How to Learn to Let Go?

Hey all,

I am wondering how you guys deal with it when your significant other completely vetoes the names you love? I feel like I am an over-thinker, so when I love a name, it’s not a lightly-made decision.

Hubby has vetoed two of my favourite names, [name_m]Callum[/name_m] and [name_u]Rowan[/name_u], and I don’t want to take them off the plate completely, but I know I need to respect him as well. Help?

Honestly, if it’s completely unusable for him it’s best to just take it off the list and the sooner the better so that you wont keep pining over them. I had to do that with [name_u]Wren[/name_u] which is one of my favorites, but a complete no go for my husband. It’s better to just take it off and stop thinking of combos etc. so you can focus on names you might actually use. If you think he’ll consider them as middles, but not firsts then offer that as an option, but if not, better to rip them off quickly like a band-aid and move on.

I totally understand this! My husband has essentially vetoed my favourite boy name, [name_u]Rex[/name_u], and I just can’t let go! I do agree with @squidly that the best thing to do is just to drop it and move on, but at the same time I know it’s really hard to do that. I don’t know about you, but I really fixate on the names I love, I spend ages finding the perfect combo for them and imagining how they’d work in my ideal sibset… in the end you feel almost like the name is already your child!

I’m sorry, I don’t have much advice for you other than the very sensible advice offered above, but I just wanted to say I totally understand how crushing this is!

This happened to me. I would guess it happens to more people than not, to be honest. I loved and still love the name Svala and I really wanted to name our daughter that. I thought it was perfect and had already kind of decided in my head that she was Svala, so yeah it was hard to drop it.

I found it helped to imagine the situation reversed. Think of a name you hate and imagine your husband suggesting it - you wouldn’t want him to keep needling you about it once you’d rejected it, would you? So the absolute minimum you need to do is stop mentioning it. People do sometimes change their minds so maybe not ‘one strike and it’s out’, but set yourself a limit. I gave Svala a good three tries with long gaps in the middle - he just didn’t like it and clearly wasn’t going to change his mind.

The harder thing is letting go and stopping thinking about it, but you just need to force yourself. Think harder about names you know he does like (and you like too), try and imagine yourself calling a baby those names. You will warm to them. And once you have a baby and his name is x, not [name_m]Callum[/name_m] or [name_u]Rowan[/name_u], he will just be x and you will love those names still but they won’t be your baby. And it’ll be all right. I love the name Svala, but it’s not my baby’s name. If I think of calling her that now it just seems wrong.