House of Eratosthenes

Does my boyfriend owe me a ring?

Dear Bossy: I’m wondering if you can help me. My partner and I have been together 4.5 years. Within two months, we were engaged. I was 24 and he was almost 22. I still am waiting for an engagement ring.
:
It has been quite a painful experience as I have watched many of my friends get engaged, be given a ring, get married and have babies whilst I still wait for my engagement ring. I finally decided to do something about this situation and with his blessings (he was away for two weeks), went engagement ring shopping with a girlfriend. Of course I found The Ring and totally fell in love with it that night and put it on layby for 6 months. It totalled $6,500 which I kind of felt was justified seeing how long I had waited for this ring.

I thought the whole thing was made-up until I got to…

Truth be told, we have had financial issues throughout this 4 year period. However, he has never put aside any money for a ring and is only considering buying me one now because I have said that I want to get married next year.

This comes right after a meandering story about how she went “ring shopping” and found something perfect that costs $6,000, and found out after the fact he’s only wanting to spend about half that.

I have to drop my skepticism at that point. I’m obliged. I’ve lived through this…finances ruined because someone has the attitude “if you get it and you pay for it and it didn’t cost enough to be painful, something is terribly wrong.” It’s the number one financial mistake made by our young people.

“Bossy” launched into an answer I thought was pretty sensible:

Gosh there’s a lot of tit-for-tat in relationships these days. For those not familiar with old-fangled language, tit-for-tat means seeking repayment for one type of injury with another. You see a lot of it in schoolyards. “You won’t give me a lolly so I won’t be your friend.” Or the adult version: “You won’t buy me a ring, so I won’t marry you.”

I can understand you wanting a ring. Rings are symbolic. And sentimental. You want something beautiful you can look at that symbolises your love. What I find incomprehensible is that you have agreed to marry your boyfriend and yet you are prepared NOT to marry him because he won’t provide you with a piece of jewellery of the right value. It’s ridiculous.

Two big lessons are being missed here. One — the lady of a castle is royalty within that castle and must see herself as such. If she labors toward the financial destruction of the castle, the castle will not stand and she’s not going to come out of the deal too happy & whole either.

Very common problem. Some of our girls fancy themselves to be “liberated” and then once they latch onto a guy, don’t behave that way. There’s this attitude of money being his; it usually follows a request that he spend it a certain way, at which time, for whatever reason, he declines. Okay then, buster. If I can’t say how this is spent, then it must not be mine, and if it doesn’t belong to me then it damn well isn’t going to belong to anyone else either.

From that point onward, if the bills are all paid and there’s still fifty bucks left in the bank account…why, that’s untenable. Something’s been left unfinished. Need to fix that.

The second things is closely related to the first; it’s causative of it. It’s the notion that just because an emotion is understandable, it must be acted-upon. It must manifest a thirst that will be fatal if it goes unslaked. In this case, the reverse is true. If the household winds through year after year and decade after decade never having any money left over, then everyone who lives in that household will be injured.

Emotions can be quite understandable, and yet, we’re all still better off if they’re just ignored. Especially when it comes to fighting over jewelry.

How many things do people buy that cost six large? The television set will give you everything you want if you pay a third to a quarter of that…and that leaves…the house and the car. Isn’t that ridiculous. Your three big ticket items are the roof that protects you from the elements, the car that shuttles your ass around……….and a rock that does nothing.

DeBeers, when archeologists and anthropologists form their theories about what destroyed our civilization thousands of years from now, your name is going to pop up high on the list.

Huh. My original wedding ring cost $35 and my wife’s CZ cost $135. Because we wanted to get married, not put on a fashion show and impress people. Granted, $135 was a significant amount of money for me back then.

We both have nicer ones now. But not $6,000 nicer for sure. We have other priorities.

And oddly, she loves me, and I love her, and we’ve been married 16 years. This kind of thing never comes up.

What was that the Knight said near the end of Indiana Jones III?

“You chose …. wisely”

I guess!!!! Wow. Can’t imagine dealing with that kind of sh*t.
- philmon | 06/11/2008 @ 13:51

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One Ring, To Rule Them AllWednesday, June 11th, 2008

One Ring, To Rule Them All
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008