Some people flex their love with price tags, and others do it with effort. He wasn’t trying to impress his girlfriend with a diamond; he was trying to show her who he is and what kind of marriage he was offering.
But her reaction to his proposal exposed how differently they see what commitment looks like in the first place, and they just might be incompatible.
For close to four years now, this 28-year-old man has been dating his 27-year-old girlfriend. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t believe in marriage, but it’s incredibly important to his girlfriend.
He thinks that tying the knot is pricey and meaningless, but after he realized his girlfriend felt the opposite about it, he changed his mind.
Well, he didn’t change his views on marriage, but he resolved to marry her since it was obviously something that would make her feel happy and secure, and that’s what’s most important to him.
When his girlfriend addressed getting married, he made her a promise that he would propose within a set time frame, and she never spoke about it again.
“My reason for this is because, as I understand it, marriage is a symbolic gesture, and I, for one, acknowledge the importance of symbolism in our lives and how it affects us,” he explained.
“For that reason, I decided to symbolize my devotion to her and our relationship, and my willingness to do anything for her, by literally forging the rings myself. It was not that I couldn’t afford to buy a fancy ring.”
“I’m pretty well off and could easily buy one, but what message would that symbol send? To me, buying a ring was like saying that monetary or material value would be at the center of our relationship, and not hard work and effort. This has always been reflected in our relationship through the kinds of gifts I’d give her.”
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He’s never once purchased lavish presents for his girlfriend. He prefers to make her things by hand, and so he resolved to do that with their rings.
It took him three or four months to learn how to work with different precious metals, and then he opted to make their rings with gold.
He definitely failed more than he succeeded, but in the end, he made a ring for her and a ring for him. He even engraved them both with the first messages they had sent one another.
This sounds pretty insane, but he was trying to be thoughtful with his over-the-top efforts. I mean, this is certainly the first time I have ever heard of a guy making his own engagement ring by hand.
“The reason I went through all this trouble was for the rings themselves to be symbols of unwavering love and devotion, that we would work together to build the life that we both wanted with our own two hands, that marriage would take a lot of effort but would be worth it in the end,” he continued.
“The first thing that came out of her mouth when I got down on a knee and proposed marriage was, in verbatim, ‘How much did this cost? Where’s the diamond? Did you get this off a pawnshop?’ This was after I explained the symbolic meaning.”
“And that kind of pulled down the curtains for me, so to speak. I told her I’d get new rings, but at this point I’m not sure I wanna marry her at all.”
Neither of them was necessarily wrong, but they weren’t aligned, and that matters more than gold or diamonds ever could. If he’s questioning marriage now, that’s a big red flag, and it sounds like it’s best for him not to walk down the aisle.
Sometimes, the test of a relationship isn’t how grand the proposal is, but how someone reacts when the love you offer doesn’t look the way they imagined it would.
What advice do you have for him?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
