Would You Be Pissed If You Didn’t Get a Diamond Engagement Ring?

When my now-husband, Chris, and I decided to get engaged, he was making peanuts as a line cook at a busy New York City restaurant. Since his salary didn’t exactly scream “baller” and our rent was high, I told him that I didn’t want a diamond ring.

I meant it—it made zero sense to put him in a bad financial position just so I could sport a flashy rock on my finger. And since his finances would eventually merge with mine, I was even less psyched about the prospect of a pricey ring.

Most people I talked to thought it was “awesome” and “ballsy” of me to buck tradition—they’d never even thought of getting engaged with anything other than a honking diamond. One friend even jokingly said, “I actually feel less cool now for having a diamond ring.”

But one friend of a friend wasn’t so impressed. “I don’t get it,” she told me after we met at a party. “Don’t you think you deserve a diamond?”

Nope. Absolutely not.

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Don’t get me wrong: I’m not anti-diamond engagement rings. Many of my friends have gorgeous rocks that they love, and I love that they love them. It just wasn’t for me—I couldn’t get my head around the fact that I just had to have a certain type of ring to show that Chris really cared about me.

Curious to know where our diamond fetish came from, I reached out to Ira Weissman, founder of the diamond educational website, The Diamond Pro. He says that while rings have been a common engagement gift for ages, before the 1940s, the idea of giving a diamond engagement ring was practically unheard of. The concept was actually created by a famous diamond company, which had just discovered a massive stock of diamonds that far exceeded the current demand. They teamed up with a popular ad agency to try to increase the global demand, and the “A diamond is forever” campaign was born. 

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“The brilliance of this line is that it speaks to both men and women…in politically incorrect gender lines,” says Weissman.

In addition to the marketing campaign, the company did celebrity product placements and even gave lectures in high schools around the country on the importance of a diamond engagement ring. Seriously.

Clearly, it worked. In 2012 alone, Americans spent nearly $11 billion on diamond engagement rings and jewelry, according to Bain Company’s 2013 Global Diamond Industry Report.

But for men like Chris who aren’t rolling in it when they’re ready to propose, the expectation that they’ll pop the q with a huge diamond is incredibly stressful. And that’s no way to kick off happily ever after.

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I took the practical stance when we went ring shopping and flat-out told Chris that I just wanted something affordable, but marriage and family therapist Jane Greer, Ph.D., says there’s a more delicate way to approach the conversation. “Make it about what you want, rather than implying that he can’t afford it,” she says. “You can say something like, ‘If you had all the money in the world and could buy me a $10,000 diamond, I’d still love to have a ruby.’”

When he proposed, Chris made a point of saying that he planned to get me a diamond one day. He’s talked about doing it several times since then, and I’ve stopped him every time. And even though he proposed years ago, Chris has said several times that he feels bad that he never gave me a diamond.

That’s just messed up.

I got the man and a pretty engagement ring. And that’s good enough for me.

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