After a conversation with the ex tonight, I remembered one of those seemingly tiny things that ended up being dehumanizing to me. When we were married, I was referred to as “my wife,” almost to the point where “my wife” had no name. At first, it was endearing, because I thought he did it out of happiness and excitement for being married. Then, I started to become a little bothered by it. I dismissed it as overreacting, though, until other people began to notice it, too. His brother, his best friend, others, all would ask him if he knew I had a NAME. He would refer to my as “my wife” to mutual friends when I was sitting right there. “Well, I’ll have to ask my wife!” was a very common phrase.

So, what’s the big deal? What’s in a name anyways? Well, that which we call a rose would still smell as sweet, but there is actually a lot in a name! One of the ways we can still see racism in this country is that Black and other ethnic sounding names on resumes are less likely to get callbacks than White sounding names. In other words, Susie or Bill is much more likely to get an interview than Talitha or Darnell. Prisoners are given numbers. Nazis gave Jews in the holocaust numbers as a way to strip them of their humanity. It is much easier to commit atrocities to a faceless, nameless person or animal than it is to someone we know or feel is a human.

And over a couple of years, what seemed like charm turned into what seemed more like possession. It is strange how important being referred to by name can get. A name is one way we are defined, distinguished from other people.  Names are actually pretty important! They are more personal than numbers or pronouns. In fact, everything has a name. Brands have names (and those that are not brand names are often seen as cheap and inferior). Even pets have names. And even in custody disputes, parties are advised to not refer to their child as “my daughter” or “my son” because of the possessiveness it shows. I remember the first time I read that, and it made me realize how important names really are. After that, I never felt guilty for being annoyed that I was never referred to by name in his and another person’s presence. Not even being allowed to have something that a can of Bush’s Baked Beans has made me feel pretty cheap and worthless.

Now I have a new name, a better name. To him,  I am “my ex wife,” and it is actually much a better name than “my wife”! I have actually heard him refer to me as “my ex wife” in the middle of a list of actual names to a person who knew me! I feel sorry for “my new wife” and “my daughter.” But to Steve and everyone else (myself included), I am now known as Laura. And that is a beautiful name.

(Note: I refer to him as “my ex” or “the ex” in this blog mainly to protect his privacy. Most people who read this know who he is, but not everyone, and those others are the reason I do not refer to him by name. I do refer to him by name when I am talking directly to him or to people who know him. I should make up a pseudonym for him for this blog, probably, I just can’t think of a good one. Also, I would like to say that I hope I do not come across as completely demonizing him in this blog. I make and made my fair share of mistakes, too. I don’t blame everything on him, but I don’t excuse what he did, either.  I am not perfect, but my philosophies on how to treat loved ones has not changed because I happen to think it is a pretty good one that works when the person does not expect you to be like his angry, narcissistic mother and therefore sees an angry narcissist no matter what you do. However, this is simply my viewpoint and my side of things. He has his own viewpoint and his own side, as untrue as it may be! haha)

Tags: divorce, ex, names

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Marriage, Divorce, Romance, My Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.