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I encountered three different words to say "lover".
My teacher said that сожитель has a negative connotation, it is rather "plebish", but I don't actually understand what kind of bad connotation it has.
фаворит, as she said, is used for lovers of kings and queens.
любовник should be a more general term.
Can you please explain the difference between these three words, according to you? How would you use them?
Сожитель indeed has some negative connotation for me. It doesn't mean "lover" in a sense that it is a partner for a married person, but it simply means people living together and having a relationship while not being officially married. I would usually see it in official sources (news etc.), which often report some negative occurrences and thus lead to this word having a bad connotation for me. One would rarely call his\her partner сожитель, we would rather usе мой парень\моя девушка. Although this word can sometimes be used in the same sense as любовник and even муж (husband), though I can't recall it being used often with these meanings.
Фаворит is explained correctly.
Любовник\любовница is a general term for a person you have a relationship with while being married (who is not your husband or wife, obviously).
Любовник/любовница you use to name a sexual partner. Only in half of the cases it might imply that a partner is married, but it's not a must.
To understand what is wrong with сожитель, you need to know the meaning of concubinage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concubinage). This word stresses the idea of the inability of further marriage, which makes these relations less legitimate.
Additionally сожитель is somehow related to Soviet crime law as it was stated before.
Фаворит is outdated. Totally agree with your teacher.
Любовник translates directly into English as "lover". Nothing more to add.
I believe the word сожитель has a further negative connotation of someone who takes advantage of the person who provides room, board and physical side of the affair. Сожитель is essentially a parasite - contributing next to nothing to their partner's well-being, but steadily consuming the financial, emotional, physical and temporal resources of the person with whom they are cohabiting.
1.сожитель - one who you lives with someone in the same appartments and have intimate (sexual) relationships with him. Feminine - сожительница. 2.любовник = lover. Feminine - любовница. 3.фаворит = archaism, nowadays it is not in use. Means a favorite lover of a high-level person (king, prince, sultan, etc). Something like favorite concubine. Feminine - фаворитка. Once I worked at a publishing office, so that I had to get translated words like these ( due to translation agency, Technolex Translations, of course). I think фаворит isn't used nowadays in Russian, meanwhile любовник is a wider term, may be applied in more cases.
фаворитis not simply a lover of a king, but rather a lover of any ruler which influences ruler at a degree that he/she can make ruler make certain decisions.