Quote:
Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
Did it occur to this gentleman that perhaps women choose to take on their partner's name? Sure, we don't need to have their name, but maybe we would like to. My partner could care less if I take his name or not when we marry, but I will likely do so because it acknowledges our partnership. I'm sure he would take on my name hypenated with his to really make the point, but that would be an incredible mouthful.
I don't see it as a shackle, I see it as a choice to be considered and made. He certainly doesn't see me as a piece of property--I wouldn't be with him if he did.
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Well Snowy, that's exactly the case with me and ktsp. There was no tradition in his family/culture of the woman changing her name to match the man's, and he didn't expect me to change mine. But for several reasons (which I laid out in another, older thread on this topic--from before we got married), I decided to change mine to his. He would have supported me 100% either way, and I'm very glad for that. As you said, if he had had more expectation of me changing my name, then I would have been more concerned about other issues between us.
I took a lot of flak for changing my name, though (being in grad school, surrounding by women with PhDs who have published and would never dream of changing their name)--but I had my reasons, and I stood by them.
The only time that I have felt a twinge of regret is when I was Facebook-friended by a whole bunch of people from my Christian college, all of whom are stay-at-home moms who waited to have sex until their wedding night, none of whom are working or pursuing advanced degrees, all of whom changed their names and have the requisite 2.3 kids by the age of 30. Not that anything is wrong with them deciding to do that, but I find it just so damn normative and... well, boring.
So yes, it bothers me somewhat that I conformed to that group, in that way. I don't like to blindly conform to what other people expect from me, in general. So in some ways, I wish I had bucked that tradition, just to stand out more from that group and not "fit in" to their expectations, even in this small way.
But, oh well. My marriage to an atheist Arab (and including a Buddhist ceremony) gave them all enough of a heart attack, I'm sure.
