I've been looking at my wedding ring set a lot lately. There it is. These rings have an interesting history. They are bugging me in the present. In the future I would like to be rid of them and the marriage they represent.
HISTORY
When W and I got married we did so pretty much as a spur of the moment thing. We decided on Wednesday to get married and were married that weekend in the cheesiest chapel in Reno, NV. Because of the short notice and our limited financial resources at the time we had no rings. I spent the first few months of married life unringed. Then somehow we got some catalog pushing cheap jewelry, and W thought it would be great to order rings for both of us from there. We did. We followed the cheesiest wedding ever with the cheesiest rings (NOT the ones in the picture above) ever. Not only did the finish wear off fairly quickly, they turned my finger the loviest shade of green. I was embarassed by my wedding ring set at that time, but W seemed to think they were fine so I shut up and left it alone. Finally, after he inherited some money several years into the marriage he agreed to buy real rings for the both of us. We discussed how much we could spend and at first he thought about $500. I eventually got him up to $1,500 for both my wedding set and his band so that allowed me to get a real diamond instead of synthetic. I always kind of resented how difficult it was to talk him into letting me have a real diamond. We went to a local jeweler and first picked his band so we'd know how much we had left for my set. At my urging we made a production of putting the rings on each other's fingers at dinner at a nice local restaurant. That's the history -- I sure know how to make a short story long, huh?
PRESENT
For a long time I rarely took my rings off, only when I did something messy in the kitchen like kneading bread dough. I have left them on during every extramarital tryst. BJ would sit and hold my hand and fiddle with my rings and talk about me wearing his rings someday. He made me believe that he really did want for us to marry, and we talked of our wedding often. When J took his wedding band off after he'd been separated for several months we discussed wedding rings and when the right time is to take them off and how it symbolizes giving up on the marriage. When I was with K last week he made no mention of my rings, but I looked at them several times and thought how inappropriate they seemed there on my finger while I indulged in carnal pleasures with another man. Interesting that of all the pieces to the situation it was the rings on finger that seemed inappropriate to me.
FUTURE
Those rings that I longed for so much during the early part of my marriage have become such a burden. Now I long to be rid of them. I read in others' blogs sometimes that spouses take off their wedding rings when they are angry as some sort of message to the other spouse. I never even imagined doing such a thing. Once I take these rings off it will not be to send a message to W, it will be because the marriage is truly over and done with. By the time they come off, it will be no surprise to him as it will happen when we file for divorce, or when he dies if I continue to stall for too long.
Posts
