People who know BirdMan and me know that I am not now, nor never will be Mrs. BirdMan Lastname. I took his last name because my maiden name was goofy and hard to spell and pronounce. Were I a “Smith” and he a “Von Schelffinmier” or something, I would have kept Smith. (Actually, Von Schelffinmier would be pretty cool…but I digress)
BirdMan’s mother’s family, however, do not know us. They know the sedate, agreeable persona that BirdMan has presented to them for the last 26 years so as to not cause a fuss…anyway, they are a different sort of person than him or me**. Women are expected to stay at home, raise the babies, and basically give up any sort of self and just be absorbed into their husband’s personality. They appear on address labels as “Mr. and Mrs. Bob Loblaw,” or in one instance “Mr. Bob Loblaw,” the wife is not even mentioned.
We get letters from them addressed to Mr. and Mrs. BirdMan Lastname. I do not approve. I need advice on how to nip this in the bud. My mother and father never allowed themselves to be called “Dr. and Mrs. Dadname Lastname,” and I will not either. I am my own person and I have my own name, darn it! I would happily have us be called “Mr. and Mrs. Lastname” or “BirdMan and LittleBird Lastname.”
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to approach this civilly? I have already discussed not being Mrs. BirdMan Lastname with BirdMan and he agrees with me, BTW.
Thanks!
*not better, not worse, just different. They can go ahead and dissapear into their husbands and give up any desire to be a seperate entity, just as long as they do not expect me to do likewise.
Have him tell them in the most diplomatic, “we appreciate your respecting our wishes” sort of way. They are his family and he agrees with your position. Let him handle it and make sure he in no way implicates you as the instigator - he has to make it clear it his HIS choice. Otherwise, you will be screwed…
I have some inconsiderate inlaws who dislike the fact that I kept my maiden name. I like these people a lot but I resent the fact that they don’t like me keeping my name. “Don’t you want to be a Smith?” “Aren’t we good enough for you?” I mean, really.
Aside from getting your own labels printed up and signing yourself as “yourself” at every opportunity, there’s nothing you can do.
Although you could be sarcastic and next time they send you a “Mr. & Mrs. John Smith”, you can send them a note and say, “By the way, my name is spelled M-A-R-Y”. It probably won’t help, but you might feel better.
Not to belittle your frustration, but in their defense addressing a letter to a married couple as “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe” is just traditional and a reasonable default position for those that don’t know any differently. If you’ve already told them in no uncertain terms that on all correspondence to the two of you, they are to address the envelope in one particular way or another, then I have no defense for them.
However, I’ve often puzzled over how to address correspondence to my friends and their significant others, when they have not made their preference clear to me or anyone else. The least offensive, I feel, is to resort to tradition, and assume that if either of them have a problem with it, they’ll let me know.
I suggest responding with a note, thanking them for their recent letter, blah blah, etc., and signing it Sincerely, Jane Smith and John Doe. It would also help if your return address sticker was written the same way, or however you prefer it.
Don’t expect a switch to occur immediately, but I suspect after receiving a few letters like that, they’ll get the point.
I agree with this. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I just don’t understand how addressing correspondence in such a traditional manner prevents you from being your own person with you own name. I mean, how often do you receive items from them addressed to the two of you anyway?
Again, I realize I am not you, but I’ve been married for, well, forever. I didn’t even take my husband’s last name and I still receive invitations and so forth addressed to Mr. and Mrs. HisLastName. I don’t get worked up about. I respond and, if it’s not clumsy, I include both our full names.
Try WordMan’s advice, but if that doesn’t work - and it might well not - then go with the above. Some (especially older) women find being addressed as “Mrs. MyFirstName HisLastName” as highly offensive, as IIRC traditionally only a divorced woman uses that method of naming. (That might be for widows too, but I think they stay with the “traditional” method of address.) Thus they might do it out of reflex, or out of some “she doesn’t know any better” impulse.
Heck, my own mother screws up envelope addressing to me; I just shrug about it these days. (I have a hyphenated surname; she gets it right when writing only to me, but when writing to my husband and I, she defaults to “Mr. and Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName” instead of “Ms. MyFirstName MaidenName-HisLastName” and then on the next line “Mr. HisFirstName HisLastName”.)
I had no idea that’s how it was supposed to be done. I think I’m just going to start addressing all my letters to “Youse guys.” Then I won’t have to deal with this.
OT: Several years ago, one of my uncles couldn’t remember my or my brother’s names so he addressed our Xmas gifts as “Elder Son” and “Younger Son.” He still can’t keep us straight. It’s pretty funny.
It’s not like they call you Mrs. HisFirstName BirdMan to your face. And, as others have observed, it’s just the traditional way to address mail. Don’t sweat it, especially if those annoyingly addressed envelopes contain, as envelopes from my inlaws often do, checks.
But, really, whatever your motivation, you did take your husband’s last name. What are they supposed to think?
All due respect, but if my daughter expected me to address all correspondence to her and her husband that way, she’d have to know that I’d be doing a lot of eye rolling every time I had to do it. And just for fun, every now and then I’d address her however I wanted.
I think you’re right on the money by shrugging it off.
You took his last name, but you don’t want anyone to use it? This is currently the name that appears on all legal ID’s of yours?
And you think that if a woman takes her husband’s last name they
. (Or was that meant solely for that side of the family?)
What a strange combination of nitpicking and broad brush generalizations. You disregard your father’s (I assume) name because it is “goofy” but don’t really want your’s husband’s name because then you would somehow lose your ‘self’. On one hand you don’t care about a name and throw it away for convenience, and on the other you feel it defines you as an independant entity.
If you think that they will respect you or your independance because of a naming convention, you are wrong. Don’t you see how that just changes the words? It is superficial. Everytime they write “Mrs. Independant Last Name” they will think “Silly git.” And everytime you read “Mrs. Independant Last Name” you should know that they were thinking “Silly git.” A rose by any other name and all.
If the opinions expressed by relatives you don’t respect cause you grief on something this minor…you are in for a long-haul. Rise above this.
My wife (who doesn’t share my last name) and I have been married for over six years, and neither of our families (both of which are significantly more conservative than us) have come to any consensus about how to address envelopes to us. Sometimes we get my last name only, sometimes we get her last name, sometimes it’s our last names hyphenated, none of which are correct.
We did try to explain our preferred method of envelope addressing shortly after we got married, but even with the early polite reminders and the last six years’ worth of Christmas and birthday cards and all of the other familial correspondence on which we put our preferred method as the return address, they still can’t get it right.
I think we’ve come to the realization it’s simply another thought process of theirs for which we’re simply not going to be able to easily effect change. In our minds, we’ve decided it’s just not worth the effort anymore.
Which is not to say it’s not worth mentioning to your respective family members–if it were still important to us, we’d certainly be more vocal about it.
I don’t think you read carefully Tomcat. She’s already happily taken his last name as a family name, but would prefer to be addressed by her first name or have them both be addressed as Mr. and Mrs Lastname. It’s the wornout convention (which was always rather bizarre) of Mr. and Mrs. Hisname Lastname, or even worse, just Mrs. Hisname Lastname that she would like to avoid.
Another thing I do with our mail, when sending stuff out, I simply put our first names and our address in the return address. The post office doeesn’t need last names. Works for us.
Ding Ding Ding we have a winner. Why cause friction over something that really doesn’t matter? If it’s their attitude you don’t like, this won’t change it.
I’ve never understood why they don’t just address the envelope to “Mr and Mrs Lastname” and sidestep this whole issue. It bugs me when I get a letter addressed to “Mr and Mrs Hisname Neville”, too.
If this is the biggest complaint you have in life, then we should all be so lucky. Cut them some slack. I always say call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late for dinner.
Perhaps if you really were your own person with your own identity, you wouldn’t feel that how someone else addresses letters has any effect whatsoever on you? By trying to change what they do you would be saying that how they address letters actually changes your life. At which point they would roll their eyes and wonder why you let something so meaningless begin to really matter–because I guarantee you, it is completely meaningless to them.
I agree with just about everyone else…let it go. It’s traditional etiquette, and you are dealing with traditional people. What name they use when addressing cards and letters has nothing to do with how they view you, but with their own comfort level. And you don’t want to know that they are snarling at you every time they address an envelope if you lay down the law to them (especially if they have to do a second one because they forgot and used the traditional form the first time). They feel they are showing you and your husband respect by using the proper form, so don’t escalate things to a point where they start addressing envelopes to Beloved Son and Current Legal Wife. Remember that a card addressed to the two of you is not all about you, but that this is part of their respect to their son and your marriage. You don’t have to agree, but it is what makes them comfortable.
And yes, that is how my mother addressed all cards sent to me and my husband when we were married. Even though I would have preferred she not address them that way.
Oh, and one more comment. My married last name is fairly common, but even if it wasn’t, I have discovered that in formal situations, where I was addressed as Mrs. HisFirstname Lastname, it helped people understand who exactly was my husband, so they could make the right connections. I wasn’t Frank Lastname’s wife, or Doug Lastname’s wife, but Craig Lastname’s wife. This would only happen in situations where it was the husband’s who were the focus of the attention (we were a military family) or at infrequent extended family gatherings where people didn’t want to spend time with a family tree chart, they just wanted to be polite and go home.
