Should I be upset that he wont marry me?

[ChezzaB]

Hi This may seem like a strange one but humour me please.... my dp and I have a 7mo ds who has my dp's surname, am I stupid for caring that me and my son have different names? I know I can change my name egally but I relly wanted to have the special day but dp is totally against it! I did know this from the beginning but my feelings have changed now we have a child! Am I just being stupid?Now whenever I mention it I get accused of nagging, should I just give up and deal with the fact that I'll never get the fairytale wedding I desire?!

As well as all the legal stuff, it was really important to me as well to have the same surname as my children and not be the odd one out. It seemed 'tidier'. It was also a way for me to move away in my head from my original family and join what I saw as a 'normal' family.

I had wanted DH to marry me before we had children and when he wouldn't I was really resentful. I felt he was ashamed of me and didn't want to publicly declare he was with me. He seemed like he was worried that his friends would think he was 'under the thumb' and it seemed to me that he only decided it was a good idea when all his friends started doing it. He had always said he wanted to be with me out of choice not because there was a legal document that said he should be, although we both had our names on the house deeds.

We were both a bit nervous about the big day and being looked at and feeling self conscious so we just had a small wedding.

"Move out. If he wants you back, and his DC, he can bloody well get over himself and commit to all of you legally."

The trouble with this is, it simply reconfirms to him that he's right not to marry her. If she resorts to threats like that before she's married, what's she going to do afterwards when she's got the whip hand and the threats have much more weight behind them? Does a leopard change its spots?

Unfortunately, this is zero sum - the financial security that accrues to the ex-wife comes wholly out of his own.

TBH, I find it quite odd that some otherwise intelligent women are surprised that men are increasingly reluctant to marry. If you make the consequences of divorce worse for men, then obviously this will make them less inclined to risk it, just like if you make it hard for employers to sack people, they stop hiring them.

It's all very well to say that it's cynical, mercenary etc to worry about a divorce before getting married. This is dead easy to say when you're the one who's going to get, say, 70% of everything.

"Move out. If he wants you back, and his DC, he can bloody well get over himself and commit to all of you legally."

If we all took such extreme measures to solve our marriage problems, no marriage would survive for long... I'm afraid that I'm one of those people who would only threaten to leave if prepared to follow through. There are an infinite number of ways to tackle a problem rather thanjust walking out with 2 small children and the HUGE consequences of it.