My entitled family treats me and my husband like garbage and have even gone as far as to call me a gold digger and that I'm only with my husband for money.

But after being mistreated by my husband's family for so long, we both decide that enough is enough,

resulting in us getting the best revenge possible by changing our last name and disconnecting from them entirely, causing them to freak out in a way that we truly did not expect.

Here's what happened. So I got married three years ago to my husband, and I changed my last name

to his immediately following. My relationship with my in-laws was never super. But it was civil

until about 2020 when our differences became obvious, and they were hard to reconcile. They have

never welcomed me into their family and never put forth any effort to be a part of our lives. At first, my husband just said things like, well, they're like this with new people, or this is just how they are. Over time, though, they have not only managed to alienate me, but my husband as well. They have implied that I'm digging for gold, and have called me quite a few unpleasant names. My husband had enough

with them during our first year of marriage, and when he went low contact with them, they tried

guilt, manipulation, and passive aggressiveness to get him to resume what we would call his previous

role in the family. And that role was him basically doing all the work in the relationship.

Well, when that didn't work, they basically cut us off.

They never called much before, but now they never called. And then act like it's our fault when

they don't and then play the victim constantly. Now, for a bit of background, I have BPD,

which stands for a borderline personality disorder, and my new last name just didn't feel like

me, especially considering his family. After my diagnosis a year ago,

my therapist explained sometimes people with BPD struggle with this since we struggle with

identity as well. So it's been talked about a lot. And it was then that my husband had suggested

that we both changed our last names. And I thought it was an interesting idea. I didn't want

my maiden name back because it's hard to spell and pronounce. And it's not all that common in our country. Now, I liked his last name, but it was such a common last name. We talked about this for about a year, and we settled on my deceased grandmother's maiden name. It's common, it's easy to say, and it's easy to spell. And we feel this honors my family, who we have to thank for our lovely life today. It was surprisingly easy.

We set up a court date. We filled out the papers. We had a hearing all within a few weeks, and then we changed it on social media. Well, his family found out and they are super pissed off. And some of my family found out and they're pissed off. They said we had no reason or right to do this. I told all of them it was a decision between me and my husband, and it was not up for debate. On his side of the family, they cut us off and never even talked to us. And on my side, no one even owns the name. And it left with my grandmother when she passed away. One of my aunts tried to say that I needed their permission. But in my opinion, the only person I would need to have permission from would be my grandma or my father, but both of them have passed away already. My mother thought it was a great idea, and so did my siblings. But we are getting bombarded, and we're currently trying to gray rock all of them. But it's not like this was a rash decision. We are both very happy with the change, but the amount of backlash I've been getting has me wondering if we messed up by not announcing it or telling people in advance. What should we do? Okay, first off, you have every right to change your last name, especially if your husband's family is going to be treating you like crap in the way that they have been. Seriously, from day one, they've been treating you like garbage all the time, saying that you're digging for gold while also calling you all sorts of names, and then also trying to like alienate you and your husband all the time. I mean, who in their right mind would want to stay in a family like that? Like if I was in your shoes, I would have the same conversation. I would be super pissed off that I'm still getting treated like garbage by these people who literally are masquerading as family. And then they're the ones that freak out all because you guys say, okay, we're going low contact. This is insane. As if they want you to stick around and enjoy this awful treatment. So in my opinion, I don't think you're the jerk at all. If you guys want to change your last name and no longer associate with those people, then my God,

you have every right to do that. Because based on what you've described, these people sound like

an absolute nightmare. If you like Am I the Jerk, you're probably going to love Am I the Genius.

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