This article is about the social term for an intimate relationship. For the Limpbizkit album of the same name, please see Significant Other (album)
Significant other (sig ot or SO) is a gender-blind, politically correct term to refer to a person's partner in a intimate relationship without disclosing or presuming anything about his or her marital status or sexual orientation. It is also vague enough to avoid offence from using a term that an individual might consider inappropriate (e.g. lover when she considers him a boyfriend, or girlfriend when he considers her a life partner).
The first known occurrence of the term was in 1953 by U.S. psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, a former editor of the journal Psychiatry , in his work, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry.
Its usage in both psychology and sociology is different from its colloquial use. In psychology, a significant other is any person who has great importance to an individual’s life or well-being. In sociology, it describes a person with a strong influence on an individual's self-evaluation as well as reception of particular social norms. This usage is synonymous with the term "relevant other."
In social psychology a significant other is the parent, uncle, grandparent, or teacher - the person that guides and takes care of a child during primary socialization. The significant other protects, rewards and punishes the child as a way of aiding the child's development. This usually takes about six or seven years, and after that the significant other is no longer needed, the child moves on to a general other which is not a real person, but an abstract notion of what society deems good or bad.
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