an independent woman

I’ve been pretty independent all of my life.  In fact, apparently at the wedding my dad took Sam aside and said, “You know, Marie is very independent.”  This was nothing new to Sam of course. Which is why I think people are a little suprised that I’ve decided to change my last name to Sam’s last name.  A number of people are surprised.

People aren’t surprised enough that I feel the need to rant about it — I mean, nobody is giving advice and trying to pressure me to keep my own last name name or anything.  But I really did think about this long and hard before deciding to make the change.

The biggest con is that I’m middle-aged and my name is in a lot of different places.  I first thought I only had a few credit cards and bank accounts, etc, but over the last three months I’ve been noticing more and more where my full name is used, or even my full name within my email address.  It may take a year to change everything over completely.

However, in my eyes, that’s really the only con.  I don’t really think that changing my name or not will make me make more or less decisions in our marriage, or that I will be more or less independent.   Certainly Sam didn’t pressure me to change this, it was entirely my own decision — in fact, early on it was clear that he assumed I would keep my name and was a little surprised I wanted to change it.

In the end, I guess I’m a little old fashioned.  I want to have the same name as my child, and it just seems to me like people are really married with the same last name.  I envisioned a lifetime of writing two names on letters, and a lifetime of carrying around a marriage license to prove we are married … and thought that the trouble of going through this now is worth a lifetime of accomodation.  Some women I know who have been married for a while have ended up changing their names eventually because it’s just easier in the end.

This is just for me, of course - I fully support all of my good friends who did not change their names.  In fact that I love that I live in a generation where I have this choice and thank all of the women before me who paved the way.

Posted by Marie on April 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized


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