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TobyBartels comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Dating is one thing, but if you were asked if you were ‘lovers’, then that would seem a strange use of contemporary English to me.
Sure. 'Lovers' isn't contemporary English at all, is it? But if a semantic shift / euphemistically-useful pattern of meaning is found in one place, that means it can occur elsewhere.
(Which reminds me: I've heard that 'dating' meaning 'in a relationship with' is a recent development, and that in the '50s or so, 'in a relationship with' would have been 'going steady' and 'dating' wasn't committed or exclusive. Is that true?)
It is, but it's more restricted in usage than it used to be. One might say "the notorious criminal Alice was captured last night, thanks to testimony from her former lover, Bob", or something along the lines of "Catherine the Great's numerous lovers"; but one wouldn't say "this is my lover, Charlie", and "Dennis and Eve are lovers" would sound stilted, if not exactly incorrect, in most situations. I get the impression that it's now used with indirection and a slight pejorative air, where originally it might have been a direct, neutral description of a relationship.
("This is Charlie, my loooover" is a possibility in some dialects, but that construction emphasizes the relationship by drawing attention to the archaism.)
Hell, it wasn't even considered committed in the 80s. Although I suppose different regions may have changed faster, in the South in the late 80s/early 90s, "going out" was what we said for "going steady", while "dating" implied a more casual relationship. (And the actual term 'dating' was rarely used - I remember being asked, "you guys messin'?" after a couple dates with a boy.)
So yes, true.
My memory of sitcoms and comics from the '50s agrees with you.
That's all that I have to go on; I wasn't alive myself back then.
All the same, I still think that ‘lover’ is a contemporary word. A bit old-fashioned, and usually singular, but I was alive for a time when a gay man could introduce another man as his ‘lover’ and it would be perfectly natural, with no other word that would mean quite what he wanted to say. (Now he could say ‘fiancé’ or even ‘husband’ and that would seem natural, but once upon a time it wouldn't have.)
ETA: Also Nornagest's ‘former lover’.