Me, too.
I take mine every time I shower or when ever I’m bored and want something to fidget with or roll around. I have really skinny fingers but I needed it to be big enough to fit over my knuckle, and thus my ring is very loose. I also wanted a half size smaller but my wife made me get the larger one. I have to take it off when I shower because I’m afraid it will slip off with all the lubrication with the soap and the water. On a cold days my ring has been known to even fly off my finger.
I occasionally take it off if I am going to be doing something that is going to get my hands extremely “gicky”, just to avoid having to clean it up afterward. I will also take it off if I am doing heavy manual labor just to make sure it doesn’t get damaged. In either case, I put it back on as soon as I am done. I probably haven’t had it off for more than a couple dozen hours altogether in almost 12 years.
My wife’s ring is a relatively ornate one, so she wears it occasionally, and usually takes it off when she sleeps. Mine’s just a simple thin gold band, and except for when I’m fiddling around with it, it’s been on since we bought it.
Although now that I think about it, I honestly can’t remember if I was allowed to wear it or not when I went in for surgery on my knee the year before last.
For those that have lost your rings or don’t wear them because you’re afraid of losing them (which, in my opinion, defeats the point of having them), have you not heard of personal property insurance? Everything I own is insured with a $100 deductible, against pretty much anything. Even if I drop my TV by accident while moving it, it’s covered. For high value items, I have specialized coverage which allows for completely free replacement should it get damaged or stolen. My camera equipment, for instance, is completely covered that way (so if I get mugged, I don’t have to pay the $1300 it’ll cost to replace it). Coverage for a bridal set should only be a few dollars a month, and for a plain gold band…well, they’re inexpensive to begin with, so on the off chance you lost it again, it’s not THAT big a deal. (Would still stink for sentimental reasons…but that’s why I don’t take mine off).
Mine, a silver/titanium band stays on 24/7, except for fiddling. The wife’s gets taken off every night and when she showers.
I take mine off every night for sleeping. Ditto my class ring on the other hand. I also take them off when working with serious tools, around electricity, or when eating goopy finger food (e.g. French fries, no; Buffalo wings, yes).
My wedding ring isn’t a simple band, more like a signet style with a single diamond & lots of carved crevices to catch & store BBQ sauce.
If it was a simple band I could see sleeping & eating with it but I’d still be taking it off for physical work. I know 3 guys missing a finger and in all cases it was a simple event like a trip-and-fall that turned real ugly when their ring caught on something. It peels the meat off a finger like emptying a natural-casing sausage. And it isn’t repairable.
So color me careful. Sentimental, but careful.
[QUOTE=Jman]
For those that have lost your rings or don’t wear them because you’re afraid of losing them (which, in my opinion, defeats the point of having them), have you not heard of personal property insurance? Everything I own is insured with a $100 deductible, against pretty much anything.
[QUOTE]
In Canada, you can get a jewellery floater with a $0 deductible with most insurance companies. My engagement ring cost something like $7 per year to insure on my personal property insurance.
My big plan as a pre-engaged person was to have a plain silver band for a wedding ring, and once married, only wear the diamond engagement ring on dressy occasions. But I didn’t get to pick out the rings, so I ended up with a platinum set, both with diamonds. While I was engaged, I took the ring off occasionally when I was afraid of getting robbed (I worked in a pizza place late at night and for a few weeks we had some really scary-looking customers at the same time there were some nearby burglaries). But I pretty much wore it 24/7, and always wore both rings after I got married. When I was trying to get pregnant, I heard all sorts of stories about having to have rings cut off in the delivery room (they were all untrue). So the day I found out I really was prgenant, I tried to take my rings off…and I couldn’t. I gained a lot of weight with that baby, and the next, so my rings never came off, but they weren’t tight, either. It was like banding a tree…I gained everywhere but under the rings. One time I had my daughter at the hospital for a procedure, and the doctor got very worried about my rings! I had to show him that they rotated freely.
But for fourteen years those rings never left my finger. Only time I had problems was when peeling oranges. I had to be sure to rinse thoroughly to prevent irritation. Never scratched my babies, only occasionally snagged it on anything…and it was a fairly big solitaire setting. The day of my divorce, after my ex took me to brunch (long story) I went straight to a jeweler and had them cut off. That’s when I found out they were platinum! And then bawled like a baby! Now, nearly ten years later, I still have a scar where the rings were…just two thin lines, the width of one of the bands…looks like I still have a ring there! I joke about how my marriage permanently scarred me…but only on my finger.
Nothing of substance to add, as I’m single. But I just wanted to say that I initially read this as “scratch the baby’s asses.” I thought, How very noble, yet funny.
Happy
I don’t work with newborns, like Cyn, but I do work with children (and paint, and clay, and glue, and sand, etc.) in an elementary school. I don’t wear my ring to work because I don’t want to get all manner of crusty, goopy stuff down among the prongs and crevices. I figure the giant Mrs. in front of my name by my door is enough to tip folks off that I’m married.
At SCA events, during the day I don’t wear my rings because I’m the minister of children. I always seem to be wrist deep in craft supplies wherever I go. 
I do wear my rings when we go out for an evening, to a family gathering, or (in the SCA) at court. All other times it hangs out in my jewelry box.
I have two engagement rings. They are both “channel” bands- they have a row of small diamonds inset in them, with no pokey-outy parts. The first one is the one that my husband gave me when he propsed. It is very, very modest- he was a single parent and had no money. We got married 6 months later. At Xmas that year, he gave me a much nicer channel band, and said I could replace the first one with that one. No way was I giving up the first one. So I wear all three- fist one on the bottom, wedding band in the middle, and nicer one on top. they actually look very nice together.
I take them off every night when I get home from work, and I don't wear them on weekends unless we're going out. I also try not to wear them when I wash my hands or take a shower, because the soap scum can really make them look dull. to clean them, I soak them overnight in vodka once a week.I thought the EXACT SAME THING! In fact, I didn’t even catch it until I read your post.
Take off my wedding ring? Hell, I haven’t put it on for 5+ years.
It’s a nice ring, I like how it looks, but I’ve never been able to get used to wearing it. After a year or so I just gave up.
I do have a nipple ring I never remove though.
My wedding ring is titanium… so any “dangerous” stuff I might be involved in (machinery, for example) the ring comes off.
I take my ring (a plain gold band) off very rarely, but last year, after 12 years of marriage, I realised it was pretty scratched and bent from doing rough jobs, and maybe I should take it off from time to time (if only to prevent my finger getting torn off if I caught it in something).
So when I needed to repair the garage door, I took off the ring and put it carefully in the base of a candlestick on the mantlepiece. Later on, the job finished, I remembered I hadn’t put my ring back on and went to get it – it wasn’t there. I searched. My wife searched. Everywhere. For days.
A week or so later, after giving up on finding it, I was moving some books around on a bookcase when I found the ring – hidden behind a book. It was a hymn book that we’d borrowed from the church where we were married and forgot to return.
A sign? Was some higher power telling me I should return the book?
Perhaps – but that church is a double glazing salesroom now, so bugger it.
My husband and I both take our wedding rings off every night. I usually put both my band and my engagement ring on in the morning, though I’ll take 'em off again if I’m working out. I’ve been known to run for literally hours at a time, and it makes my hands swell, so it hurts to have a ring on. I’ll also take them off if I’m cooking, particularly working with raw meat or hot peppers. I don’t like the idea of the raw meat juice getting in my rings (engagement is a diamond solitaire, and my wedding band is a channel-set band with alternating rubies and diamonds), whether or not that’s a problem, and if I get pepper juice on one of my rings, it invariably gets stuck in there and shreds off a lot of skin around the area where my ring touches me (did I mention I’m sensitive to hot peppers?).
Anyway, it horrifies both my mom and my sister that I take my ring off for any reason. But I figure I don’t need my ring to remind me that I’m married. It’s symbolic, and I love wearing it, but I’m not going to wear it if doing so will cause me a lot of pain and will take skin off.