One Ring To Rule Them All … And Bind Them
A thought-provoking question recently submitted to Carolyn Hax about where finance meets romance has both micro and macro ramifications. The immediate issue to the letter writer is that after a serious accident LW’s friends and family came through with not merely moral support but also material help, totaling $3,500. LW was, and is, grateful.
Before the accident, though, LW had been saving up for six months to buy a long-term girlfriend an engagement ring. LW is in a better financial state now, for various reasons. If s/he is able to start saving again and to buy one soon, will the community think LW misdirected funds?
There are two interesting larger issues here to me, in addition: 1) what do we owe our friends and family in exchange for an unprompted, generous expression of goodwill; and 2) how important are engagement rings to a proposal, anyway?
Over the years I’ve heard from a steady stream of women who reject not only the tyranny of the engagement ring, but also the whole notion of waiting around for a proposal, period, much less for a reason unspoken to them by their prospective mates.
At this point you’re already looking at proposing 10 months after deciding to propose. Wow.
Waiting till you’ve saved your desired amount gives the jewelry more agency than it does the woman. Would she want that? Would you want to marry someone who’d want that? Presumably not if you intend to remain a wobbly scooter among cars, literally and figuratively speaking.
I get it. The most romantic proposal in pop culture to me is from When Harry Met Sally. He runs to meet her at a fancy party on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. In the background, someone is crooning “It Had To Be You.” (“With all your faults, I love you still …”) They yell at each other until Harry declares, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” They end up making out while confetti falls gloriously around them and it’s perfect. And no one has to seek permission in advance from De Beers.
But other people want other things. I know women who have had their partners borrow money so as to get them the correct, five-figure diamond ring. I know women who were content waiting six months or even a year so that their partners could create — or, perhaps, curate — the best possible pop-the-question-with-jewelry scenario.
In one of my favorite Vows columns ever, one man blurted out “No, no no!” when his partner proposed, because he too had a ring in his pocket and was planning to propose later that day.
Of course, in this case, the letter-writer went through a near-death situation and is working his/her way back to full recovery. Because those circumstances are rather unusual, the two individuals in question have even more incentive than most to talk candidly about their future. Even so, though, if the LW’s girlfriend acknowledges that her dreams were, and remain, diamond studded, they can try to work that out.
Regardless, I don’t think the LW owes any account of the money spent to the friends and family that helped him. The community gave the LW a gift, and the LW said thank you. The responsibility ends there. If I were in the community, I’d be overjoyed that the money helped enable LW to get back on his/her feet (literally?) and propose to someone and carry on with life. I wouldn’t be miffed because I expected my contribution to go solely to aspirin and chicken soup.
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