Becoming "Mrs" Curt Curtis

So a funny thing happens when you get married. Besides joining lives and families and households, there's that Name Change thing. Which I'm ok with. Which I wanted. Which I think it's cute when people call us the Curtis'... But somewhere in there, more than just my name got changed. My life, my personality, my job, my work ethic, my identity got shadowed by my husbands.

WHAT?

My point is summed up in this one experience. I was walking up the stairs behind our greeters desk as our receptionist was training a new girl and I heard her say "That's Marisa, she's our owners wife."

...............................

NOT, That's Marisa, she's worked here 21 years.
NOT, That's Marisa, she manages our entire fleet of transportation for 9 stores in 5 states plus the shows.
NOT, That's Marisa, she works our shows, handles our website, our dropbox, our pictures, our inventory, our.............

NOPE, Just Marisa, the owners wife.

I'm sorry, that burns my buns. Is that what happens when you marry someone honest and fun and gregarious and successful? Your own accomplishments, opinions, value, just get crumbled up and thrown under his wing?

Last time I checked, I had been a gainfully employed person since January 10th 1997. I've PRIDED myself in my ability to multi-task. To teach myself new things. To work, and work, and work some more. Of course, it is a weird thing to date (& eventually marry) your boss, but we have NEVER  considered our pleasure before our business... (as sad as that statement is) As in, when we're at work, we're at work. During the day, we don't sit next to each other, we don't hold hands, we don't call each other about personal things. Hell, we don't even carpool! We have our own daytime lives completely independent of each other.  Maybe there's a female cell in my brain that sometimes wishes that he was sitting up at his desk thinking how much he loved me and would call and tell me nice things, but our relationship has not been and is not that way. And NEVER EVER would I lean on my relationship with the boss to help me fudge on my job. In fact, it's a bad thing, but we occasionally have a hard time remembering we are life partners instead of business partners. We take it that seriously...

So then, October 14th, 2017 rolls around. The happiest, prettiest, most fairytale day I've ever had in my life. After the honeymoon, I began the name change process (Which, by the way, is intensely more complicated when you're established in your credit and accounts and life! OMG)

And that's when it began... not just the one experience above, but over and over and over and I’m tired of it! 

I work. I want to be really good at my job for myself. I want to earn my money for myself. I want to support myself. I want credit for what I do for myself! 

What’s a girl gotta do to be more than just someone’s wife?