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Feeling rushed / ring ettiquette


kismetkismet

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This humiliates me to say because I've always thought of myself as pretty low maintenance as a girlfriend, but my boyfriend/fiancé just proposed and i'm feeling a little disappointed and rushed by the whole thing.

 

Firstly, he is an enormous sweetheart and has basically been asking me to marry him a couple of times a week since the first three months (something i'm told by his family he never did with his ex of 6 years). I knew I wanted to marry him after a couple of weeks and our families have basically already been planning our wedding. I'm 30 and he's 29, but I kept telling him that we didn't need to rush and that we should wait AT LEAST 1 year to a year and a half. We've been living together 8 months and I do know from the bottom of my heart that I want to marry him, but it feels like the whole thing is just being rushed.

 

Recently we went on holiday with my immediate family and he proposed while on it. Which sounds very romantic, only he did it unceremoniously when we were both pretty much black out drunk in our hotel room about to go to bed. I literally don't even KNOW if he got down on one knee it's all such a blur. He also proposed with a ring that his dad bought for his step mom when they first got engaged. He bought a small one because they were too poor to really get engaged and he had 3 little kids already. Now he's replaced it with a different ring so when my bf said he wanted to marry me but didn't have a lot of money he gave it to him.

 

Now, I have told him before that I don't want a super expensive ring or big diamond, and I DONT. I would rather have something that is meaningful to us and not a diamond than something expensive. But the ring feels more like something to rush over things rather than something meaningful to our relationship. I have quite a... unique style, I'm a designer/artist and have blue hair, wear a lot of tight black and platform boots with a touch of girly-ness and silliness. the ring is a very delicate yellow-gold band with a raised setting and about 3mm in diameter. It only fits on my pinky finger and i don't have delicate looking hands at all.

 

BUT I know that it came from love and an anxious desire to marry me. I feel HORRIBLY guilty about feeling this way at all. I thought that maybe we could reset the ring, or set it with another kind of stone that is meaningful/my style, but really cheap. But I don't want to be an ******* or have his parents think i'm ungrateful or shallow. I have a very good relationship with them and love them dearly.

 

So what is the etiquette on this?? Should i just get it resized and learn to love it? Should I see if we can do something different with it? It might actually be too small to safely resize.

 

(next up, how to convince him and our families we should wait an extra year to get married..)

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I hear you. Not that I'm the marrying type...but if I was, I'd want a ring which was ours. Or even an antique ring which we chose together. Having a family member's old ring just wouldn't work for me. I think the fact that the ring doesn't fit you is a great start for opening the conversation.

 

As for how to persuade the family members to delay the wedding a bit....that's easy. Just say "no" to the proposed date. Tell him (and them) that while you do want to marry, it's too rushed and you need more time.

 

If he can't accept that you want to rush the wedding, then you've got an indication that he cares more about his own needs than yours. In short, if he can't accept the delay, then a delay is even more necessary.

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thank you! And yes, I'm not even a wedding type really either. I thought i'd maybe get married one day, but it certainly wasn't something I 'aspired' to and I'd never really thought about what kind of wedding i might have at all. So it also feels weird to be feeling so unsettled by the details.

 

If he was the type to care more about his own needs in general than it might be more of a concern. But he's the kind of guy that makes me painstaking dinners every night, he anticipates my feelings and anxieties even before I do and does everything in his power to fix it (And I have plenty of those..) He's almost an impossibly perfect boyfriend/fiance, it seems the one thing that he can't anticipate is this. but THIS is kind of a big thing haha.

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Successful marriages are all about communication and it starts here.

 

If you can't express - or he won't hear - your very reasonable concerns about the ring and timing of the wedding, doesn't bode well for the future.

 

Speak your mind, these things have to work for you, not the families involved. If I was going to wear a ring every day for the rest of my life, I'd want it to be uniquely mine...

 

Mr. Lucky

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Thank you Mr. Lucky. I did talk to him the next day and I think he understands. I guess I just needed some reassurance that I wasn't being shallow and selfish over a ring because I'm too embarrassed to talk about it with anyone but him. I've always associated people freaking out over their ring with being concerned with the wrong part of what getting married means, and then suddenly I find myself upset over it.

 

I guess what it is, is that while I'm not shallow, I AM sentimental. And this rushed feeling proposal makes me feel like our relationship is being taken away from us almost. (The funny thing is he told my sister he was going to do it there 6 months ago.. )I want it to be about US, not the performative side of getting engaged. But then I also find myself feeling a little embarrassed when other people ask about how he proposed and the ring and such. I'm just feeling super conflicted. I will assert myself with the ring though. I do want to see us when I look it..

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  • 2 weeks later...

Totally agree with Lucky that communication can make or break a marriage.

 

How did he take the talk?

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...

 

So what is the etiquette on this?? Should i just get it resized and learn to love it? Should I see if we can do something different with it? It might actually be too small to safely resize.

 

(next up, how to convince him and our families we should wait an extra year to get married..)

 

Tell them you are waiting. If they press you, just say you've decided.

Yes, you accept the ring if you love the man. It is a symbol only, a symbol of love and commitment.

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I hear you. Not that I'm the marrying type...but if I was, I'd want a ring which was ours. Or even an antique ring which we chose together. Having a family member's old ring just wouldn't work for me. I think the fact that the ring doesn't fit you is a great start for opening the conversation.

 

As for how to persuade the family members to delay the wedding a bit....that's easy. Just say "no" to the proposed date. Tell him (and them) that while you do want to marry, it's too rushed and you need more time.

 

If he can't accept that you want to rush the wedding, then you've got an indication that he cares more about his own needs than yours. In short, if he can't accept the delay, then a delay is even more necessary.

Ultimately, this is a problem that is connected to the attitude about money. He couldn't afford a separate ring, so for what is arguably the most important thing he'll ever do in his life, he took the easy route and used a cheap a hand-me-down from from a family member.

 

Marry this guy, and you'd better get used to living this way. I'm not saying that money is all-important, but your attitude vs. his speaks to a mismatch in the approach to getting what you want. You feel this inside. Your guilt is probably you confusing your genuine reaction with materialistic greed. It isn't.

 

I'll also note for the record that his father didn't dissuade him from this path, and in fact, rolled out the red carpet; i.e., the apple did not fall far from the tree.

 

Search your feelings on this and trust your instincts.

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If he was the type to care more about his own needs in general than it might be more of a concern. But he's the kind of guy that makes me painstaking dinners every night, he anticipates my feelings and anxieties even before I do and does everything in his power to fix it (And I have plenty of those..) He's almost an impossibly perfect boyfriend/fiance, it seems the one thing that he can't anticipate is this. but THIS is kind of a big thing haha.

 

You don't deserve him. I'm being serious. He treats you like gold and wants to continue doing so for the rest of his life, but here you are whining because the ring he was given to use as something of a family heirloom isn't good enough? Really?

 

Time was a woman would be happy to receive the ring her fiance's father gave to his wife regardless of it's size or monetary value.

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yeah I agree...consider yourself lucky to have someone who loves you so much. Imagine how you would feel if you were him and knew the way you were talking about the ring and engagement.

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The last two responses are shocking to me. She's been feeling rushed, the guy proposes while blackout drunk, the ring she's supposed to wear for the rest of her life doesn't even fit and she should just shrug her shoulders and go along with it? It isn't about being ungrateful, it's about some of the most important moments of her life blowing past without any consideration for her feelings.

 

(Oh, and a guy who ignores her repeated insistence to date for at least a year prior to engagement and then proposes while sh-tfaced is not treating her like gold. Not even close.)

 

It sounds like the OP and her fiance never agreed on their expectations for engagement, marriage, etc, which is the real problem here. Things like "I'd like to spend a year together before we commit more fully" or "I would like to show you the specific rings I like" are completely fair.

 

If you're going to survive this you will need to communicate about it. There are no shortcuts to this one. I wish you luck.

Edited by lana-banana
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You don't deserve him. I'm being serious. He treats you like gold and wants to continue doing so for the rest of his life

 

That may indeed be the way he feels but marriage is two people. She's been pretty up front with him about the timing but he's not listening.

 

Not a good start and I doubt many would recommend the OP proceed until she truly feels ready...

 

Me. Lucky

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Yes, I'm not concerned about the size of the ring, I'm concerned about the meaning and the sentiment behind it all..

 

We've talked about it and I've thought about it a lot and I understand where he was coming from a bit better now. In explaining this to all of you I should have made it more clear how anti-traditional wedding I am - in that we've had numerous discussions about how insane it is that people spend the cost of a downpayment for a home on a ring and spend upwards of 20k on the wedding. We've always said that we'll have pie instead of expensive cake, I won't wear a proper wedding dress etc. etc. and that I'd rather spend money on a cool travelling honeymoon than an expensive ring. So it's understandable that he didn't think that it would bother me. I should have been more clear that I wanted a ring that represented our relationship, but i didn't really think about it because I never thought about the fact that he might get it from someone else. For me I AM attached to the sentiment of the wedding, just not the material side of things - and I expressed that to him so that we're more clear going forward.

 

I did tell him I wanted a ring that was for 'us' and started looking at other rings, but I don't care enough about any jewelry to spend the amount of money that engagement rings cost.

 

As for timing - I now just want to do it this summer anyway. I think that waiting until next year would just make me more stressed out about it/put more pressure on the day.

 

And for the proposal - apparently he had been planning an elaborate proposal for months (and talking about it extensively with his friends and my sister), and then went and botched it. He'd told his friends he was going to do it in the water because I'm obsessed with the ocean - and then realized that was a terrible idea.. then wanted to do it on a day when we were alone on the trip and we never were. Plus he asked for my dad's permission at the very beginning of the trip and then my dad kept harassing him to do it quickly so that we could celebrate. Then when we were drunk apparently I was teasing him because he was saying "I wanna marry you, are you gonna marry me?" and I was like "I dunno! You're gonna have to propose to find out" whereas I normally just say of course..

 

Then I think that the pressure of having to tell people and my family trying to plan it for me overwhelmed me and I went into a panic. I hate having attention on me and am terrible at public displays of sentiment. It's helped me realize that I need to focus on planning a wedding that is not very bride-centric and more about the gathering of everyone than a spectacle.

 

All in all - it was not ideal by any means, but we've talked it through and having had time to think about it I'm happy with how things are.

 

Thank you to everyone for your input! It helped to know that my concerns about the ring and proposal weren't just me being shallow even though talking it through helped me to understand where it was coming from.

 

(by the way just to reiterate - he did wait as long as I'd asked him to propose, we'd been together 14 months and I'd said to wait a year to a year and a half)

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