[Athena E.]

'I didn't take my husband's last name... now my in-laws say no one will respect me'​

AIBU, which stands for 'Am I Being Unreasonable', is the perfect platform for sharing your thoughts and opinions! So, for today's AIBU discussion, we have this story from Reddit/pianohog:

Am I being unreasonable for not taking my husband's last name?

'Hi all. I got married to my husband 1 year ago and I am still wondering if I'm being unreasonable...'

'Before we got married my husband and I talked and agreed that I could keep my current last name. It never occurred to me that I should tell anyone of our decision to not change my last name. At our wedding, the pastor announced us as Mr John and Mrs Jane (fake names for anonymity). No last name was announced.'

'Anyways, once we got back from our honeymoon and finished moving into our new house, my husband's parents invited us over. What I thought was going to be a nice first visit as husband and wife quickly turned into a fight.'

'My father-in-law (FIL) said he had to have a serious conversation with me, and he began talking about how great and wonderful his last name is and how people will automatically respect me in his community just because I would have the same name as him. I calmly as I could (I was so upset at this point I could hardly talk) told him my reasons for not wanting to change my name: 1) it's complicated and expensive to change IDs and such; 2) my current last name is unique, I've never met another person outside of family with it; 3) my home business and degree were established under my current name.'

'None of these reasons were good enough for him. He replied, "Well, my other daughter-in-law changed her name and she has the same degree as you.' And then my mother-in-law said it didn't cost her any money to change her name (but that was 40 years ago, things change).'

'I said, "I don't feel that I further need to justify my decision to you since you're not listening or understanding my perspective." Now, FIL says I am insulting him by rejecting his name and all his friends are going to suspect something is wrong and that I am making a mistake and that no one will respect me.'

'I am full-on crying at this point, and all I could do was stand and say I am going home. As we are walking out FIL stands up and throws his hands up in a surrendering gesture saying "I'm just trying to have a conversation."'

'I think I could be unreasonable for 2 reasons here: 1) for not publicly announcing my intentions to keep my maiden name and 2) for walking out mid-conversation with my new in-laws?'

 

[Glucose]

Oh my gosh, is this STILL an issue??? When I married my (still) husband in the 1970's I kept my name for a few reasons, not the least of which was that my name had been mine for the 24 of my years since I was born, and I didn't want to just be known as Mrs (my husband's name), implying I'd be just an appendage of my husband. The only problems I came across were stupid little things like filling out forms where I was asked my husband's name and got queried about why the surname was different from mine.