Some women spend their entire lives imagining their engagement ring. Will is be square cut? Pear shaped? Do you want a gold or platinum band? Most of us never imagine the ring to be one that was meant for another person. Yet that's exactly what one woman is dealing with after her boyfriend, who is finally ready to propose, asked if he could use a ring meant for his ex.
She explained on Reddit that her boyfriend bought the ring after he ended a four-year relationship.
"He had ordered a customized a ring from overseas for her," she wrote. "I’m not sure what the actual value of the ring was, but according to him he spent few thousand dollars on the ring in total."
But now that they are considering getting engaged, he's wondering if he could take the pricey piece of jewelry out of the cupboard and give it to her instead.
Though she knows that it makes sense not to let the ring go to waste, she can't help but feel a little cheated.
The woman wrote that though she knows they could use the money they would spend on buying her a new ring on more important things, she still wished she could have a ring that was bought with her in mind.
And unfortunately, even if they did sell the old ring and use the money to buy her a new one, a jeweler told them that it wasn't worth much.
"He assured me that she never wore it, but I just don’t want something that wasn’t made for me," she wrote. "Am I being unreasonable?"
Other people online were pretty sure that it was perfectly normal for the woman to want her own ring.
In the comments, people were pretty adamant that she had a right to be picky about the ring that is going on her finger.
"No girl! You’re not being unreasonable," one person agreed. "Rings carry stories and history. If it’s not a story you want to carry around on your finger for the rest of your relationship, you are totally within your rights. Also, that ring was customized for another woman, not for you. Get another ring!"
"Sometimes in life you just have to cut your losses and start fresh," another person wrote. "He should sell the ring, be done with it, then get a new one and cop whatever the loss is. Sure the money would be better spent on the house and it is not that practical. But part of getting engaged/married is recognizing something special you have with someone else — and a ring is a symbol of that, so completely understandable to not want that symbol to also be a symbol of a past relationship."
And finally, a jeweler stepped in with some professional advice. "As a jeweler, I'd say keep the diamond, and reset it. A diamond is a diamond, and the mounting should be just for you," the person wrote. The jeweler added that if both the stones and metal aren't worth much, "get yourself a new ring. That's gross, trying to give you a ring completely made for someone else. You'd look at that thing every day, and resent him for his cheapness."
Some people thought that she was overreacting -- a ring is a ring.
"Who gives an (expletive)? It's just a ring," one person wrote. "Thoroughly unimportant."
"The diamond market is such a scam anyway," another person commented. "They are the ones who injected this (expletive) in our heads that it has to be a new ring and it has to be two-months salary, you know, for a rock that has no functional use at all."
Someone else thought the woman was missing the point. "If I were you I would take it if it's something you actually like or not if you don't. He's not thinking of her. He loves you and wants to spend his life with you. Does getting a ring he already owned, and never promised to another, something you want to argue about?" the person commented.
But the woman later wrote in the thread that she didn't like the ring at all. "I don’t exactly fancy the colored jewel and the gold band," she wrote. "Would definitely prefer something more simple! At the same time I don’t want to hurt his feelings by discrediting his efforts so I’ve been feeling torn on whether or not I should I tell him I actually don’t like the design."
In the end, the woman decided that she wanted to explain to her boyfriend the reasons why she didn't want to accept his ring.
"Perhaps I need to explain to him that it’s not about the amount that he’s going to be spending, but rather the effort that he’s spending on me?" she wondered.
She did like the idea of repurposing the old ring to make a new one. "Repurposing the previous ring into another piece of jewelry actually sounds like a really good solution to our problem! I’ll try suggesting that to him when he brings it up again."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
