[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Kansas Ref

Your partner has bought into "attribution theory": giving the person characteristics he does not have, but rather ascribing those characteristics to him because of perceived age/seniority. It's a very hard perception to dis-embed from a person's mindset

I call any distant acquaintance older than me "Mr.", and Mrs.". I also use titles for any professorial, "Dr.", "Officer", "Detective", "Professor", "Reverend". "Father", etc., even if they're much younger than me. I call almost all coaches "Coach", except for a few that I've known for almost forty years, from my days as a coach, calling very few of them by their first name.

I would always call my best friend's parents Mr. and Mrs. Smith, up until the day they died, while I was middle aged adult. It used to drive my ex-wife crazy, one of the reasons I'm divorced.