Dear Tiggy,
I’m engaged to the most incredible woman in the world (sorry, everyone else!). Everything is going fairly smoothly as we plan the wedding and our lives together but there’s been one sticking point: she wants me to take her last name. Kind of insisting on it, actually.
Really, she just wants us to have the same last name. However, we agree that our last names are too clunky to be hyphenated, and we don’t want our future kids to be stuck with that. I don’t want her taking my name because I don’t think we should change our names at all. For me, my name is my identity, so trading it out for my partner’s doesn’t sit well with me.
I hate to admit it, but there’s a tiny part of me that thinks this has something to do with me being bi. (She’s a lesbian.) Like, maybe she thinks that if I had wed a man, I would have changed my name for him. (I wouldn’t have.)
Am I making a big deal out of nothing or should I stick to my guns? Or are we missing the compromise here?
—In Limbo
I’ll bet a nickel it doesn’t have anything to do with your being bi or her assumptions therein. You’ve done a good job of sussing out precisely what she wants – i.e. for you to have the same last name — but you need to get to the bottom of why. The fact that you think it has something to do with your being bi indicates that you haven’t fully communicated on this issue. Have you told her what you told me about your name being your identity? Have you asked her why it’s important to her that you share a last name?
Start there and build a compromise. You haven’t nearly exhausted all of your options on combining names – how about combining your names into a new one, like Melissa Etheridge did with Julie Cypher? How about keeping your names but each of you tattooing the other’s on your back? – so don’t be afraid to think outside the box as you try to satisfy your values.
For the record, whenever I’ve seen this issue before, the person who wants everyone to have to the same last name feels strongly that it makes them and their children an “official” family. If she’s having trouble articulating why this issue is important to her, you might throw that out as a possibility.
© 2011 Tiggy Upland. Tiggy Upland reserves the right to use all submitted queries anonymously, in any medium.