I feel bad for Bill Clinton. He had to get elected president before his wife dropped her maiden name.

Wookie --

Fascinating thread, especially recently. Out of curiosity, are there any issues in your relationship that have been primarily resolved in a manner of your choosing? Everything mentioned ITT seems to be either the two of you doing it her way or planning to do so. I'm not going to go so far as to say, as others have, that you need to runforrestrun.jpg immediately, but it is cause for concern for a lot of us (presumably) unbiased observers.

My situation when I got engaged was similar on the surface to yours, and we ended up resolving our issues amicably and relatively easily. I married a good Catholic girl about 3 and a half years ago (President of the Catholic Club at her all women's school), but she wasn't nearly as, let's say, set in her ways as you describe K to be. She ended up taking my name (it was a big deal to me and the one thing I put my foot down on, I don't remember her being super opposed to it though) and we ended up getting married in a Catholic Church and agreeing to let my kids be raised Catholic. I'm an atheist, but she similarly put her foot down on this, and we ended up making the service as mild as is possible at a Catholic service (and it ended up being very nice).

We went through pre-kana and all that; parts of it were useful and parts of it weren't (natural family planning in particular was lol). Even before pre-marriage counseling we discussed a lot of the aspects that I guess a lot of couples don't discuss (money, raising kids, religion, general life expectations, etc). We took a while to discuss each one and come to a resolution, and I was never afraid/concerned/however you want to say it with her temper or response. I gather that is at least somewhat the case for you, so to echo what others have said (including some particularly good posts from Coffee), this makes it even more important that you have these conversations now. They only get harder to have the further along in the relationship you get.

Yeah this is super-standard in my experience, although some women keep their maiden name professionally but still change it personally so as to have the same last name as their kids.

In my world she wouldn't have had it there to begin with, and would have changed it to Clinton from Rodham after he was elected to utilize the positive name association.

Whether you like him or not a lot of good things happened while he was in office so most people probably remember him fondly.

i don't understand. "in my world?" isn't that exactly what happened? his name was not (on its own) good enough for her until he became the leader of the free world. then suddenly her position changed. that's all i'm saying.

i mean, think about it. if you were a kennedy, it doesn't matter what country she's from. your wife would gladly take your name. and in those conference calls she would introduce herself with her maiden name or say she got married and move on. she'd find a way to make it work.

I just meant that she wouldn't have had the hyphenation/dual name thing or whatever it was.

And I agree.

Grunching; I'm assuming you have already discussed splitting your children in two and naming half after each of you?

Thanks for your remarks. You and I sound like we are very much in similar boats. At least "her way" sounds very similar on a number of issues that are contentious for both you and me, although the concessions you and I can offer are different, as are/will be the compromises we reach with our women.

I agree that this thread has turned out to be much more interesting and much more useful than I envisioned it to be. I was going back and forth on starting it in the first place, wondering if anyone would care and, if they did, if the discussion would be anything more interesting than a back and forth between the camp of "Bitch should take your name!" vs. the camp of "Meh, whatever." As we can all see, people cared, and it was much more interesting.

All,

I raised the meta-issues raised in this thread with K over Skype, essentially standing up for myself more. I should give some significant props to Coffee here, as his take on things was insightful, inline with my needs, and relevant to the shortcomings of both K and me as a couple.

My line of the night was that, when K was telling me how vital she considered these things to her sense of self and how much it had pained her to give up the concessions she had (even though the forum might consider those relatively modest), I explained that I considered my side of these things as close to my sense of self as she did, and that it pained me as much to make concessions on them as it did for her to do so. This brought her to tears, both for remembering the gravity of the decisions she'd made as well as for now recognizing that I was going through the same thing even though she hadn't seen it.

We also talked about putting each other first instead of our respective families, our respective friends, or "society," but that wasn't really an issue. She's on the same page as me there. The key was K recognizing my feelings, not trying to get her to recognize the dubious justifications for her own. It was obvious that the light bulb went on.

So, no, K is not hopelessly stubborn, and she's not an unbearably obstinate product of women's lib. Instead, she is not the best communicator who was not aware of the obstinance and insensitivity of her prior statements, and she was not aware that she was being overly defensive of her own feelings while being insensitive to my own. We had a solid breakthrough tonight.

We did, however, postpone the ultimate titular last name (re-) negotiations. It was getting quite late for her at this point, and she was getting sick with a sore throat and didn't want to talk too much more, so I gotta leave that one hanging.

lol

Can I plagiarize you for this zinger? I mean, I'd love to throw this at her during the eventual last name negotiations (she'd laugh heartily), but I'd rather not have to cite this uhh, dude I, uhh, read on an internet forum, uhh, somewhere.

That is good. She took a stance, you stood up to it, and now you both seem to have identified that the marriage should be more of a team thing.

I think a lot of couples struggle with this at first (and sometimes, until they get divorced). It's just an entirely new thing to go from being your own person for 20+ years to now joining up with someone.

The best feeling in the world is telling your partner something that is bothering you, having them listen, and actually show they care by helping alleviate your pain. That's what makes marriage great is the effort you two will go to. Not to "show" you care, but because you care. If you don't have that you don't have much.

I do think living together pre-marriage is really important. Your relationship will change a lot once you live with your partner. You'd be surprised how much (or maybe you have lived with a partner in the past). And it's not in the sense most people think (omg he's sooo messy) or (wow, she's a lousy cook!). But more in the sense of being accountable to eachother. Coming home every night, always knowing where the other is and what they are doing. You really do submit yourself to your partner when you live together. Personally, there was no way I was marrying my wife until we lived together for a long time and had plenty of sex. While this didn't make my very Catholic parents (mom has taught Sunday school in the past, Dad's brother is a retired actuary-turned-priest) too happy, I felt it was the logical progression and was willing to "live in sin" as it were before I started a life with someone I didn't feel like I already fully knew. Wife's parents are not religious at all so they didn't give a ****.

I know this is off-topic so delete it if you wish but living together is something you should consider, imo. She probably won't go for it though and it's not a deal-breaker by any means. My little brother and his Southern Baptist gf waited until marriage to live together and to have sex. They seem to be doing fine 2 years later. It can work, I just think you will learn even more about eachother when you reside together.

Living together is not much of an option when we currently live >3000 miles apart.

Mr Wookie and Ms Doe Wookie (or Wookie Doe, can't remember how its usually done).

Kids name: Doe Wookie.

Common practice here.

I'm glad I was able to help out. I'm in basically the same spot as you, Wook, so I can understand what you're going through. Sounds like you and K Doe had a good conversation, and I agree with PHB that those sorts of conversations (when you discover that the other person is willing to listen and cares about what you're going through) are very rewarding.

As a matter of fact, I had one on my end last night.

It's all yours, but I gotta warn you - if you're sure she is the real mother, she might not like it.

This doesn't sound like me at all.