The Vine: January 8, 2014
My boyfriend wants me to take his last name when we get married. I don’t. We are at a stalemate.
Briefly: We live 1500 miles apart. We used to date casually when I was home from university in the summers. That was over ten years ago, and we lost touch for several years. We reconnected a year ago. It’s been great. But I can sense a potential landmine.
Some things that I think are important for you to know:
He’s late 30s, I’m 30. We are not engaged yet, but we are planning on it in the next year or so.
Next month, I’m leaving the city I’ve lived in for 12 years to move back to our home state, to live together. Besides my best friend and my social circle, I’m leaving a somewhat underemployed, but still totally rewarding career in the arts, so moving means lots of networking to start getting jobs in my field again.
I already feel that he has a bigger personality than I do. Keeping my own identity separate has always been extremely important to me.
When we’ve talked about it, he uses the team analogy to state his case (we’re going to be on the same team so we need to be wearing the same colour jersey). I am proudly feminist, so much of my reasoning against a name change is political. But also, I just don’t believe we have to “show the world that I’m on his team.” I am proud to be in a relationship with him, I think he’s wonderful and I want to spend my life with him, but it seems so important to him that I prove it by taking his name. He doesn’t want to take my name or create/pick a new name.
I like my name. Our surnames together with a hyphen sound silly; they start with the same letter as my first name. We want kids, but any name option other than his surname for future kids is totally off the table for him. I’d be willing to just give the hypothetical kids his name if he’d give in about me with my last name.
I just have no idea how to solve this. I am scared to call this a deal breaker, but I know in my heart that I do not want to change my name. He is just as firm in his belief (and this is a big shock to me, because we are quite aligned in most of our other beliefs, and very open to compromise where we disagree). I think we are both being careful not to give each other ultimatums, because we are both strong-minded. I don’t need to get married; it’s more important to him, but I’m totally happy to do it if we can figure this out.
As I see it, unless one of us makes the compromise, our relationship will play out in the following ways:
- 1) We break up (we don’t want this)
- 2) We stay together but never marry or have kids (we don’t want this)
- 3) We never marry but he’s willing to have kids (he doesn’t want this)
Is there a way around this that you can see? How can I show him the unfairness of expecting me to take his name?
Thank you so much for reading this,
And Why Is It HIS team, Anyway?
Dear His,
Oh, boy: the name-change. It brings up so much other stuff that’s pretty much only tangentially related to the actual issue. I mean, it didn’t for me — if you mush my husband’s last name and mine together, it becomes “Bundy,” which given our shared enjoyment of true-crime became a running gag during the wedding planning, but I never considered changing it and Dirk never brought it up in the first place. I have a “professional” name; I saw what my SIL went through logistically to become a legal Bunting and it’s a major hassle; Dirk and I don’t want children, so naming the aegis under which we all exist isn’t a factor. I myself don’t consider it a feminist issue, because I already have a man’s last name (and middle name), and I didn’t care enough to go change it to…I don’t know, “Cheesebook” when I turned 18. But people have all kinds of reasons for changing or not changing when they get married, or wanting their future wives to change them, or wanting other people to do what they did so they can feel better about their own decisions, blah blah blah.
Alllll that to say that our names, what we call ourselves, how we think of ourselves and our alliances in the world, mean a lot to us, though we don’t think about that meaning on a daily basis, so the strong and opposing reactions you and Boyfriend have had to it seem normal to me and I don’t think either of you has to apologize for that, but at the same time that isn’t even what jumps out at me in this letter. What struck me on first reading is that you haven’t conducted your relationship in the same city for any length of time yet, never mind that an engagement is apparently not even imminent; it’s just something under discussion. You’re planning on getting engaged “in the next year or so,” and I know that this is how some people do it, and my whole Aries get-drunk-and-propose short-date MO is not for everyone, but the thing is, engagement is the plan. “Engaged to be engaged,” “we’ll talk about it in X time” — again, it’s fine to have a shared idea for that and it’s not necessary to hide a ring in a dessert. Do you.
But it’s also not something that, for example, you dangle in front of your long-distance GF to sweeten the “she has to move here” deal, which is kiiiiind of the vibe I get here, that when it was time to put up or shut up, you put up and agreed to pull up stakes and make a go of it in your home state, with him…if he saw it going somewhere. And he did, maybe partly because you made the compromise and he thought you would keep doing that, and now you think maybe he’s inflexible, doesn’t hear you, won’t fight for you. Again, just spitballing here, but the bottom line is, you’re both waaaaaay ahead of yourselves with this right now. You don’t live together yet; you don’t know how that’s going to be. You’re not engaged. You don’t co-own property or pets. It’s a bit premature to wrangle over who’s changing what when you get married.
You can’t unring the bell, though; you can’t unknow that you don’t agree on this issue and a middle way doesn’t seem likely. Still: table it. You don’t have to settle it today, or even in a month; don’t try. Focus on your move, on adjusting to a new home and on the roommate shit couples have to go through; leave your names out of it. If you can, consider seeing a counselor, on your own or with him, to talk about your own boundaries and sense of self, and why the fact that he’s a strong personality keeps coming up, and why you repeat in this letter that you don’t want Us — meaning Him — encroaching on You, and whether it’s possible for the two of you to accept certain things about the other and/or fight about them kindly and productively.
But the name isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that you’re afraid you’ve already given up too much in this relationship, and you don’t think he respects that or cares about balancing that. You need to name that, to yourself and to him, and get right with taking a risk and trusting yourself. It’s fine not to want to change your name, but both of you need to come clean about what this is really about, to wit: the fear that, in the end, you two aren’t really on the same team.
…Y’all should just become the Cheesebooks, though. Come on.
Tags: boys (and girls)
When I married 30 years ago, I changed my name to his. Then 15 years ago we moved to his country, where everyone must keep their name. So I reclaimed my name. Problem solved.
While we’re on the subject, can there be a term for ‘dude a married person is cheating with’?
There wasn’t even a question for us. I don’t even think there was a discussion. I kept my name. The dogs’ names are now hyphenated, as will any future children.
I will say, he moved cross country after a brief LDR and upended his whole life. We knew it was a serious relationship, but marriage wasn’t seriously discussed until three years in, and we didn’t pull the trigger until four and a half. I was 34 and he was 37 when we met, 38 and 41 when we got married. I never worry that people won’t know that we’re married because of our names.
No help to the letter-writer from this spinster, but because people are sharing Name Stories:
My mother took my father’s name when they got married in the early 60’s, and kept it when they divorced in 1973. So she still has his name even though they were together for 12 years and have now been divorced for 40. (Whereas my father’s current wife did not take his name.)
As a teenager, I hatched a plan to drop my middle name — which I never use — and replace it with her maiden name. I thought I was being all feminist and honoring her. Instead I hurt her feelings — it turns out my father chose my first name, and she chose the middle name I was proposing to erase.
I didn’t think about it much as a kid, but now it’s funny to me that people get adamant about having either biological genes or the same name defining you as a family. I have an older (half) brother and sister from my mom’s brief first marriage, and neither of my parents ever referred to us as half siblings, or told us we weren’t really family even though we’ve never shared a last name, and they certainly didn’t share their stepfather’s (my father’s) last name. So, if it’s not really biological ties or names that hold us together, what is it that makes us a family? Because we are, as big a pain in the ass as that is. I don’t know that my mom had too much trouble with people thinking her children weren’t really hers because of different last names.
It’s also really funny to me that my rather conservative, rule-following parents ended up being slightly ahead of their time in this respect.
I changed my name when I got married, but it was my choice. I get the overshadowing personality thing, because in my case I felt like it was my dad and his side of the family who can be overbearing and controlling, and I felt great about declaring myself to be part of a team where I felt like an equal partner. To me, the fact that you don’t feel like an equal is more of a red flag, because holding on to your name is not actually going to change that. There are good reasons to keep your name, but to me, that’s not really one of them.
Logistically, it was no big deal. Not much more of a hassle than moving to a new state and having to change my address with everyone.
Adding to the pile of anecdata, I’ve been married since 1987 and my husband and I both kept our original names (our grown son has the same last name as my husband, with mine as one of his middle names) and I can’t think of one instance where it caused any kind of hassle whatsoever–legal, forms, schools, anything. So avoiding hassle in itself is not a reason to change–because it might never happen.
Sure, I’ve gotten the occasional “Mr. and Mrs. R” cards, or whatever. That’s not a hassle, though. It’s nice to get cards at all, I figure. And it helps me weed out telemarketers when they hear my voice and ask if I’m Mrs. R. Ha! No, bye.
Hee, that’s my second favorite telemarketer/junk mail weed. “Mrs. Bunting?” “Not in this house, byeeeee.” My favorite is signing up for a catalog or mailing list by selecting “Admiral” as my honorific and then seeing if it pops up again. I forget who sold my name, but I know a memorial park/mortuary wound up with it, so I get these “It’s Time To Face Reality” pamphlets advertising this cemetery, addressed to Adm. S. Douglas Bunting (they assumed that naming convention, not I; I guess ladies can’t be admirals?).
@karen: I can’t help thinking that even Bill might hear “Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton” and think “… Who? Oh!”
There is (or was) the long-ago counterpart of “maiden” in “knave,” but I think the coinage “knave name” probably wouldn’t work now. Fortunately or un-.
Ha! I subscribed to Eating Well magazine eons ago, and somehow my last name got misspelled. It was easy to trace how much they sold my name based on other junk mail that came addressed to the wrong spelling.
When two of my friends married each other, they considered combining their names–until they realized that the most obvious combinations were Pith and, even worse (better?), Smelletier.
@Sandman, I like knave name! It’s no less applicable than ‘maiden’ is for the ladies these days, if you know what I mean, and I’m pretty sure you do. Classes up the joint, if you ask me!
Also: I’m never signing up for anything anymore without a high ranking honorific. That’s just too much fun. Who wouldn’t want to write to Dame attica!
My husband and I had a pretty short discussion about me changing my name. I have a very common first name and an uncommon last name, so I went by my last name for nearly the entirety of high school and college. So I’m a little attached to it, to say the least.
The main crux of the issue, and the ultimate solution, was that my first name sounds patently ridiculous with his last name, and me taking his name wasn’t a priority for him.
I also suggested combining last names, but he wasn’t interested in that. So we just kept our own names and decided not to worry about it. The dog’s last name is hyphenated, and we’ll decide what to do with kids if/when we decide to have them. And I actually enjoy it when our friends and family address us jointly by his last name and tease me by addressing me with my first name and his last name. It’s endearing.
I didn’t change my name, and my husband was actually relieved. His first wife took his name and then kept it after the divorce; that always rubbed him the wrong way. I think he felt like my taking his name would jinx us, or something. This didn’t come out until I broached the topic during our wedding planning. So, anyway, not every guy even *wants* his betrothed to change her name.
I don’t know if that’s useful to our letter-writer, but maybe down the road she can point out that this whole “team name” nonsense is not an American guy default setting anymore.
I think the crucial thing for the letter-writer–and for anybody, really–is that it has to be your choice, and that if you’re on board w/the traditional approach, fine. Nobody else gets to judge you on that. If you and he were to agree on any other approach, fine. Nobody gets to judge you on that, either. I’ve gotten rations of crap from feminist friends for taking my husband’s name, but they didn’t understand the sheer depth and volume of daddy issues I wanted to amputate. Nor did they get that my husband is the best man I’ve ever known; he never put things in “our team” terms, but if he had, I still would have gleefully ditched the home team to join his, because the guy is awesome. I didn’t want to hyphenate–I wanted the old stuff GONE. I wanted, literally, to become someone else. There may be other women out there (shoot, for all I know, a bunch of men out there too) who are or have been in a similar situation.
Hi LW! I’m a feminist too. And my boyfriend and I have had the children’s-last-name discussion precisely because we didn’t want to get to the point of becoming engaged and getting a nasty surprise. But we’ve never, ever had the should-ebstarr-take-his-name discussion because he knew me well enough to know I’d be against it, and he understands that it’s, well, MY name. He has no chips in that game. At one point, though, he did mention that it had been kind of his dream to have his wife take his name (until we started dating haha). “Well, if you want to have the same name as your wife, you can always take mine,” I said a little bit rudely. He said, no, that wasn’t the same. And that’s the point, right? That’s the dream. It’s rarely just about having the same name as the one you love, although it can be about that. It’s also, for many men, the dream of growing up into a Man and finding a woman to join Your Family, a woman to mother your children, who will also have the same name as you and your father before you and his father before him and so on and so on, and never remembering that she comes from her own family and that has meaning to her too.
At the end of the letter you list some options that make my head spin a little. This man is unwilling to marry you if you won’t take his name, but he’s willing to let you bear his out-of-wedlock children as long as they have his name… at which point he still won’t marry you? The mother of his perfectly-named children? Really?! I understand that you’re not super attached to getting married, but you should think long and hard about whether the kind of man who would feel this way is the kind of man you should have babies with. What if your children are daughters? Will he raise them with the kind of egalitarianism that you, presumably, want your daughters to be raised with, or does he secretly think women should be Women and men should be Men? Obviously, I am also a feminist who fell in love with someone who’s got his own various attachments to patriarchal traditions, so I’m not saying that can never work. But what your boyfriend is saying to you is so irrational and punitive that I almost can’t believe you’re even giving it a serious hearing.
So I think the way to “show him the unfairness” of his viewpoint is to stop acting like it’s YOUR job to convince HIM. It’s YOUR name. The sexism all around us conspires to tell men that they get to have a say in stuff like your sex life before you met them, or how many pounds you weigh, or how revealing your clothes are, or your last name… but you are the only person who should have a say in your own name and your own clothes and your own past. Remember that, and don’t act like your decisions aren’t yours to make — you can welcome his input, you can take his feelings into consideration, but this is not a decision that two people make together. It’s your decision.
(PS. I hate to disagree with the wise Sars, but I think the point about “having a man’s last name” when you’re born is a little off, to be honest… I mean, it’s not a man’s name now that you’re 30 years old. It’s YOUR name. A woman’s name.)
Isn’t youth the equivalent of maiden? Not that youthname works all that well. I have used the ne/nee thing.
My aunt, who hasn’t married, got tired of her very generic firstname lastname combo and took one of her grandmothers names. She’s blessed with good grandmother names too.
I’ve always thought if I’d written a romance and wanted a pseudonym I’d have used great-grandma Rose Graham. Of course if I wanted to sound more high class or possibly write something vampire-y I could have used one of my dad’s grandmother’s name, Maria von Kaulbach. I actually looked a lot like her when I was younger, was shocking the first time I saw her picture.
My other nuttier aunt changed her last name to Forever.
My mom took my dad’s name because it was less generic.
“Ten plus years later, they have kids, she’s still a feminist, a good one, but not as passionate about this issue as she used to be and she’s found that not having the same last name as her husband and kids is a massive pain in the ass not really worth it. People ask her nosy questions, mail comes addressed to the wrong last name, school forms and legal matters are a nuisance, etc. She wishes she had just changed it.”
Speaking ONLY to the naming issue, and not the bigger issues that I agree are at play here, a thousand times this. I had what I felt at the time was a “professional” name, and chose to hyphenate so that name would stay in the mix. Unfortunately, while syllabically our names are fine hyphenated, there’s just enough weird spelling that it’s a nightmare once I start filling out paperwork or, more significantly, dealing with people over the phone. No one wants to hyphenate my name, including my own relatives, and now that we have kids, I tend to write just his part of the name as my last name because it’s shorter and for some reason having kids in school means signing things all the time.
So … figure out the larger issues first, and if you get that all straightened out and still plan to get married AND want to have kids, do think about the logistics and which will be the bigger PITA. It’s a pain to change your name (and in fact, my unmarried name remains on some accounts because NO I will not be faxing some random banker my marriage certificate), but it’s ALSO a pain to not share a last name with your dependents.
Even though changing your name to be the same as your spouse’s is a pain, it really does make life logistically simpler after that. Of course you shouldn’t change it if you don’t want to, I’m just pointing out that the argument that “it’s a pain to change it” gets quickly overridden by the annoyance of NOT having the same name and people getting all confused.
In my (first) marriage, for (long story) reasons it took me two years into the marriage to get around to changing my last name to his. Until then, the post office didn’t want to give me mail with his name on it, doctors didn’t want me in the examination room with him even though he was right there saying it was ok. Once I changed my name to his? Suddenly they didn’t even bat an eye over allowing me access.
HOWEVER, I agree with everyone else that this is totally a secondary point in this case, and that the name argument is really just the manifestation of your feelings of too much compromise on your end and getting steamrolled in general. Don’t ignore those gut feelings.
I just want to add that in my (second, very happy) marriage, I kind of wanted to keep my maiden name having been so very happy to get it back after my divorce, and my new husband didn’t overly press me to change it. However, we knew we wanted kids, and I knew I wanted to have the same last name as my kids, and I wanted my husband to have the same last name as out kids, and he already had kids from his previous marriage with his last name…
…so it was pretty easy to put 2+2 together and figure out that the only solution was to take his name.
However, like others, I HIGHLY advocate making your maiden name your middle name. It makes life much easier when you endlessly encounter things (checks written by forgetful grandparents, frequent flier accounts) that are still under your maiden name. As long as the authority sees that name somewhere on your ID, you’re usually good to go.
Late to this party with a totally geeky addendum: there is “research” out there about women who take their husband’s name; however, as you’ll see, Slate had to correct the record because the research was completely fraudulent. Check out the researcher, Diederik Stapel, for a juicy read: he fabricated the data for virtually every study he did, including his doctoral dissertation.