SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone

In the past few days I feel like I have turned some corners and am totally closing down the lingering "I wonder how he is" crap that had been continuing to warp my way of thinking.

Because my ExH is a control freak and has an ego the size of Western Europe, he is naturally waiting for me to realise the error of my ways and beg him to take me back.

Meanwhile of course he continues to criticise and attempt to "advise me" ie tell me what to do, can you say "control freak" and I am totally done now with the "lets be friends for the children route". It's been driving me crazy.

In the past week or so I have been seriously been thinking of changing back to my maiden name, not just because being branded with his family name seems like a joke now (none of his family apart from his Dad have bothered to make contact with me. They all live in their own little bubble of fucked-upness in fact god knows what I did but since we D'd the ExH has received invites to events from people who we hadn't heard from in years. As you do.

To get to the point

I refuse catagorically to be referred to as Mrs yet I hate "ms" which is the only logical option using my married name.

Have any of you changed back to your maiden name, and if you have, did you go back to "Miss"? It sounds like a tiny detail but here (UK) so often lately companies have said they can't leave it blank so I've gone with Ms as it's the least offensive option with my married name.

Bit of a vent here... but inside I'm feeling good today. It's been over a year now since his "ONS" and therefore much longer since the previous EAs and I finally am starting to feel like I'm getting some closure from the whole episode.

I am also see why they say you need a good chunk of time to get over something like this.

I also think changing my name would let my ExH know for absolute certain that a)he can't control me any more and b) I really am not going to change my mind. I don't even mean that in a bad way, just a realistic one.

In summary - has anyone gone back to "miss"?

I'm keeping my married name as I've had it for almost 2/3 of my life and it's the same as my children. I have a boy and a girl so I'll always have the same name as at least one of them if not both. Personally, I feel that changing it back to my maiden name is like trying to go back. I want to move forward.

I don't have children. I went back to my maiden name, because I didn't want to be known as " the first Mrs. douchebag".

Even when married, I use the Ms. Title. I am NOBODY's missus. So, I still use the Ms. If you want, take the Miss-just use it and take no prisoners.

I kept my married name. At the time of my D, I just couldn't deal with all the "changes" that would be required in a name change situation: driving license, insurance policies, credit accounts, just about everything in your life that requires proof of name. I also don't like to move backward. And I prefer Ms. If I ever marry again, I'll most likely go with a hyphenated last name, maiden-new married.

I kept my maiden name in the first place, so that wasn't a big deal. Although my actual title (never used) is Dr thanks to grad school, I usually go by Ms.

That said, I have not seen Miss used very much in the USA, but I know it could be different in the UK. Miss is also supposed to mean "never married" iirc. It's your choice, but I would go with Ms

I have kids and when I told them I was going to go back to my real name, my kids were completely non-plussed and had just assumed all along that I was going to do that. I had almost always gone with Ms before so it was no problem for me to keep using that salutation when necessary.

As to your point about driving it home to the ex - mine was shocked (I changed it about 2 months after DDay 2 which was the same day I filed for separation/divorce - I was lucky in that my lawyer had an opening that day!) and he couldn't believe I would give up his precious name. It was all I could do to not tell him that the kids had asked if they could change their name too.

In my Divorce paperwork I ticked the box for name change. As he actually divorced me, I felt that since I was no longer married to him then I would no longer be referred to as Mrs Whatever.

I kept my married name as my middle name and added my maiden name as my surname. I only did this because of my children and also because everyone knows me as my married name.

I use Ms. It does not bother me at all. - just happy to not be his Mrs!!!

I never took my husband's last name...so not really a big deal to me. But as a teacher, I've struggled a bit with the mrs/ms/miss thing. I go by all three. "Miss" because it is easy to pronounce with my last name. "Ms." if I'm feeling persnickety...but it's not as easy to say with my last name. And I even use "Mrs." because I look at the title "Mrs." as more of an age thing than a married thing. Hell, I'd go by "Madame" if it didn't have bad conotations.

I suppose it confuses people that I'm not consistent. But I don't really care.

I'm keeping his last name. It took 3 years to get that signature down fluidly, I can't even imagine going back to my incredibly long, unwieldy maiden name. Since XH commanded me to change back, it's incentive not to.

edit: oopsie, typos.

[This message edited by Vulcanized at 9:28 AM, June 1st (Saturday)]

My maiden name is awful or I would have gone back to it already. It's a good ole' anglo-saxon descriptive name, that includes a word that makes people giggle.

At the time of divorce, I was more concerned about not changing it because I was going to file bankruptcy. I thought it would be confusing to creditors and may cause problems in getting the bankruptcy completed.

I was signing my maiden name to things before the divorce ink dried. I go by Ms., I like it.

I was going to keep his name that way I wouldn't have to correct the kids' teachers, coaches, etc. But after finding out how much the OW wants to have his last name, I don't feel like sharing it. She can have it. My maiden name was easier to pronounce and it's what a lot of my military buddies still refer to me as.

I went back to my maiden name. There was just no way I was keeping his last name! Not to mention no one could spell or pronounce it anyway. I let ppl call me 'Mrs' from the school as they didn't really know better, and I don't mind. I used Ms for the same reason as you. Certainly as the mother of two (then) children I felt Miss was going back to someone I wasn't. Ms. seemed the logical choice then. Besides, whose business was it if I was married, divorced, or single, anyway? When I married again (glutton for punishment I suppose, forgive the sarcasm) kept my maiden name as my 'middle' name and took on his last name. This way I sort of still have my own identity. Mattered less over time, but most everything now has my first, maiden, and last name on it (no hyphens, don't like them). Or given, maiden, and surname as I think it's referred to in the UK.

Just felt Miss wasn't who I was anymore, I guess.

Don't know if that helps

On the control issue, which I empathize with from WH1, your name is only a teeny tiny bit of that overall message, which is 'I am separate and you cannot control me.' Your actions will be a much louder part of that overall statement to him that guess what, your old button pushing ain't working, and I don't have to do/say/be a damn thing you say, you no longer have a vote!! Nice, detached, and firm is the best way to get this across. Don't let him rattle your cages - still have to have contact because of the kids, but know how you control that contact is in your hands, not his.

Wishing you best of luck with this.

I kept my married name for a couple reasons, chief of which was my children. But I also decided to keep it because it's just a name & it's a pain to change it.

I do go by Ms. now instead of Mrs. (although some of my students call me Mr ). I always associate Miss with a young unmarried.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Shakespeare had it right, IMO. It is not a big deal to me and I plan to keep my married name. After 22 years it would be a huge pain to change everything. Plus, on a professional level it would create another PITA that I just don't need. I also want my name the same as my kids. Lastly, it will be a final dig at POS just to spite him and keep it.

I have always used Ms. anyway so that is not a big deal.

For those of you who kept your married name, doesn't/won't it bother you when your ex remarries? My ex remarried within a couple of months, my goal was there not two be 2 Mrs. Asshats. I would HATE to be referred as the first Mrs. Asshat or something along those lines.

My kids too never thought it was weird that I would go back to my maiden name. I have many married friends that never took their husband's names in the first place, so maybe that helped.

It didn't bother me that there were two Mrs. Fallingquicklys when I married WH. After all, I took the same name as my mother in law. When WH marries again there will be three women plus my daughter who have the same last name. I just hope he chooses someone who will be good to his whole family (and who isn't already married to someone else). I want my children to have as little stress through this as possible.

We (both) hyphenated our last name when we married. So it was very easy to drop "his half" of the name and return to my maiden name. We often used that for simplicity, anyway.

I don't ever use Ms/Mrs./Miss---and I never have. I have always been a first name person. When we lived in the South, it was typical to be called Miss Firstname, regardless of marital status. There, it was fairly common, too, to be Miss (often pronounced Ms, but only because of accent, not to make any statement) Lastname, regardless of marital status.

It does seem like many online forms are requiring a choice. When that happens, I go with Ms. But no one in my real life uses any of them.

Not an easy topic. I've seen it twice on the D forms lately and it's a current trigger. And part of detatchment?

FWIW, I kept my married name, in honor of my children and mother in law, who I dearly loved and who showed me nothing but tremendous kindness. It's kind of a last link to the goodness that remains of knowing that family and of my children's connection there.

Most inlaws are still very kind to me so even though they live in LaLa Land, it's the kindness that remains in my mind and heart more than the stupidity.

Also, the same name as my children meant a lot and it's one thing I can have any say over keeping, so I did. Plus, my maiden name is beastly to spell! (lol)

I don't favor Ms but it's there and in my path Miss seems to be said to "young" type people.

It's also strange to be only me and not "AND", as part of a couple. It's been 20 years since I was just my name and it still sounds foreign.

Yes, periodically I slap myself for thinking of him, but it's more in the form of swears and pity now and not pining. He's made some serious "mistakes" on both the part of OW and I and now is in OW's hands to clean up a lot of them-not mine-so I hold that idea high, but it took many months to realize. He's her problem now!

Yes, he's talked about being "friends" and to me that sounds like a swear/insult. He hasn't treated me as a friend in a dictionary and still continues to inflict pain, some of the biggest pain a life will feel.

In a way, saying "friend" after what he did is like a hope that I'll get over it, but that's not going to be any time soon.

And how to be a person's friend when they keep the pain and lies going?

FWIW, my mother finally changed her name back when her ExMIL was in the same phone book with both first and last initial.

They had a lot of personality trouble (mom is narcissist so not helpful!) and baggage.

There was an incident I remember where for a time I was next of kin on my mother's "papers". She fell and hit her head and went to the E.R. They called me to get her and sign all the forms, but you know what? She had gotten remarried so quickly that her paperwork at the hospital had all three of her last names on different forms!

So I had to walk the entire ER and search for her, where she was on a stretcher and wrapped in tape.

Apparently the forms take a really long time sometimes to go through!

Well, she didn't keep the second last name either and took her maiden name again.

At least it's easy to say and spell!