HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND HATE MY RING
In keeping with tradition, she was swept off her feet, but the fantasy crashed back to Earth when she saw the ring. Eight years later, still happily married, a woman hits the redesign button.
In keeping with tradition, she was swept off her feet, but the fantasy crashed back to Earth when she saw the ring. Eight years later, still happily married, a woman hits the redesign button.
Before I was engaged, my fantasy of the perfect marriage proposal had two variations. The first, Disney- influenced version went like this: there I am, unassumingly engrossed in doing something adorable like unpacking a picnic lunch from a wicker basket at the top of a waterfall, when my bearded, wide- shouldered mountaineering boyfriend softly calls my name. I turn, my long blond hair fanning gorgeously around my shoulders, and see the words “marry me, petite chou- fleur” spelled out in river stones that he has covertly hauled home from the banks of the Seine where we had our first kiss. I weep with joy as he slides a large princess- cut diamond onto my finger.
The second proposal fantasy was less screen- ready but aligned more truly with my values. This time, my women’s studies- major boyfriend and I are walking hand in hand when, through a miracle of psychic timing and gender equality, we decide at precisely the same moment that it would be prudent to make our relationship official— in a ceremony free of patriarchal references, performed by a suitably progressive, preferably gay minister. Together, we purchase matching wedding bands in reclaimed silver sans conflict- ridden diamonds.
Of course, life rarely mirrors our fantasies, and here are the two proposal- hands I was successively dealt. The first followed months of joy- killing coercion directed at my nuptially skittish live- in boyfriend. After a particularly combative weekend two years into our relationship, I got a call at the office on a Monday morning. He said, “I just had a good talk with my ( thrice married) dad, and I guess I’m ready to go ahead and get married.” Be still my heart.
It’s hard to imagine that the second proposal could be less romantic, but it was. Offer No. 2 came just weeks after the first, from an old west- coast boyfriend whom I’d recently spent a chummy day with while he was in Calgary on business. Apparently misinterpreting my friendliness for secret longing to reunite following our amicable break- up three years earlier, he flew to town a few weeks later ( business only a pretense this time) and asked me to dinner. When, partway through appetizers at a busy Mission restaurant, I told him I’d be getting married later that fall, he yelped, scraped back his chair and bolted out into the street. I paid the bill and eventually caught up with him in the parking lot where he shouted angrily: “Why would you marry him instead of me?!? I have A MILLION DOLLARS IN THE BANK!!!”
It was true— he had more money than I’ll ever see again, and I admit there have been moments when I would have traded my marriage in for some of that cash. Most of the time, however, I think I made the right choice in marrying the 40- year- old bachelor who listened to his father. Until recently, though, I did harbour a secret regret: my ring.
At the risk of putting people in boxes, when it comes to wedding rings, women tend to fall along a spectrum of pragmatic to sentimental. On the pragmatic side are those who insist on being heavily involved in choosing or designing their own engagement ring. These are presumably sensible people who simply want to ensure that they will actually like what will probably be the most significant and expensive piece of jewelry that they will ever wear. Why, after all, would one leave such an important decision up to a dude who may never have set foot in a jewelry store in his life? In an extreme case of such un- sentimentalism, a friend of a friend of mine went so far as to relieve her boyfriend entirely of the stress associated with potentially wasting two months’ salary on the wrong ring. With her betrothed waiting patiently by the jewelry store’s exit as if at a shoe sale, she fully negotiated the price and design of the diamond engagement setting of her dreams, then handed it over to him to figure out when and how to give it back to her ( no pressure there). From what I’ve heard, her boyfriend was hella relieved.
On the other end of the spectrum are the women who think of an engagement ring as the truest gift of all— a gem- and- metal expression of love, chosen by one’s betrothed and treasured to the end, no matter that the bride dislikes platinum and pavé- set diamonds.
According to statistics put together by De Beers ( that most reliable source of self- promotional diamond- ring- sales- related research), the people at the sentimental end of the spectrum are getting awfully lonely. The same company that, 70 years ago, convinced the world that “a diamond is forever” and that an engagement almost didn’t count without one, recently claimed that more than 80 percent of women these days are involved in choosing their own wedding ring ( the stat is anecdotally true in my circles, at least). It’s a trend that bodes well for diamond producers because, according to another survey— this one by Vashi diamond- sellers out of the U. K.— 10 percent of 1,000 women surveyed say they would have chosen a larger stone had they been given a chance. ( In other news from the same Department of Surveys Designed to Prove that Women Are Ungrateful Malcontents, one in five women are generally disappointed with their man’s proposal.)
When I was in my 20s and in love, my mother went to Marlborough Mall and got her wedding ring melted down. Despite the fact that she was motivated by a desire for a more contemporary setting rather than hostility toward my dad, it was, in my young, romantic mind, a brutally unsentimental act. I was shaken to discover that the infinite token of love I was desperate to be offered was so easily melt- down- able. What I didn’t know then was that this was the fourth incarnation of my mother’s wedding ring ( the first two were damaged by shoddy jewellers). I remember feeling bad for my dad who had given her that ring— a diamond solitaire in a curved setting— decades before. It turned out, though, that my dad, who was wearing the second incarnation of his own wedding band, wasn’t remotely offended.
My old wedding ring was a slick, white- gold band with a protruding cup, into which the jeweller had sunk a colour- change sapphire visible only under strong light. During the eight years I wore it, I occasionally wished I could have sidestepped the whole business by following Seventh Day Adventist doctrine. While working part time years before for a local ophthalmologist who adhered to SDA traditions, I learned that members of this relatively austere Christian denomination ( alcohol, caffeine, meat, cosmetics and jewelry are generally eschewed) have been permitted to wear modest wedding bands only since the 1980s; a utilitarian watch is still a more acceptable show of marital commitment. A plain, functional watch— even one you don’t like— is less burdened by centuries of meaning and size- and sparkle related expectations.
Dispensing with a wedding ring isn’t always a stellar solution, however. A recently divorced, elegantly embittered friend of mine both entered— and left— her marriage without one. She was married in a basement in a strange city with a couple of witnesses standing by; her dress was a $ 98 “sack” from the Tweeds catalogue, and her ersatz wedding band was a mood ring the groom had borrowed from his step- mother’s jewelry box. It may sound kitschy and cute for a young couple with no money, but despite having long moved on from the unhappy union, my resolutely non- materialistic friend
still wishes she’d received a meaningful wedding ring from her ex. The lack of one, she says, was predictive of— or at the very least set a disastrous tone for— the future state of her relationship. “We acted like it wasn’t important enough to bother with anything special— we thought it was something for bourgeois people and we didn’t think of ourselves that way.” In hindsight, my friend says what she really wanted, and still wants, was physical, ringshaped proof that she was cherished.
That sentiment slays me. It’s my modus operandi when it comes to receiving gifts: you could give me a used plastic fork for Christmas and I’d be touched that you thought of me. You can imagine, then, why it took me so long to tell my nice husband that I disliked my ring. Instead, I sought increasingly thin reasons for taking it off ( to apply lotion, do dishes, mark a stitch in my knitting project).
Lest you assume I’m horribly greedy and vain, it wasn’t the size of the rock that bothered me; I would have been content with a plain band from Costco. It was the choice of metal and the setting I didn’t like— a design that resulted from showing my fiancé a single online photo of the first adequate ring I came across in my brief research. I then expected him to miraculously make my marital jewelry dreams come true. In trying to walk the line between fully taking control of the process, which seemed uncouth to me, and wholly trusting my fiancé to surprise me with something wonderful, I ended up with a ring that was neither what I really wanted, nor what he would have chosen for me.
Starting sometime after our eighth anniversary last fall, my husband and I went through an extended rough patch brought on by the tedious irritations that inevitably arise between people sharing a life. After having doggedly worked our way through it over the course of many weeks, the sight of my ring relegated to a shelf in the bathroom seemed like an ominous road sign pointing in a direction I wasn’t prepared to go. I could have sucked it up and stuck it on my finger but, at this point in my marriage, authenticity seemed especially essential. My husband resisted for a dangerous nano- second before agreeing that I should have a ring I love and, yes, let’s get it fixed.
My renovated ring consists of a hand- moulded, rough- hewn yellow gold band engraved with a sweet secret message ( not telling), and the newly set sapphire now glints violet and pink even in regular light. It’s “absurdly tiny” ( my husband’s words) and not entirely dissimilar to the sort of ring my daughter chooses from the treasure box at the dentist’s office. But to me, it’s just right.
To an onlooker, my husband’s do- over proposal probably wouldn’t seem any more romantic than the original. He did, indeed, kneel down to offer the ring this time, but that was only to meet me at eye level as I squatted to help our four- year- old off with her muddy shoes. And as I slid the ring onto my finger, I heard the sound of our six- year- old son, ever watchful for unseemly grown- up moments, say, “Ew, I think I’m gonna puke!” It was all kind of great.
Afew weeks ago, my dad’s brother died. At the reception following his memorial, I noticed that my mom was wearing an unfamiliar gold band and dainty little diamond solitaire on her left ring finger. Turns out it was my late paternal grandmother’s wedding set; my mom thought her motherinlaw should be represented at her own son’s funeral. It was a sentimental gesture of infinite love.