Dear Married Guys: Put Your Ring Back On
I was under the impression that married men wore rings. Does that make me old fashioned? Short story: I was all about it when an attractive guy with a no wedding band of any kind started to chat me up at an art show last month. He complimented my blue eyes – classic – and tried his best to convince me that lawyers were decent human beings by telling me about how he reads books to second graders at an underprivileged school in town. Swoon worthy, right?
He was attractive, found me “disarmingly charming” and had an extensive collection of Bob Dylan records. I was amazed that I had found such a catch and was all but putting my number in his phone when a gorgeous blonde in a wrap dress walked up to us. She draped her arm around his shoulders and all but put threw the massive rock on her left hand in my face. The glimmer of hope that maybe she was his sister and they were what, super close? quickly slipped away when she kissed him long enough to make it clear she was in fact his wife.
I was perplexed. Offended almost, that this guy who I had just spent the better part of the night getting to know was married, and his wife was looking at me like I was a stripper who showed up at the wrong bachelor party. I willed myself to just bow out gracefully but I don’t know, something not good came over me and I blurted out, “Wow, so you’re married. Good to know.”
The married man held his naked left hand up with a ridiculous smirk on his face and said, “You know, I’m not really into jewelry. Sorry you got the wrong impression.”
Not really into jewelry? Wrong impression? How was I to get the right impression? I was outraged. He had just carried on I then did what any woman would do and I texted and called my best girlfriends, filling them in on this menace to society. That’s when I became even more outraged. My friends had similar stories; some had stories that were far worse! They had heard every reason for not wearing a ring you could ever imagine:
I took it off for work and forgot.
My wife said I didn’t have to.
It’s so bulky.
Wearing jewelry makes me feel like a girl.
It messes with my golf swing.
Married men, a wedding band is not jewelry. It’s a wedding band. A symbol. You wear it to show your commitment to your wife, all the unconditional love that’s (hopefully) there and the future you look forward to sharing together. Why not wear it for that very purpose? You said the vows in front of God and everybody – choose your choice.
If nothing else, wear the ole’ band to tell single gals like me that you aren’t available because believe me, we notice the existence of a ring within the first 5-7 seconds. It’s one thing to chat it up innocently at a party, but to carry on for hours while saying things like “You’re gorgeous” while leaning in like you want to get to know me on a Biblical level is too much. Sure, there are exceptions on both sides of the story – guys who go bandless to appear single and girls who rather go after a married man – but lest we get a bad rep, most of the bachelorettes I know rather not spark interest in a married man. They find the guys who choose not to wear one for a number of erroneous reasons frustrating – false advertising, if you will.
So to bring this all full circle, I saw attractive married man from the art show in line for coffee a couple Thursdays ago. He was with his wife, laughing about something on her phone and guess what? He was wearing his wedding band.
