|
|
| What's in a name? I'll tell you what's in a name... |
| 10.18.04 (12:54 pm) |
It astounds me that men cannot grasp that a woman with an established life and career might not WANT to change her name when she gets married.
I've decided it's because men aren’t faced with that particular problem.
I remember when I changed my name after I got married—and changed it right back after I got divorced. I think the whole struggle over my last name might actually have been the beginning of the end of the marriage.
I changed my name and I felt like I lost myself. The person I'd been for the last 30 years, and suddenly, I didn’t exist anymore. Talk about an identity crisis. I didn’t feel anything but awful when I did it. I didn't feel all giddy/excited/happy/glad to start a new life. I felt like I'd been erased.
I shouldn’t have taken his name. I really think that was the first nail in the coffin of my marriage. I felt that I ceased to exist in a fundamental way--I mean, my NAME was gone. I just felt awful. I felt possessed as if I were property---chattel. Like I wasn’t entitled to be a independent thinking person. I became the property of someone else—“his wife.”
I never liked identifying myself as someone’s wife, or having others identify me as "his wife." I hated when I had to bust in after being introduced as "his/my wife" and say "And my name is Stephanie." Like "Come meet the dog!" Come on, you know? I have a name. Really I do.
I had an aversion to identifying him as “my husband.” I felt terribly odd about it. It was so…medieval or something. Just not right. Not right at all. I didn't own him. He wasn't a possession.
I struggled and struggled and we fought and fought before the wedding, and even after about this name thing. I thought I was making too big a deal about it, that I was weird and abnormal for feeling that way. I thought I was a freak, but turns out lots of women feel this way.
I'm thinking about this because I've got a couple weddings coming up, and I always worry that the bride hasn't given this much thought. She SHOULD. Because it's much more traumatic that you'd expect. Especially for those of us who have claimed our names and built our professional lives around them.
And men just don't understand it--because it's not something they'll ever have to do, or are ever expected to do. So, bullshit on that. Keep your names, girls. Don't give it up if you don't want to. It's who you ARE.
|
|
0 Comments
|
| |
|
|
|
