I am going to sound crazy now, I just know it...
I actually am not a huge fan of "my wife" for the same reason. I had trouble saying it for a long time and even now I prefer to use her fist name when I am talking in person. Online though I can't really go around referring to people by first name since you guys wouldn't know who the heck I am talking about. But on another forum where I have posted for years everyone knows my wife by her first name because I slowly converted to using her real name over time.
haha no, i don't think you sound crazy at all! Language has implications, whether we like it or not. I use "partner" when i refer to my, er, male partner in part due to implications of language as they relate to gender. not to say that it's right or wrong to change the use of language, but an awareness of it i think is the more important part.
On topic, i should also mention that it's not like there's a code that's like "OK i'm definitely getting the sex!", but rather just the start of a process. Like I said, I'll let someone know that i'm seeing other people or am not interested in something serious, but it's just the first step. If someone is not down, then cool, we establish a friendship or whatever. If they are, then it's onto the next step, which is getting to know the person. I don't engage in casual sex immediately; my goal is a friendship + sex without the complications of commitment, so the friendship logically has to come before the sex.
Honestly, it's not a whole lot different than the dating process. In fact, thinking about it, my views on love lead me to believe that i "stumble" upon it so i guess casual sex in my eyes can be part of the larger dating process. I met my current partner this way; I let him know I was seeing other people, he was fine with it, but the more we hung out, the more I liked him. And compared to the others I was seeing at the time, he stood out (at one point I was texting him during REALLY boring dates). Eventually i came to the realization that i liked him enough to want to take that plunge, so to speak...I guess the order in which i go through this process is a little different in that sex has to come before a relationship if i choose to go that route. If not, i'm cool with just the sex.