What is the definition of "lover?"

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Is "lover" a synonym for "spouse?" Does it mean someone who truly loves you and is committed to you?

I say "my parents were lovers for 15 years," meaning they were married 15 years before they divorced. Is that grammatically correct?

Lover = Consensual and romantic sex partner, with or without the binding of marriage.

But romantic relationships aren't exclusively about sex, they're about commitment and partnership. That's why you fall in love with somebody and start a relationship with them. Loving includes hugging, kissing, and cuddling.

i'd leave out the 'sex' bit, at least for the definition.

a spouse is indeed (lawfully) wedded, but a lover is 'just' someone who loves you and shares your life as a romantic partner.

both sex and marriage are common between lovers, but not a defining feature

Grammatically it is correct but it isn't correct if you consider the meaning.
It would only be correct if they were strangers before getting married, they fell in love around the marriage time and they loved each other till the divorce or if they fell in love for example 3 years before the marriage but the love expired 3 years before they divorced.

If they were dating/loving each other for some time before the marriage and they loved each other till the divorce you add the time they were this way to the time they were married. So if they started a romantic relationship 3 years before marriage and they loved each other for the whole time they were lovers for 18 years.

Lover doesn't mean spouse. It means someone you are in romantic relationship with, someone you love and who loves you. It might be a spouse, a partner, a boyfriend, a girlfriend etc. but also someone you secretly cheat on your spouse with.

I'm asking this question because my crush called the woman in this thread his "lover," when they don't see each other very often, only talk on and off, she called him a "friend," and other people I asked about them think she might be a friend with benefits. She's never called him her boyfriend and he has never called her his girlfriend. But I heard "lover" right from the groom's mouth. That has to be a synonym, right? I always thought I was being a homewrecker by fantasizing about marrying him. Whatever their status is, she DOES NOT deserve the honor of being joined to him for the rest of their lives together in the sacrament of holy matrimony.

Based on my observations, a monogamous romantic commitment is a monogamous romantic commitment. I consider couples married on their first date because marriage should be the ultimate goal of any romantic relationship. The wedding is only the legal consummation of the relationship. Couples should celebrate hard soon after they start dating, because why wait for the wedding to throw a meaningful party with family and friends? The wedding can't be the start of the couple's life together if they've been dating for a while. Also, popular marriage vows say that you'll "LOVE and honor" your lover all the days of your life. Isn't that what being a lover is?

Is my crush technically married to that other woman? The other thread never clarified what he meant when he called her his "lover."

Lover is not a spouse. It's just someone who you love and who loves you back.

And there is also a second meaning of this which is quite popular in my language but I am not sure how common it is in English. Nowadays we don't use the "lover" word to describe someone who we are in official relationship with (boyfriend, spouse) in Polish language. Our "lover" (translated as "kochanek") means no less and no more but: "someone you make love with but don't consider making your relationship official" so the most common case of a "lover" here is someone you cheat on your spouse with. In old Polish we used to name "kochanek"("lover") anyone who was in love with someone but now we can see it only in old books. It was replaced by the bad meaning.

As long as I am aware though English language still uses the good, oldfashioned meaning of "someone who loves" and the new meaning("someone you simply make love with") is secondary to it. But I might be wrong about that.

I hear it mostly used by the homosexual community when they want to be married but cant.

Someone you don't wanna see with your girlfriend

Interesting. So is my crush's case more of the "bad" or "shallow" definiton, according to the Polish word? (And I'm of 50% Polish descent, but didn't learn too many words in the language!) This woman in question said he was her "friend," but he still puts her on a pedestal, which is why I'm still afraid of her even though other people say she's not a threat to my dreams.

No idea. Personally I never heard someone using the word "kochanek" when talking about his own love/sex interest in Polish. We secretly say "He got a lover." when we know someone is cheating on his spouse and we talk about him behind his back but that person will rather use: "This is my friend/companion."(publicly) or "This is my dolly/babe/etc. if you know what I mean."(to close friends) when introducing that kind of lover. Although it is probably possible for someone to be open with the "kochanek" status. I don't speak with people enough to know for sure.

Perhaps the girl you are talking about has a boyfriend/spouse and she is cheating on them with your crush or she just doesn't take your crush seriously so she calls him "friend" while considering him the bad meaning of the "lover" but your crush is in love with her and considers the old fashioned meaning of "lovers".

Or perhaps she is just shy and she doesn't want people to know she is in a love relationship. Being in love and having sex can be embarrassing so not everyone wants to openly admit it.

This question reminds me of a scene from My Dad the Superhero


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK4-JlrzYmU

Gerard Deperduie says "Lover, I hate that word, it's so graphic"

Generally in English a lover is someone you have sex with. It's a term for a sexual partner who you are not neccessarily in a committed relationship with.

Not always; I've seen it to mean "someone with whom you are in a romantic situation with, regardless of sexual activity" plenty of times. I think it depends on the context.

But when someone says "This is my lover," I think almost always they will mean that they are romantically involved with them.

I wonder if this is a generation gap thing or a US vs British terminology thing? I've never heard "lover" being used for someone other than a sex partner. Unless it's someone from Cornwall saying "hello me lover" basically they call everyone lover.