Not That Kind Of Partner

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Since "domestic partner" is a politically correct way to refer to the person you live with (carnal benefits optional), police officers, lawyers, and other people who work with colleagues also get to utter the above Stock Phrase when introducing their professional partners, Not That There's Anything Wrong with That optional.

This trope is Older Than They Think because "partner" has always had that double meaning, and it's a handy way to drop in some Ship Tease or Ho Yay, but expect to see this trope pop up more and more in lieu of (or in conjunction with) She Is Not My Girlfriend.

Examples of Not That Kind Of Partner include:

Anime and Manga

  • Something similar in the English dub of Samurai 7. Kambei calls his war buddy his "old wife", and this is translated as having him refer to the guy as his "mate". So, in English as in Japanese, the other characters are surprised when they meet the guy and find out he isn't a (female) love interest.
  • There has been some confusion on the term "partner" in Mahou Sensei Negima (between the festival and summer arcs).

Film

  • Inverted in American Beauty: when welcoming Colonel Fitts to the neighborhood, Jim Olmeyer introduces Jim Berkeley as "my partner". Colonel Fitts asks them to cut to the chase and proceed with the sales pitch, as he presumes they're business partners, and reacts with disgust when he realizes they mean romantic partner.

Literature

  • Very common in The Hollows books between Ivy and Rachel; compounded by the fact that with Rachel under Ivy's protection, other vampires assume Ivy must be getting blood and/or sex in return.

Live-Action TV

  • Often but not always averted on Bones - everyone seems to think Booth and Brennan are a couple but they always say "we're not a couple, [he/she]'s my partner," and the corretee almost always knows what they mean.
  • The Doctor is always having to clarify that a "companion" is not sexual (actually, the term is an Ascended Meme, since it wasn't normally used on the show before that).
  • Law and Order: Criminal Intent - Robert Goren's mother was already a little bit out of it, so she started thinking that Alex Eames was his girlfriend.
  • Mike and Carl in Mike and Molly.
  • Reba: Van auctions a day of working out with him in a silent auction and the winner of the auction was an effeminate man who wants to understand football better because his "partner" always talks about it. Turns out he's straight and he was talking about his business partner.
  • In Scrubs JD refers to his Heterosexual Life Partners Turk as his "partner" (since they're more or less an internal medicine/surgeon team), then hurriedly clarifies "not that type of partner". Later, it's revealed that his patient had the right idea to start with and got the wrong idea from the correction.
  • The X-Files Mulder and Scully run into this, too. The fact that they're closer than most married couples likely doesn't help the situation.

Web Original

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Not_That_Kind_Of_Partner?oldid=1988707"