FI and I got into a huge blowout fight last night that resulted in him walking 5 miles back to his place at 1am and me taking my ring off for the first time since I put it on in January. All over his last name! I am at a loss... he is extremely traditional and of course wants me and our future children to take his last name, which I totally understand. I am a little less traditional. I love my last name, I always have, I am extremely close to my family and it hurts to think I'm trading my family name for another. I am already established in a growing career that is associated with my name. Not to mention is last name is long, uncommon, very German, always mispronounced and misspelled, and people give me strange looks when I say it. He is from a small town in New Jersey where his dad, grandfather, great grandfather and uncles have established a strong reputation of drug and alcohol abuse, infidelity and divorce-- nothing I want to be associated with.
BUT... by not taking his last name, I am making him feel a little embarrassed and I think emasculated, which I hate. I want us to be a family and on the same team and I don't want to answer awkward questions when we're mistakenly addressed as "Mr and Mrs X." He is not open to a hybrid last name, which I considered for awhile.
The issue of future kids is also heavy on us. He of course wants his children to have his last name, but I can't get past the fact that they will be as much my children as his, and yet they will never feel a connection to the name I was born and raised with. I know I feel that way about my mother's maiden name-- as a child I didn't even realize I was related to my mom's side of the family with her last name. Our kids are going to be closer to my family for the most part anyway-- we currently live near my parents and his mother (divorced from his dad and changed her name back to her maiden name) and I've met his side of the family maybe three times in the 6 years we've been together-- and yet the kids are going to have their name! It frustrates me!
We don't know what to do because nothing makes us feel comfortable. I don't want to keep my name and then have a different name from my own husband and children one day, but changing my name makes me feel a loss of who I am.
I guess I'm just torn because obviously the answer is to keep my own last name, what's the big deal, but I can tell that hurts and disappoints him and I don't want to start our marriage off like that.
UGHHH!
Thanks for letting me get that out. Any similar experiences?