lumpkin
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- May 24, 2005
- Messages
- 2,491
There have been several posts about this topic so I thought I’d share this story for all the women out there who are feeling that their engagement rings are “less than” other people’s, that perhaps their fiancé held back too much, and that other people are going to judge them because their fiancé didn’t get the biggest diamond. Okay, here goes, this is the story of my great diamond debacle.
Eighteen years ago, my husband and I moved in together. We had a wonderful courtship and he was so loving and affectionate and unlike anyone I had ever been involved with. We were very compatable and enjoyed the same things and "got" each other''s humor. He was divorced and I had never been married. He had a very miserable marriage that ended after five years. He was very reticent to get remarried, but said he felt I was “the one for him.” I was crazy about him and still love him deeply now.
The day we moved my things into his house with his parents'' help, my mother, who had told me she was all for the two of us moving in together, made an announcement in front of my husband’s parents. She said that if he didn’t think enough to marry me, she didn’t see much future in the relationship. It was totally unexpected and utterly humiliating. In fact, that single act set the tone for many years of insecurity (on my part) and a not very good beginning with my in-laws (go Mom -- NOT).
After several months of the cold shoulder from my family I pressed my husband to buy an engagement ring. At least that way everyone would know he was serious about me. So we started to do some research (by 1988 standards) and I mentioned the two month salary “rule.” His reaction stunned me and I never mentioned it again, fearing that he would perceive my desire for a nicely sized diamond as gold digging or something like that. I got a pretty ring. But it was VERY much smaller than I would have liked. At the same time I had two co-workers who got engaged and they each got over a carat and they were, 1) younger than I, and 2) their fiancés seemed less successful than mine. One of them even commented to me in a snooty tone that her “fiancé would never think of getting less than a carat.” And here I was with a 33 pointer that could not even be seen clearly in our wedding photos (the close up of the hands). So it got planted in my mind that I had settled for a ring that told the world that my fiancé was reluctant to marry me and that I wasn’t very valuable to him.
A few months after our wedding I upgraded the center stone. I paid for the upgrade myself.
A few years later I bought a 1.5 carat CZ and had it set in a two tone 14k setting.
A few years later I went back to wearing my upgraded wedding set.
In all this time, my husband has never treated me with disrespect, never cheated on me, never raised a hand to me, and seldom raised his voice to me. Wouldn''t you think that would be enough? Well, aparently not for me. I was still insecure about my wedding set, of all things.
For our 15 year anniversary I found my current setting. I put it in layaway, but when I showed it to my husband he paid for it and we set my long ago upgraded center stone in it. I should have left it alone right there, but I didn''t. Along the way we had found an oval and we decided to put that in the setting. It was 1.14 carats. Then I found a 2.0 carat pear and decided to sell the oval and get that. I had it for several years and I realized a few things.
Having a large diamond did not make anyone think my husband loved me any more than they thought he loved me when I had my previous rings. All they had to do was see how he treats me to know how he feels. However, since we have kids and money is an issue that it was not before, perhaps they may have thought *I* was selfish for spending money on myself that could have been spent more wisely elsewhere.
I found that a lot of WEALTHY women I met did not own large diamonds, and it began to feel very ostentatious to wear such a large diamond.
I had had to sacrifice a certain amount of quality to get the large diamond and I became dissatisfied with it. I spent money having it set in several different settings to come to that conclusion.
Both of those co-workers who had originally gotten the big diamonds had had some serious tragedies in their lives. One lost a toddler to a childhood illness and the other never married the fiancé that got her that big diamond. So having a big diamond does not ensure you will have a golden marriage and a life without challenges, heartache and tragedy.
I’m sick about the money I spent to come to the conclusion that a bigger diamond did not make me feel the way I thought it was going to make me feel. In the end I traded the big pear in on a much smaller, much better quality diamond and put it in my current setting. I feel so much better about it and I don’t feel awkward about wearing my ring in front of people who know we aren’t rolling in money, and at the same time, it is as beautiful as anything I''ve ever come across in real life, so I''m not feeling my ring is "less than" anyone else''s.
I don’t know if my story will help those of you who are feeling badly about your diamonds, but I hope it will (especially since this story is something I could never bear to tell people in my real life -- I would honestly be too ashamed). Having a smaller diamond than your friend does not mean your fiancé loves you less than hers loves her, or values you less. Honestly, the only thing it means is that she has a bigger diamond. Period. Do some honest soul searching and really think about your relationship. There may be a ton of reasons why they felt the need for such a large diamond – family pressure, maybe they actually do have a lot more disposable income, maybe they know or are related to someone in the diamond industry, and maybe (unfortunately) the relationship isn''t that solid and they are compensating. Or maybe, just maybe, they have overextended just to compete with the Jones. I just hope you won’t come full circle like I have and regret spending money needlessly only to find out that a diamond, though really beautiful and maybe a passion, is really just a rock, and size is nice, but having a really nice diamond that is smaller than other women’s is still very wonderful and really okay.
I could relate to so much of what you said right NOW since I just did get the big diamond and in some ways am already regretting it. Since I want the big diamond for the tricks it does and not so much for a fashion statement I really am not interested in any other diamond but I''m just going to have to figure a way to reconcile it. Ostentatious nails it for me. I HATE that and I don''t want to play into that at all, even if my motives are different. No one else knows that. Ugh. I''m so conflicted!!! I am lucky that I don''t attrbute my husband''s love with the size of the diamond. I think the long wait eliminated that. It showed *HIM* that I loved him enough to not ned a diamond at all 
300x240.png)