friends’. That last bit’s important to me; it’s interesting how often people assume I mustn’t like him that much if we’re not an item romantically, and yet, I love him – he’s one of my favourite people.  

This problem I have is a modern but a growing one. Gone are the days when married with  2.4 kids’ was the shape of households. Many separated couples still live happily (and unhappily!) under one roof; people are choosing to set up home and even a life with their best mate over a spouse; siblings live together, women live communally… It’s not just the shape of a household however that I’m talking about here, it’s the language we have for any kind of relationship that does not fit into our socially conditioned, neatly labelled ideas of what ‘friendship’ is, or ‘romance’ or ‘commitment’. I’d argue for example, that I have all three with Egg: the creative conversations we have, the fact we understand one another at a deep, soul level, the hard times we’ve weathered together, the fact he never bores me (although he does annoy me and vice-versa, look, we’re like any other relationship…!) these things can feel romantic to me, they’re just not sexual, and crucially, I have no label that fits and that’s frustrating.  

Author and journalist Rhaina Cohen is a woman after my own heart. After experiencing a female friendship that she felt transcended what society tells us are the parameters of friendship, she felt compelled to write a book: ‘The Other Significant Other: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center.’ It’s a collection of stories with people whose significant other does not fall under the conventional label and includes friends who are also co-parents, carers, housemates and life partners. Platonic relationships that are people’s whole worlds.   

“I wanted to explore the outer limits of friendship,” Cohen tells me. “Because I felt we can ask much more of friendships than we currently do. People are searching for a language that feels like it better captures the significance of their relationship…” she added. “It's alienating to not feel like the most significant relationship in your life is recognised which is why having a term can be very powerful. Obviously, it’s hard to find a term that is going to satisfy every person in every kind of relationship, but we definitely need more labels.” 

The ‘alienating’ point really struck a chord with me. On a wider level, I also think it’s important and interesting to ponder the emotional ramifications of not having the language to describe the most important relationships in our lives. Even at NCT lessons which Egg attended with me, I felt alienated among the conventionally together couples. I didn’t have anything to describe our situation, as and this contributed to this idea, this fear that our family unit, our love for each other, might be less valid or recognised because it wasn’t the conventional type.  

I questioned if we could be a real family at all, and that was hard to deal with. With hindsight, I realise this was mostly my stuff – Egg did not suffer from these thoughts -  and most people weren’t judging, but even so and bizarrely perhaps, I felt I had to justify spending so much time with Egg if we weren’t having sex (not that most of my married new-parent friends were). I still do to a certain extent. When people say, ‘don’t you want to meet someone?” I feel what they’re really saying, is don’t you want a ‘real relationship’? But this is a real relationship to me. It’s the most significant relationship in my life. This does not mean I don’t have room for a different kind of relationship with somebody else, but it is real and it is important, and it would be great to recognise that, with a term that fits – even legal protection.  

Because this is the other issue: without the language to describe them it can be hard to celebrate, protect and even grieve these relationships, when they’re over. 

The French are streets ahead with this stuff. For decades now their ‘PACS’ the Pacte Civil de Solidarite,’ has provided a legal (including tax and housing) status for two adults sharing a life outside of marriage. There is no requirement for a romantic or sexual union, it’s just two adults sharing a life, be that friends or otherwise. That said, the push for significant relationships outside marriage to be recognised and protected legally, is gathering steam in other European countries, including this one.  

The UK Government's June 2026 consultation entitled "A Fairer End to Relationships,” represents one of the biggest proposed family law reforms in decades, and if granted would give unmarried cohabiting couples, among other things, legal financial rights when relationships end and provide inheritance protections when one partner dies without a will, among other things. Not quite as progressive as the PACS but a step in the right direction.  

I still struggle with a term to describe me and Egg, but can’t help but think, that what this is really about is finding different language to describe different forms of love. It’s the love part that we really want to recognise and be recognised, after all.