Name Change Mess
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I don’t know what “advice” you want, Cancer2988.
Your concern that the DMV will try and stop you from changing your legal name from your ex’s after marriage is completely unfounded. You don’t have ANY intention of doing anything differently, so the only solution you have is to tell your fiance to screw himself because you’re going to do what you want, period.
Or, you know, break up.
Yes you are right, I know what I want to do and I don’t think his opinion on MY name change is a defining factor. However, I was hoping to seek advice from people who have had such a conversation with their partner and ask how they got him to understand and support the decision. I don’t know why that is so hard to understand?
Well you literally didn’t ask so there’s that.
Honestly I don’t know what to tell you on that front. It’s completely self-evident to me that your name = your call. That your fiancée doesn’t see it that way is concerning. Is this a one-off for him or does he have a track record of expecting you to accommodate his wants at the expense of your own?
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been married twice. You just calmly explain what you’re thinking and what it means to you, in a neutral setting like when you’re taking a walk. I’m with everyone else who says if he won’t budge and insists that you and your kids take his name and his name only (even if they disinherit land), then something is really wrong with him. He’s probably an old-fashioned ass in other ways too.
I mean, I didn’t change my name, but I “got” my husband to “understand” by asking if sharing a last name (what he was focused on) was important enough to him to change his name, and if not, why not. I think in his case, he’d never had to think about what something like that would mean for him.
I second Kate’s suggestion of a neutral setting to talk through what it means to you.
Exactly what Kate said. You explain why it’s important to you, but also be willing to listen to why having the same last name (his) is important to him. And yes, if he’s unwilling to budge, that’d be alarming.
When I was, like, 23 I remember getting into an argument with my boyfriend at the time over this. I said, generally-speaking, I didn’t think I’d ever want to take a guy’s last name. I said nothing specific about him, or his last name, or us as a couple, but he was offended by this “slight.” Now that I’m older, I truly think I’d cut and run if the same thing happened.
I like to think I wouldn’t be dating a guy who insisted I take his name. I’d hear him out on the kids’ name, but my name is not his issue.
That thing about “giving up” your maiden name for the other guy but not for him is creepy too.
Yeah, it is creepy. Plus from that response about the ex-husband, it sounds like the issue might be about having an ex-husband at all rather than the name.
That stuck out to me also. It smacks of ‘you did xyz in bed with your ex so you have to do it with me’. Really not cool.
This thread should be entitled “I am marrying a childish insecure dolt of a man but rather than getting upset with him — please allow me to get snippy with so many of you as I continue to be as vague as possible.”
😉
No, but seriously. Your guy is being a complete and total ass. That SO many find people who pull this shit so irresistibly attractive just baffles me. But the world is filled with shortsighted souls who foolishly marry jerks and then act all shocked and surprised when somehow it all fails to go well.
I don’t mind the idea of taking your husbands name or vice versa. I find it, to echo the others, concerning and creepy when a man is insistant on that. It also seems like an insecurity. Why does he care, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you have your maiden name? His friends and family think it’s weird? I think in a healthy relationship this does not matter. I know in the USA wife changing her name is more common than in Canada. But I would like to marry someone who can look at any decision from a few angles. “You did it for your ex” really makes him sound like he thinks you’re his property. If you have explained that you’re feminist , you realized that you like and feel attached to your name and you have the property inheritance issue he should not have trouble understanding those things, you don’t sound disingenuous with any of that.
Make sure you’re on the same page about future kids names, now!
I suggest offering to take his name as your middle or second middle name, and take back your maiden name since you like itI apologize for being snippy. The situation has just stressed me out.
I have tried several times to have the conversation with him in a neutral way, but it usually ends with one of us being angry.
This issue really is the only thing that he has ever been macho conservative, must-be-traditional about. We are typically on the same page about most other gender role/tradition issues.
