Compound Possessive Pronouns

Fans of The Bachelor, get ready.

The gents in the spotlight just love to refer to their relationships with each individual lady. Unfortunately, these gents aren't quite up on their grammar and they end up with things like…

  • She and I's relationship
  • Her and I's relationship
  • She and my's relationship
  • Her and my's relationship
  • These. Are. All. Wrong.

The correct construction? Her and my relationship. Or, you know, our relationship, if you wanted to make your life easier.

Don't believe us? Just remove one or the other pronoun:

Her relationship and my relationship both sound good, right? Not so much with she relationship, I's relationship, or my's relationship.

The grammar geeks out there will probably throw in an objection here. When you have two names that share one thing, like a relationship, you only need to make the second one possessive: Sean and Catherine's relationship not Sean's and Catherine's relationship.

True.

But unfortunately for possessive pronouns, the same rule doesn't apply. Unless, apparently, you're on The Bachelor.