"Love the Guy, Hate the Ring"

You know, this sort of pisses me off. I'm reading this article in the February 2011 issue of Marie Claire by this title, and the whole idea of it rubs me the wrong way.

The article is about "heirloom rings," and how no woman wants your great-grandma's engagement ring, and that it's ugly.

I have so many gripes and suggestions about this that I'll just make a list:

1) Marriage is not about the ring.

2) If your boyfriend doesn't know you well enough to know you will "hate the ring," maybe you should hold off.

3) If you don't have the kind of relationship with your boyfriend where it would be cool to ask him if you can put it in a different setting, maybe you should hold off.

4) Wait, why do you hate the hand-me-down ring? It's rich with his family's history. And you are entering this family history. If this bothers you, you should probably not be engaging him.

5) Who cares if you really like the ring?

This article goes really hand-in-hand, I think, with an advertisement I saw in Elle:

"You only get married for the first time once"

I think this all plays into why I don't want to get married. I see it as an outmoded, irrelevant ritual whose meaning has all but disappeared over the centuries. The ring is supposed to stand for something, which, judging by popular culture, it doesn't anymore.

I mean obviously, there are those couples following the rules, including the whole "death do us part" thing (parents being one of those couples), but I think it has very little to do with the ring. Some people just actually mean their promises.

Maybe if marriage was less about the dress, the ring, the color scheme, the cake, the bridal registry, I'd be more into it. But as long as women's media portrays it as such, I'm cool with just having a boyfriend for life, ring be damned.