What a hoebag. Good riddance. As long as your checking of her email wasn’t a regular thing you did before you noticed shenanigans, then I don’t blame you a bit.
But seriously, make some friends. One partner being the only source of the other’s emotional attachment and comfort is exceptionally draining.
Thread is useless without a homemade sex tape
This may be one of those things that vary from state to state, and I’m currently too lazy to research cites.
But I have read several stories over the years where someone has sued to have the ring returned and won. Including one case where the woman had sold the ring and was ordered to pay him the original purchase price plus interest.
I disagree. The “why” can be important. If it turns out that my SO has been lying to me for awhile and been doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who, I’d like to know the extent of the damage and/or what risks there were to me. Eg/ Has my duplicitous SO been sleeping around and/or engaging in high risk behavior? Has she been transferring ourcash discreetly to her lover? Is there anything else I need to know about, or should I just get regular blood tests and cross my fingers?
I’d rather know the truth, no matter how crummy it made me feel.
I think it’s in some law textbooks under contract law as an example of the key components of a contract: offer, consideration, and acceptance. “Consideration” is payment or money, or the benefit the two parties are bargaining for. So IIRC, the story went: “Will you marry me?” (Offer). Give the girl a ring (consideration in the form of an item of value). “Yes, I will marry you!” (Acceptance). So the guy successfully sued the girl for breech of contract for calling off the wedding.
Or some such. I don’t know if the example was base on real case law or was a hypothesis. And I think it also depended on whether your jurisdiction is civil or common law, but I don’t remember. IANAL, I just took a course, around 20 years ago and the example was in our book.
This.
Disagree.
There are a number of things of value from knowing ‘why.’
Now, once the forensics are done, yes, by all means, let it die, if it will. Sometimes, these things won’t die. Better to know where you stand, IMO.
See, now? You said that much better than me.
Here is an interesting article that addressed the issue of who keeps the ring in NY.
As far at etiquette goes, I think the ring should only be kept by the woman if the guy did something to ruin the relationship (like cheating, is a drunk, abusive, etc.). If the breakup is mutual, and especially if the woman cheats, the ring should be returned.
Oh, and I meant Glory Days, the Bruce Springsteen song, since the ex obviously wants to revisit them.
It’s not simply a gift. It’s a traditional promise to wed. The way I’ve heard it, if the woman breaks off the engagement, she has to give it back. If it’s the guy doing the breaking up, she keeps it. I think the courts have decided these things with all different outcomes over the years.
That’s certainly the logical approach.
Fun true story: same thing happened to a friend, he got the ring back, and went down to the beach in the morning, to throw it into the sea. While he was wading into the surf, a woman came running over to him, thinking it was a suicide attempt (he walked into the surf fully dressed).
They’ve been married for three years now.
She got a different ring.
SimonMoon5, that really sucks. I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through right now.
I am wondering, though, if your making her one of your very few friends played a part in it. Some see that as really unattractive behavior. That’s not to blame you, of course. But I wonder if she felt a little smothered. Something to think about for the future.
Sounds like he rode a lot of buses.
SimonMoon5, sorry for your breakup. I’ve been there, got the t-shirt, and I know that it is no fun. I can almost guarantee you that in the long run this will be better for you. I don’t know how old you are, but most people these days get married too young and people who married in their early to mid 20s divorcing in their mid thirties is almost a cliche.
Finally, it is very important you take care of yourself now even though that can be tough for some people in this situation. You mentioned you bought a house together. If you are keeping the house you need to get a quit-claim deed from her ASAP (and you should probably re-finance to get her off the mortgage). If she is keeping the house, you need to get her to re-finance or get written confirmation from the lender that they do not hold you liable before you sign a quit claim deed. Typically a re-finance is necessary as lenders are usually not willing to remove a responsible party from the note as it increases their risk. There are many stories of people in situations like yours deeding the house to their ex, only to have the lender come after them 5-10 years down the road because they were still financially liable in the eyes of the lender even though they had no ownership in the property. You do NOT want this, trust me. Same goes for credit cards.
Good luck. Most likely in a year you will be happy this happened. Kid you not.
Bingo! Before we were married, I got a lot of that from the now-ex. Broke every promise she ever made.
Especially beware of such things offered out of the blue. If s/he says “you’ll never have to worry about X” where X = something that hasn’t been discussed or even entered the radar screen, you’re in big trouble.
This is sound advice. I had a similar sort of break up almost 2 years ago, we were engaged, everything seemed great, then she broke up with me with no real explanation in a way that as completely unexpected to me and my entire family. I never got any real explanation, and though it may or may not be intellectually satisfying, there isn’t anything you could find out that will make the heal process any easier. If it was because she was cheating or met someone else, it’ll just make you resent her more and make getting over it harder. If you find out you actually screwed up with a bunch of little things, you’ll want to blame yourself.
A lot of people will offer condolences or things like “you’re better off without her” or “you’ll meet someone else soon enough.” While they may or may not be true, they do nothing to help your emotional state or help you keep a similar situation from happening again in the future. Instead, I say you should try to take this opportunity to take stock of yourself and see what you can learn and gain from this experience. For one, you mentioned that she was basically your only friend; this really isn’t healthy for either of you because it can create an over-dependence from you and cause a lot of things to be lopsided. Take some time to figure out what that was and do something to fix it. Similarly, you mentioned how much you trusted her, yet you looked through her e-mail on her computer which, to me, would indicate that you didn’t trust her. Take some time to figure out why you didn’t trust her, and they may be red flags for future relationships or issues of your own to work out. I’m sure there’s plenty of other things to be gleaned from this experience as well, but that’s just picking from what was in the OP.
I know it’s difficult, heartache is certainly one of the worst pains one can experience, but nothing here but simply knowing others have felt the same pain you are feeling now will make a difference. Stick through it and don’t let the despair get you. I hope that, if you don’t have many other friends, you at least have a family member or someone else you can call and talk to; don’t bottle it up, you need to grieve.
As for the ring, regardless of where this happened and the laws there, and especially because she broke it off, it’s like salting the wounds to keep the ring. It’s not like she could reasonably ever wear the ring again, except maybe if she was going out and didn’t want men hitting on her. So all she could realistically do with it is sell it and it’s got to be exceedingly bad karma for her to effectively profit off of breaking someone’s heart.
Maybe for other people, but not for me.
It wasn’t. I’ve never done that before. In fact, I don’t know the password for her regular email account (from work), but she conveniently made a new account on yahoo (which didn’t bother asking me for a password) so she could send naked pictures of herself to her new boyfriend without doing so on the work account. (Oh, and I didn’t mention that she told me once that she’d never do the whole “taking naked pictures” thing while she was with me.)
The only reason I snooped this time was: (a) she wasn’t very upset about the breakup. She remained quite happy. (b) When I met her, she was technically married (though geographically separated and planning on getting divorced) and was trying to get me to have sex with her while she was still married, which I resisted. I wouldn’t do that until she was finally divorced. So, she already had a history of being untrue.
It was just a matter of putting 2 and 2 together…
She didn’t feel smothered. In fact, if anything, she was saying that she wanted more attention, even though she was usually too busy to spend as much time with me as I wanted.
I’m forty. I don’t think I was too young or impulsive.
Doubtful. There are very few women in the world who are compatible with me and she was the only one I’ve ever met who was interested in me. I don’t know if I can wait another forty years to meet another one.
Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed anything, definitely a mistake on my part. Regardless, I wish you well and sincerely hope everything works out to your betterment.
I believe it’s considered a conditional gift. It’s not the same thing as giving a birthday present. Obviously this varies from state to state, but, in some cases at least, the judge has ordered the ring to be given back to the person that bought it.
Dude. Go back and read more cafeully. Did you miss the part where he checked that after she’d blind-sided him?
I daresay the reason he’s checking her e-mail after having been blind-sided is absolutely because he didn’t trust any longer. And I daresay the reasons for that are blindingly obvious!