My boyfriend and I have been dating for 2.5 years (living together for 2), and for the past 6 months we've repeatedly broached the topic of getting engaged. I've always been upfront about the fact that I don't want to take his name if and when we get married, and in the past he's been completely fine with that. We're on the same page on a lot of things: neither of us want kids (at least not for the foreseeable future), we both want to get married in a courthouse rather than have a traditional wedding, and we're both very frugal with our finances and intent on living within our means. It's just this one issue that we always have a snag on.
Basically, I'm attached to my last name. I like it. It's mine. I see the tradition of taking your husband's last name as something of a patriarchal vestige. It doesn't bother me if other women want to take their partner's last name, and I don't look down on them for doing so. But it's not for me. The last few times this topic has surfaced, my boyfriend has gotten pretty upset with me, and said he feels like there's no point in us getting married if I won't fully commit. I've asked him if he would be willing to take my last name, and he says no. Which is reasonable. I wouldn't expect him to do something that I wouldn't, and I'm surprised that he thinks differently. I've also asked if he would be okay with hyphenating and combining our names, but no dice. He wants me to take his last name, and I don't.
I'm not too bothered if we don't get married anytime in the near future. We have a great relationship and I'm not in any particular rush. But he seems really put off and disturbed by my refusal to take his last name, and it bothers me that this has become an issue all of a sudden. I've explained the situation to my parents, and they both seem to think it's silly of me to put my foot down on this. My dad explicitly said it's unreasonable of me to risk the engagement over a name change. What should I do to better communicate my perspective to him? Has anyone had this experience before, and does anyone know a way we can seek a compromise?
TL;DR: I don't want to take my bf's last name, but I would be fine hyphenating our names. My bf says he doesn't see the point in getting married if the wife doesn't take the husband's last name. What do?
Submitted January 03, 2019 at 01:49PM by lucetteveen http://bit.ly/2ArHjyk
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