A woman has been called a "petty feminist bitch" by her future father-in-law after saying she wouldn't take her soon-to-be husband's surname.
The 26-year-old took to Reddit's 'Am I The Asshole' thread to describe how "all hell broke loose" during a Zoom call her and her fiance had with his parents last month.
She explains that she met her American fiance Jake while he was on a university exchange in her home country of Belgium.
"He loved it here so he decided to stay and we are really happy here. I've met his family a few times when we went there to visit them, they've never been to Belgium," she says.
"Now here, women do not take their husband's last name, it is the law. All documents will still be in my maiden name after our wedding."
While she and Jack were talking to his parents over Zoom, the subject of her using his surname came up and she explained that she wouldn't take Jake's name.
"I had the perfect example of my mom who had a business in her maiden name and only used my father's name when dealing with our school or things like that and that I wanted to take the same approach as her," she says.
"Well all hell broke loose. His mom started screaming at me, saying that it is not because I come from a country of peasants that I should punish my fiance, that he was so far away from them because of me and so on.
"[My father-in-law] said that I was a petty feminist bitch and that he didn't want to listen to such nonsense. They left the call and my fiance comforted me because I was honestly very shocked by their reaction and their insults."
But once the call was over, she kept receiving "hateful messages" from her future in-laws and even roped in the rest of their family to send them too.
"Even my parents said that I should try to keep the peace and offer to check into the administrative procedures to change my name, but I really don't want to," she says.
"My fiance is conflicted, he grew up in a town where it was very, very uncommon for a woman not to take her husband's name and he agrees that it would keep the peace with his family but he does not want to force me and says it is my decision."
After posting her story, she says she was "relieved" to see positive comments supporting her decision to keep her surname. She adds Jack was defensive of his parents at the start, but later realised they were out of line.
"He promised me that he was gonna send them a message today saying that this kind of behaviour would not be accepted and that they needed to apologize to me if they wanted to come to the wedding," she says.
"We also discussed the topic of names again and he promised me that he was fully supporting my decision."
