"This is Jane, we're fucking."

I'm neither a lesbian nor a woman but the word "partner" is pretty universally understood.

“This is my wife” works real well

For my girlfriend, I mostly just correct people if they’re mistaken. “Oh we’re more than just friends” type statements.

Also fuck is the platonic use of girlfriend back? Dammit

“This person is my lover Karen”

Just introduce them as your partner. Lesbians are so habitually entrenched in hiding their sexuality.

I have so many pairs of “friends” come in appliance shopping. Gay men come in, it’s “This is my husband Mike”. Gay women come in and it’s like “This is my friend Paula. She helps me pick out appliances and definitely doesn’t live with me”.

I don’t pry, because I’m just selling appliances. But it’s pretty obvious.

"Started?" Here in Tennessee we never stopped calling each other girlfriend.

But as others said, "Partner." I use it to talk about my boyfriend (since I'm a well-known demi person locally and the sex of whoever I'm with can be a massive question mark.)

Since a lot of women have started to call their female friends "girlfriends"

This isn't really a new thing, though... Is it? Or did I miss the era where we didn't use "girlfriend" - at least sometimes - when talking about a female friend?

Since a lot of women have started to call their female friends “girlfriends

That was the original meaning of the word before it ever had romantic connotations.

From Wikipedia...

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest meaning of the word "girlfriend", from 1859 on, was to designate "a female friend; esp. a woman's close female friend". In the late 1800s, it took on the meaning of "A female with whom a person has a romantic or sexual relationship".

The new way of referring to your SO is “partner”.

So I guess like that?

Lots of handholding and kissing when introducing them?

partner is a brilliant word about to made meaningless, apparently, so, love you all, friends, buddies, girlies, girlfriends, boyfriends, beards, compatriots and fellow travelers, fuck i''m old I forgot a few dozen thousand.

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I'm not a lesbian, but I'd probably just say girlfriend and expect people to be able to understand context.

Partner.