Okay, my basic world view is that when you’re married, you wear a wedding ring on your left hand ring finger. There are exceptions, of course (my dad wears his wedding band on his right hand because he’s left-handed) but the general rule is that the ring finger gets the wedding ring. I’ve also assumed that the ring finger stays unadorned until an engagement/wedding, so that the engagement/wedding ring is the only ring that’s ever worn on that finger.
As a single guy, I have a habit of checking out women’s fingers to see if they’re married or not. And recently I’ve come into a bit of confusion as to whether the ring finger ideal is as widely accepted as I initially thought. For one, my boss has worn at least three different rings on her ring finger (only one of which has looked like a wedding ring), and on occasion has had no ring at all on her finger. A co-worker has not worn any ring on any finger, but I recently found out she apparently has a husband and a kid. Also, my ex wore a ring on her ring finger but I knew she wasn’t engaged/married to anybody.
So I guess my question is do you see the ring finger as exclusively for rings that say “I’m not available” or is it just another place for jewelry? And I’m aware there are lots of cultural variations.
I wear cocktail rings on that finger; it’s obvious they’re not engagement rings but people still occasionally assume. For instance we’re talking about a big huge gaudy old coin set in a square sterling setting…I guess to me it’s obvious it isn’t a wedding/engagement ring but people have asked me about it just b/c of the finger it’s on.
To me it’s just a finger like any other; if a ring fits that finger that’s where I’m going to put it.
And if anyone wants to know if I’m married, they can just ask.
If there’s only one ring and it’s on the wedding-ring finger, I’ll assume the wearer is married. There may be other indications of marriage, of course, such as those amazing henna designs, or a spouse nearby.
According to season 2 of the show Weeds (which I happened to be watching recently), the right-hand diamond is a symbol of independence and personal reward, or something like that. I think “ring finger of your right hand” was the implication, though I’m not sure.
I wish the custome was that the wedding ring went on the right hand.
That way when I meet a woman and shake her hand, it’s easier to tell if she’s married!
Anyway, I’m with the OP. Ladies, us guys have it hard enough as it is. Unless you’re married; keep that finger, ring free!
The lady you’re meeting might use the left ring finger for her wedding ring; that’s the custom in parts of Europe & elsewhere.
Or she may be like me–a spinster with plenty of jewelry who refuses to “save” the finger. In fact, I don’t wear anything that looks like a standard wedding ring on that finger, although some ladies do have non-standard wedding rings. (And I’m beyond your age demographic, anyway.)
And I suspect that certain spirited young ladies might answer your request with a salute from another finger.
In my high school and college days, I wore my high school class ring on my left hand ring finger. (My right hand ring figer bore a simple Black Hills gold ring from my parents).
I’m not entirely keen on the “it’s just another finger” school of thought, but people’s tastes are varied enough to make use of a ring of a particular style on a particular finger a bad indicator of unavailability.
It would never have occurred to me that I should be “saving” any of my fingers for anything. If a ring happens to fit my left ring finger best, that’s where I wear it.
I’m not giving up a perfectly good ring finger just because I don’t want to get married. I’m not single either so I don’t care if someone mistakes one for an engagement or wedding ring.
After we got hitched, my wife had her engagement ring broken down and integrated with her wedding band. It doesn’t look exactly like a wedding band OR an engagement ring anymore.
Amazing henna designs. Popular among the South Asian community for a woman who is about to be married. I first learned of them in the days when I was a mall rat at Square One, and there was this woman working at Square One whom I fancied, and one day I noticed she was wearing designs on her hands, and I asked what they were. “Oh, I’m getting married next year.”
I wear rings on whichever finger they happen to fit best (my nicest ones were gifts from my grandparents, who were antique dealers, so it’s not like I picked them out). Usually I wear one on my left middle finger, but before I was burglarized, I had a beautiful antique white gold/sapphire ring with lots of fancy carving that my grandparents had given me when I was little, and it happened to fit best on my left ring finger.
When I got to college, my (Salvadoran) roomate would chew me out whenever I wore a ring on my left ring finger. She said it was Salvadoran custom that it was bad luck for a single woman to wear a ring on that finger; it meant she would never get married.
(Not that I’m Salvadoran, but somehow her idea stuck in my head after all these years, and now I feel really odd wearing a ring on my left ring finger. Which is too bad, because in the interim since the asshole burglar stole all the beautiful antique jewelry that my grandparents gave me, my grandmother gave me an antique emerald and diamond ring that had been hers - one nice part about being in the antique business is that she got to rotate the stock through her own jewelry box. The emerald ring also fits best on my ring finger, just because my grandmother and I both have the same tiny petite fingers. It’s a good bit blingier than the jewelry I normally wear, but even if I felt particularly blingy on a given day, I’d feel…odd wearing it on my left ring finger.)
Do people seriously think that a woman’s marital status (or lack thereof) is so important that she needs to publically label herself?
I can’t imagine what you’re thinking here.
When I get dressed in the morning, do you seriously expect me to think, “well, I’d like to wear that ring today, but it only fits the ring finger of my left hand,* and I’m not married, so I can’t wear it. Darn.”
Back when I was married, I rarely wore any rings at all. I didn’t have any that I liked enough to wear. I did have a plain gold wedding band that sometimes I did wear if I felt like making it obvious that I was married. But most of the time, I didn’t bother. I can’t believe people would have thought I was dissembling because I didn’t put on overt mark on myself!
A pure, unblemished finger is the most important gift a girl can give to her beau. If you’ve worn a ring on it before and then get married, it’ll be like making your wedding band have sexual relations with every other ring you’ve worn.
Some people don’t like wedding rings as a symbol or fashion statement, some don’t wear jewelry, some have SOs but never marry, some single people don’t give a crap, and some didn’t grow up with the custom. So yeah, better to read body language and, well, actual language, when looking for a mate.
