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The Biggest Sacrifice I Made for my Marriage

The Biggest Sacrifice I Made for my Marriage

Girl On Wedding Dress

I was chatting last week with a few girls about love and relationships and I was asked: “What is the biggest sacrifice that I’ve made in my marriage?” As always, I had spent the entire night chatting away, but on this one, I was stumped.

“Sacrifice? What do you mean?

I love being married. I chose my partner myself, he’s wonderful to me. What sacrifice could I have possibly made?” Three days later, it dawned on me.

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You have to understand that I married one of the sweetest, kindest, and selfless men there are in the world. He wants the best for me and almost always over what’s beneficial for him. He is the kind of man that every woman should marry, and he doesn’t ask for much from me.

But this one thing was important to him. 

The Biggest Sacrifice I Made For My Marriage

Changing my name. 

As one of two daughters, I always felt very proud of my name. As hard as it was to pronounce and worse, spell for everyone “N-O-O-RU-TWO Ds-I-N.” It was mine. For 25 years, I was Sabrina Nooruddin and that was me.

Dropping a part of my name felt like losing my identity. This is who I am, how people know me, do I just let that go?

But what was the alternative?

It also didn’t feel fair that if I chose to keep my name then I would be the one ousted from the family name and have a different name from the potential future children that I would birth and raise.

It’s something I struggled with for a really long time. 

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Why I Even Considered Changing My Name

My husband is the best person in the entire world. He is selfless beyond measure and is always putting the people he loves first. He has never asked me for anything and even with this one thing, he never asked.

I just knew that Sahir really wanted this. He saw all of the benefits of me keeping my name.

Sidebar. Trust me ladies, the process is so much worse then what you’ve heard. Aside from your social security card, ID, and passport you have to deal with your credit cards, airline frequent flyer programs, your bank accounts, mailers, everything!

Ultimately, he was fine with anything that I decided, however, this was something that meant a lot to him. Sahir comes from a big family and there is a lot of community built around his name. He wanted me to be a part of that and share in the family name as we build our own family together. 

When I Decided To Change My Name

It took me about a year after our marriage to decide to change my name and I actually did it in secret. I lied about going to the passport office and DMV (#simplystealthy) so that I could surprise him.

On his birthday we went to a fancy dinner and I showed him a copy of my new license. He was so surprised but so happy! When my sister asked about it later he said, “Sabrina has given me a lot of gifts over the past 10 years, some sweaters, tickets, and gadgets – I don’t remember them, but this gift is one I’ll never forget.” (heart-melt)

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Do I Regret Making This Sacrifice?

I don’t regret my decision at all. I actually legally changed my middle name to my maiden name and that helped a lot with the identity complex and the legal process. (Highly recommend BTW- it makes it easier when your names don’t match up on your passport or visas or anything for you to have both last names on your legal ID) 

Not to mention, spelling M-O-L-U is so much quicker to spell.

Problems With Changing My Name

I will say this, one of the things that troubled me is how many women didn’t want to talk about the identity issues when discussing if they would change their name. Maybe some didn’t feel it, but I’ll be honest and say that I did.

There was definitely from judgment from some of the women that I tried to share my thoughts with.

No one around me seemed to feel the loss of identity and if they did, they didn’t talk about it. They shared how proud they were to take their husband’s name! I think that is certainly fair but made me so strange for feeling this way. While I recognize that everyone has a different experience, I wanted to share mine

Final Thoughts on Marriage Sacrifice

I don’t think it makes me love my husband any less or makes me less excited about my marriage. There are pros and cons to each side, but for me –  his happiness of sharing a family name meant way more to me than keeping my name.

Plus keeping my maiden name as my middle name was a great compromise.

So whatever you decide, I hope the men and women around you support your decision – because ultimately it is yours to make.