Of all the things I hate about being a human person, one of them is the following scenario: I am existing as normally as I can despite The State of Things (*gestures vaguely to the climate, the government*) when a person I haven’t seen in the last year explodes into my field of vision. We talk, and it comes up: “Oh, Erin, didn’t you get married this year?” And I say, “Yes, I did, in fact, sign up for government benefits in a weird little ritual that involved a white dress, a promise, and a cake.” And then comes the part I dread, the part that makes my intestines slither around like a bunch of greased up pythons.
“Well …
LET’S!
SEE!
THAT!
RING!!!!”
I’m sure the person says this at a normal volume, but inside my head, they’re suddenly wearing a tan leisure suit and yelling into a skinny microphone, and I’m on the worst game show ever. I present my hand like it’s a tiny slab of ham that I spent hours preparing for them, and they bring it up to their eye — one of those tiny magnifying glasses that jewelers use appears out of thin air — to inspect my ring finger. I’m horrified, and so are they when all they find is a single gold wedding band nestled around my (now sweaty) knuckle. It’s a gold band that matches my husband’s, but it’s smaller because my finger is smaller. And that’s… it. That’s all that’s there.
“Wow!” they say, completely furious at me for not having a diamond ring to ogle. For embarrassing them in front of the cantaloupe bin at Costco. For ruining their fucking life. “So nice!” And I take my ham back and stuff it into my pocket and remind myself that this, this is why I should get my groceries delivered.
In what world are we making enormous, life-altering decisions in less time than a waiter gives you to look over a drinks menu?
Call me new-fashioned—the opposite of old-fashioned (just go with it)—but engagement rings have always given me the heebie-jeebies. To be fair, a lot, if not most, of today’s wedding culture still has ties to the days when men purchased women from their fathers (super chill!), but nothing seems quite as glaring a reminder of those “bygone” days as engagement rings. They are, even in their very best light, an antiquated and heteronormative tradition that has no place in modern relationships.
Everything about formal engagements seems clunky to me. First, there’s the idea that in heterosexual relationships—which were the only relationships people considered when this shit started—it’s the man’s duty to ask the woman if she would like to marry him (barf). In the best of cases, it’s a total surprise to her. Okay, in what world are we making enormous, life-altering decisions in less time than a waiter gives you to look over a drinks menu?
Obviously, it rarely happens this way these days. Most couples talk about whether or not they should get married many weeks in advance, buy a ring (often together!), and then leave the formal engagement up to the dude. A great solution, until you consider this counterpoint: Why even?
Why did this sweet, organic moment have to be commodified for it to be “official”?
I decided to get married when my then-boyfriend and I were on a trip in Montauk one September, the best month to go to the beach in my correct opinion. We had spent the day surfing and stopped at a salty seaside restaurant for a couple of lobster rolls and local beers. And it came up: Should we get married? It had come up before after deaths and bad diagnoses and other reminders that life is precious and finite, but this time, there was no dark, unfair pressure — rather, just two people who had reached the same conclusion. By the end of the conversation, our beer glasses were empty, and our eyes filled with tears, and we were, for all intents and purposes, engaged. It was pure and romantic and perfect. Afterward, we watched the sun set over the harbor, and I did a cartwheel. There’s video of it, but it’s very uncool.
But then came the question: Should we buy a ring? That felt weird to me. Why did this sweet, organic moment have to be commodified for it to be “official”? I fully get that the presence of a diamond ring can work as a visual indicator to let other people know that things are different now, but it felt wholly unfair that he should be the one to buy it and I should be the one to wear it. In the time between then and the wedding, I would move through the world marked as “taken” while my fiancé would just… exist as he normally does. What a decidedly lopsided first step into what was meant to be a partnership based on mutual respect.
The more I thought about it, the more completely bonkers it seemed. Would we have to do the whole getting-down-on-one-knee thing? Would I have to act surprised? Would people clap for our little one-act sham of a play? And would we have to tell this fake story to friends, family, and postal workers for the rest of our natural-born lives? Wasn’t there a better way?
These rocks are integral to engagements in the same way that cotton is The Fabric of Our Lives — it’s just marketing, and we fell for it.
I called my friends in queer relationships to see how they dealt with engagements. There wasn’t a seamless translation for them. The most common response was that one person would propose, and then the other would propose back days or weeks later, but there was no real guideline for deciding who gets to go first. The only positive to this uncomfortable retrofit was the fact that in most cases, both partners wore engagement rings, which at least felt fair. I asked my partner if he would wear one. He was even less enthused than I was.
It made me wish we had an updated way of letting people know that we are, as they say, betrothed. Maybe we could hike up a mountain and bang a giant gong. Or bake a big cake that says “WE’RE DOIN’ IT” in buttercream frosting. After all, the only reason why we use diamond rings for engagements is because some diamond company called the De Beers Consolidated Mines came up with the catchy slogan “Diamonds Are Forever” in 1947, which is less than a lifetime ago. I literally have great-aunts who are older than the idea that an engagement is not an engagement until it has been punctuated with a diamond ring. These rocks are integral to engagements in the same way that cotton is the fabric of our lives — it’s just marketing, and we fell for it.
Wedding bands, on the other hand, make sense to me. They’re like tiny BFF bracelets with secret messages on the inside that you can clink together when you’re drunk. One is not grander than the other; they are equal. They cost less than a down payment on a house. And they aren’t full of inherently valueless sparkly stones that were procured by dubious practices. (Yeah, sorry to break it to you, but unless you’ve sought out a conflict-free diamond, that rock has probably gotten to you through a waterslide of slavery and murder. But that’s love, baby!).
Obviously, my decision to skirt a formal engagement was a personal one, as is anyone’s decision to go the traditional route. Buy a diamond ring if you want. Trade yourself for his father’s cow for all I care. Do whatever is right for you, because it’s up to you. But I think we should start making room for people who have no interest in keeping this dated tradition alive. If you’re out there and you’ve thought about skipping the engagement ring for whatever ethical or sociological or financial reasons you might have, I wrote this to say “same and ditto.” And if we ever meet, I promise I will never, ever, ever ask to see your hand.
