It is a tradition that when a man and a woman get married, the woman will take the man's last name. But what happens when there are two women getting married? Or two men?

Since same-sex marriage is now legal in all fifty states and hopefully will be forever, this is a question on a lot of people's minds as well as many other gender-related traditions of marriage.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you are openly communicating with your significant other. Tell them what you like or don't like and discuss the different possibilities with them. This should not be something that is just assumed in any marriage, in my opinion. I think even male and female couples should talk about these things before they get married just so that they are both on the same page in what they want.

You never want to assume what the other person wants because that might lead to complications and fights. And no one wants that when you're going to be married.

The next thing that homosexual couples might do is discuss the possibilities with each other. There are many out there. You could have one person take the other's last name, you could hyphenate the name, you could even mash the names together somehow. It doesn't matter what you do as long as both you and your partner are happy with it and you have both communicated what you want.

It is always good to be aware that the couple might not know what they want to do. So if you ask them, be prepared for an answer like this and don't try to push your own opinion. They have most likely discussed the possibilities and simply have yet to decide on one. Your input might be welcomed and they might take it into consideration, but if they say that's not something that they want to do, respect that and don't push further.

For my relationship, this is the point we are at. We don't know exactly what we want to do yet. At the beginning of our engagement, my significant other was very happy that she would become a Murtha. She talked about it whenever the subject came up and her face would brighten like the first star at night.

But as time moved on, she realized that if she changed her name, she would effectively end the line of her last name. There would be no more Nygard in the world and she currently doesn't know what she wants to do about that.

For my side, as a kid, I never really had that dream that some girls have of changing my last name to match my significant other's. I remember watching movies where the female teenager would always draw in her notebook some doodle with her first name and the last name of her crush. I could never relate to that because it was never something that I really wanted.

Of course, in the same manner, I never really fantasized about marriage or weddings in general either until I met my fiance. So at this point, I think I would be willing to hyphenate the names, but I don't think I'm willing to completely get rid of my last name any more than she is.

This is just our story. There are countless other stories in the world of both heterosexual and homosexual couples and they are all going to be different in their own way just as every human and relationship is different. But I wanted to share our story and let people know that it's okay to deviate from traditional as well as answer this burning question that some people might have. I hope this helped you to become a better person as well as to strengthen any relationship you currently or in the future might have.