My folks are, and oddly enough? married for 40 years and don’t hate each other.
They did get rings but they were craptacular things that 18 yo could get at the time. My mom did get a fancier one with a diamond ring later. She wore it twice and then just put it in a box. They aren’t that type of people.
For a while she did wear a band, but at that time she worked in a schmoozy boozy -type environment as a business model. (She wasn’t a model. It was the petro industry.)
So she’d go out for a three margarita lunch and get hit on when she had the ring on. And it was annoying to her.
So she stopped wearing it. And was left alone.
An adult single woman? Run Away!
And she never put it back on. Not b/c she’s not happy to be married but all the stuff that people here have said.
It’s uncomfortable. Her hands swell. She later started her own business that involved a lot of physical activity, and she didn’t want to be injured.
If I do get married to the SO, I’d probably get the tattoo ring, b/c my fingers swell up.
My parents didn’t wear their rings for many years. My father lost his in the first year of marriage and asked that it not be replaced because he didn’t like the feel of it anyway. (and then spent most of his life in a manual labor job and doing wood working as a hobby so it wouldn’t have been safe anyway.) My mother’s ring was lost by my little sister about 20 years ago. It broke my mom’s heart, but my dad didn’t get around to replacing it with another ring for about 15 years. In case you couldn’t guess, he’s not big in the romance department.
I don’t wear mine because it doesn’t fit anymore. I’ll just let you all assume it’s because I shrunk because that sounds so much nicer.
I wear mine when I go out…for awhile. I don’t wear it at home or if I run out quickly to the store. I wear it when I feel like I’m going somewhere people will see me.
Neither my wife or I wore one for about 8 years. I figured, we both know we’re married, what’s the point. We got rings this year (thanks in part to advice I got here). I honestly don’t see the point, when I type there is this little sweaty hunk of metal screwing up my writing flow and it’s an expensive piece of crap I have to worry about losing, which I don’t even like that much to begin with.
I also am a little uncomfortable with the enforced conformance of it all. You’re married and you have to wear this ring. I get back by wearing it on the wrong hand.
Well I was going to try to keep wearing it, but it was just so damned uncomfortable. I think, having played the piano quite seriously for around 20 years has just made me very conscious about anything on my fingers.
To some people, apparently. Once or twice I’ve been accused of trying to “trick” men by not wearing a ring but discussing those incidents would be a Pit rant so I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say there are some people with very rigid notions of how things should be done and they don’t give a hoot if there’s a good reason to change a custom, nor do they seem to understand that their customs are not universal.
I got into the habit of taking mine off at home and wearing it when I was out. The pattern was so familiar that while I felt really odd if was out without it, as soon as I got home it started bothering me.
Now I don’t wear it at all because it was lost in a flood last Wednesday.
I wear mine nearly every day, but I take it off at night because I don’t like the constricting feeling when I’m trying to sleep. Plus I joke that I’m afraid I’ll put my eye out with the diamond. On weekends I may forget to put it back on, but mostly I wear it all the time. I don’t take it off to wash my hands, do dishes, use cleaning products, etc. because it (still) fits well and it’s created from gold, platinum, diamonds and sapphires, and mankind has not made a household cleaning agent that will destroy those things. It’s beautiful, I’m proud of it and it’s one of the few vanity pieces I wear. I’ll probably not wear it when I remodel my sewing room, though, just so it doesn’t get paint, wallpaper glue and whatnot in it, and I know better than to wear jewelry when using power tools.
Interestingly, though, I get way more compliments on the sterling pendants I wear every day.
No more ring tan on my finger but married 20 years, ringless for the last 10 or so. We still have our simple white 18k gold bands, I took mine off first, for several reasons. And soon he followed suit.
Doesn’t bother either of us, but nosy family members have remarked on it.
Bwaha. Assuming this was addressed actually to me and not the hypothetical “you” that would be the man in this situation…
← Female and straight.
The main point of my previous post was that a man may be attempting to avoid giving that very impression of viewing the woman he’s talking to only as a potential mate, i.e., if she’s “taken,” she’s not worth your time. Perhaps the man has had other women give the same reaction as you, but to being asked. Just because you would prefer that someone ask doesn’t mean that everyone does.
Ha, this whole thread makes me not want to wear a wedding ring at all. I’d still be just as married…
But I really just came in here to say that wedding rings are kind of a Western concept. I mean, we sure do wear them in Hindu ceremonies, but I think we just grabbed onto it because “oo! shiny!” and we Indian people do love our gold.
Anyway, you’ll see a lot of Indian people not wearing their rings. A lot of these same women will not be caught dead without their mangal-sutr, however, the black and gold necklace signifying marriage. Or the red in the part in their hair.
But modern Indian girls often forgo all of the above.
Because we wanted it. I never said I didn’t like the ring ceremony, I just don’t like wearing rings. Is there some contradiction in wanting the ring ceremony in my wedding but not wanting to wear the ring afterward? We personalized our vows, and I said them at the wedding, but I don’t go around repeating them everyday.
Perhaps you misunderstood and are thinking that I said I didn’t like the idea or concept of wedding rings. If I had said that I think wedding rings are a symbol of husbands’ oppression of their wives, or somesuch, then it would indeed be an odd contradiction to have the ring ceremony in my wedding. But I think wedding rings are fine, the concept is fine, I just don’t happen to like wearing rings of any kind.
I’m going to have to stop wearing my soon enough. It was a little loose when I got it, but it was safe because it would never slip past the knuckle. Now it flies off when I’m rummaging through my purse, etc, and in a brief moment of panic after a bike ride on Saturday, I noticed it on the ground in front of me. For a moment, I thought the darn thing could be anywhere.
:shrug: I know I’m married. I don’t worry about it very much. Sometimes I forget to wear it. So does my wife. Neither of us are jealous, and we trust each other, so no harm, no foul.
Ever notice how your fingers sometimes seem a wee smaller in the morning when it’s cold out? One of my teachers didn’t wear his during the winter because he was afraid it would fall off, so his wife bought him another ring.
I know of an extremely Catholic couple who bought each other cross necklaces that they wear in lieu of rings. I don’t know their precise reasoning, just that it was more meaningful to them.
