My Husband’s Name

I’m going to preface this by saying this is not a rant about my husband or his family. They haven’t done anything wrong.

Little girls often dream about the day they’ll get married. They practise writing their potential new names, over and over. They test them out to see how they’ll sound. They try them on. If a woman gets married in her teens or early 20’s she might still be in that stage of practising her “new” name, and statistically speaking she likely will take her husband’s last name as her own. Nothing wrong with that. It’s probably been happening since the beginning of time.

When I got married I was not in my teens, nor my 20’s. I was 32. What to do about my “married name” was not so clear. I’d had my own name for a very long time. It formed part of who I was. I am an only child. There were not nieces & nephews to carry on my family name. I was it. Also, I’d been with my employer for a significant amount of time and a name change was tantamount to career suicide. My name got things done at work and I wasn’t entirely comfortable abandoning “me”.

My future husband told me it would please him very much if I took his name. He’s a pretty traditional guy about this kind of stuff. I suggested he take my name and his answer was “I don’t think so”.

What I decided to do was keep my name for work and use my husband’s name socially. If he had expressed no preference I probably would have just kept my name. I thought this was a good compromise, keeping true to myself while also honoring and respecting my husband and his family. It was a bit of balancing act in the beginning, and adjusting to change always takes time.

I got my passport before we got married because I needed it for our honeymoon, so it’s in my old name. I had invited some HR types from my workplace to our wedding and shortly afterward my paycheques & company benefits cards started coming in my new name, although I don’t recall filling out any such request. (See above, where I was keeping my old name for work) This caused some problems because much of what goes on at work is driven by the details HR keeps about us, and now I don’t match the name the system has for me. It’s confusing. My well established name in my company is valuable, but rather than upset the applecart I decided to not change it back and I just deal with the fallout as it comes.

After the wedding I changed some credit cards to my new name and as other things came up I would switch them to the new name. Not all, but most. When I showed up to renew my driver’s license I gave them my new name and a copy of my marriage certificate, but they said they couldn’t make the change without the original marriage certificate. Um…yeah, that’s an original document, which I will not fold up and shove into my purse, plus it costs $100 to replace. That baby stays in the house…somewhere. Them refusing to change my name did not negate the fact that I still needed to renew my license so I renewed it in my old name. Which meant my car insurance stayed in my old name.

I huffed around a well-worn copy of my marriage certificate for years to ease the confusion that arose when the name on my credit card didn’t match the name on my driver’s license. For that very reason, among others, I did keep a major credit card in my old name.

We bought our house before we got married, so my old name is on the title. When we recently renewed the mortgage I asked them to change the name on title to my new name, but to do so would have cost hundreds of dollars, so I left it alone.

Now, to the heart of what’s on my mind. I feel like “the system” is trying to erase me in favour of my husband, and here is the evidence to support my theory;

• When my now husband & I got our first mortgage and opened our joint bank account, at my bank, the representative put him as the primary on the accounts. He had never been their client whereas I had been with them for 12 years. He had no credit card with them (and in fact has no credit cards at all), but I did. He was not the one who negotiated the mortgage rates and was in monthly contact locking in rates. That was me. How they sold putting him as the primary was that he was older than me and when he reached age 65 we’d have reduced service charges. Whatever lady. Pretty presumptuous of you to think that 30 years from now we’d still be banking with you, but I let it go. Whatever.

• Several years ago we made plans to fly to my parent’s place for Christmas. I called the airline, I made the arrangements for my ticket in my old name (matches my ID) and my husband’s ticket in his usual name. I paid for both tickets on the credit card I held in my new name. The tickets were sent by mail to our home…to my husband’s attention! He didn’t make the arrangements and he didn’t make the payment, but somehow the airline saw fit to put his name on the envelope. My husband was unconcerned by this event. I was livid! I called the airline and reamed them out, firstly for not addressing the tickets to the purchaser, and secondly because if that trip had been a surprise they would have blown it right out of the water. Arrrggghhhhhhhhh!

• My husband & I share an eBay account. He’s much more active than I, but it is our account. We share the same first initial and so the account is set up with the initial and his last name. No he, no she, just a generic letter for a first name. Under our addresses in eBay we have one using the first initial/last name and another using both of our first names & our shared last name. When I do make a purchase on eBay and because I have a credit card I pay via PayPal. My PayPal account is in my new name and funded by my credit card in the same name. My PayPal account is not linked to our eBay account. My husband has a separate PayPal account. Every time I make a purchase and pay via my PayPal account the item arrives addressed to my husband. He didn’t make the payment and yet somehow the system sees fit to slap his name onto all of my purchases. Nobody at eBay or PayPal customer service was able to tell me why. Nor were they able to make it stop. Arrrggghhhhhhhh!

• The most recent incident and the reason I am so riled up about this again is that I just made a purchase via the Sear$ catalogue system. I called in the order. I provided them with my Sear$ credit card information, a card that I alone hold, in my new name. When I went to pick up the item I had ordered I found it was addressed to my husband. WTF?????? The counter person was of no assistance in explaining how this could have happened or how to correct it for future orders. Instead she directed me to call the catalogue number and speak to them. Which I did. For 15 minutes. According to "Carlos" the root of the problem seemed to stem from the fact that my husband’s name was linked to our home phone. I asked them to remove it. Carlos said their system would not allow it, and to get around it he suggested I provide an alternate number, which would be designated as the primary number with my name. Thinking this was great idea I rattled off my cell phone number. Mine. Remarkably different than my husband’s. Carlos came back and announced that his system linked the two numbers and that MY cell phone number was bringing up my husband’s name. I asked Carlos to unlink the numbers. He said their system would not allow it. I asked him to purge the entire profile and he said his system would not allow it.
  
  I don’t know if my husband has every ordered from the Sear$ catalogue, but I do know that he does not hold a Sear$ credit card. I do. I explained to Carlos that I was his client, not my husband, and that he needed to find a way to stop my orders from being shipped to my husband’s attention. He said he could not. I suggested that perhaps the only way his system would purge my profile was by becoming the worst customer ever and not paying my bills. No response. I offered to cancel my Sear$ credit card, if that would purge it from the system. But alas, if I ever opened up a new account it would link to the old and voila, there his name would be again. After a consultation with Carlos’s supervisor, Dwayne, it was determined that there is no way of getting around the fact that my orders will be sent to my husband’s attention. Thankfully the item in question was not for my husband, but again, if it was a surprise they would have blown it right out of the water. Arrrggghhhhhhhhh!

I feel like I’m living in the 1950’s for fucks sake!

I am not meek. I am not subservient. I am not a follower.

I was raised to be my own person and I am not pleased about being overlooked and disrespected. I probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if this were the 1950’s, if I were a different person or if I had gotten married as a younger woman.

As I said at the top of this post, this rant is not about my husband. It’s “the system”. He is not doing this, and from what he has said he does not believe these events carry any weight or meaning. But I do.