When I was in college, I remember a political science professor mentioning something about using the phrase “my wife”. Saying “my wife” implied all kinds of ownership, that you were claiming ownership, etc.  

It made me think back to reading Marx’s political and economic treatise of 1844, where he declares that the enemy of being is having. Marx thought as soon as someone holds something and thinks: this is mine, then greed, avarice, robbery, and a whole host of other evils follows. Therefore, in order to change this, he sought to abolish private property. People that couldn’t own anything wouldn’t envy what others had…. and so on… eventually resulting in a perfect society. Getting to the point would require killing those that wouldn’t get with the program and mercilessly hammering on the remainder of the citizens until they got it out of their skulls that they owned anything, but hey, ya gotta break a few eggs (euphemism for ruthlessly murder and oppress society) in order to make an omelette (euphemism for your theoretical perfect society). 

But of course, I talk about ‘my’ wife all the time. What does it mean when I say, “my”? 

Does it imply that I treat her like my property? That I think she is property to be owned by me? 

Of course not.  

My, the word, is an adjective ascribing possession or belonging to someone. It can be used of the possession of property: “Hey, that’s MY bike!”, or “That’s MY book, you can’t have it.” 

In such instances, we treat the inanimate object as our property, to possess and do with as we please.  

But in the case of “my wife”, the ‘thing’ I possess is the unique (hopefully at least) relationship of being her husband. There is only one person I can call my wife. The title of wife, and my relation to her as the possessor of such, is unique, and only I can claim it. Of course, she IS a wife, and others can talk about her being a wife. But relationally, they would have to say: she is ‘his’ wife, when speaking third person, or if speaking to me, she is your wife. The thing I possess is a unique relationship with her, not her. 

There are other relationships that would carry that relational aspect, without being unique. For example, you might be ‘my friend’. But that appellation needn’t only apply to me. Presumably, others can make the same claim that you are their friend as well. The important thing here isn’t really the uniqueness, but the relational quality that I possess with regard to you. I possess the relationship of friend with my friend, I don’t possess my friend.

Just like with a book’, it would be possible for it to have shared ownership. You, and I, and three other friends might all have gone in on a rowboat and we could all call it “my boat”.  

There are also times when I refer to a thing I don’t own as mine. I go to work and sit at my desk, in my office. In the past I rented an apartment and would invite people over to my apartment. I do not own any of those things, yet they do remain, in a sense, mine by ‘possession’. My desk and office have been particularly apportioned to me, by those that own them, so I refer to them as mine in that relational aspect.  I possess the habitation of those things, I don’t possess the things themselves.  

I also refer to actions as mine. I perform them. I act. I sometimes do something stupid. Those were my actions, or maybe my sins. In these cases, the relation is performative. I possess my performance of them. 

Clearly, there are different categories of possession and different ways of understanding how one ‘possesses’ a thing.
I’m spending some time today articulating what everyone can already intuit. You don’t need to know how to define these different categories of ‘possession’ in order to understand them. We understand them intuitively and naturally. We know there’s a difference. But on occasion, we can be convinced by someone in a position of authority that referring to ‘my wife’ is the same as referring to ‘my bike’ if we aren’t curious to question things.