[Ed. This is an interesting article because of the differences on how men & women vary on different topics... like this one!]
May 30, 2004
Bridging the Engagement-Ring Divide
By JEFF OPDYKE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy and I got engaged in Los Angeles in 1991, when I surprised her by buying a diamond ring while shopping for something else, and then proposing to her on the spot.
The ring was small and terribly flawed. The cost: a bit more than $700 -- all the money I had.
Amy loved it, and still does today.
I bring this up because I have some friends who are in the midst of buying engagement rings, and they're tormented by the process. How much to spend? How big? What cut? What color? What clarity? Gold? Platinum? And the big one: Is it what she wants?
Some men think they have it a bit easier because their girlfriends have dictated the ring's minimum qualifications. Easier, perhaps, but equally distressing: Those qualifications often differ dramatically from the guys' original plans.
It all boils down to one of the bigger divides between men and women. At the risk of playing to stereotypes, I believe that to most guys, a ring embodies nothing more profound than his desire to share this life with this woman. And many men would like to express this desire in a relatively affordable way. But women see it a bit differently: They feel a diamond should also make a grand statement, a rock among pebbles that they can brazenly wave about in front of friends and family in some unspoken declaration: "This is how much he loves me."
The result is a serious disconnect that can leave both sides unhappy. Men are left feeling that they spent too much or that a simple act of love has been taken from their control. Women are left feeling that the expression of love they sought fell far short of what they were hoping for.
Is this any way to start happily ever after?
* * *
At the crux of engagement-ring angst is the theory -- perpetuated in part by a specious marketing ploy -- that the proper diamond should cost the equivalent of three months' salary. The expectation that only a well-heeled diamond is good enough to symbolize love instead symbolizes the chasm often separating men and women.
For instance, a friend of mine says that when her boyfriend asked if she expected a $10,000 ring one day, she didn't have the heart to tell him, "No, silly boy, I expect one that's $25,000."
Her boyfriend sees engagement rings as many guys do: "Some women," he says, "are under the mistaken notion that diamonds and jewelry are good investments, like stocks and real estate." In reality, "they're more like time shares: bought in the heat of the moment with lots of emotion and promises, and instantly worth substantially less than you paid for it."
Nor, I would argue, is size commensurate with love. If that were the case, the folks who drop tens of thousands of dollars on a flawless hunk of crystallized carbon would never face divorce.
So if an engagement ring isn't an investment and doesn't measure love, why should size matter?
In talking to a number of female friends, many women battle a great deal of internal turmoil when it comes to that question -- tugged on one side by cultural conventions and ego and on the other by a desire to relieve the cost pressures on the men they love.
Clearly, some women are swayed by the latter. Susan, a friend in San Francisco, says that when she got married, her fiancé "was living hand-to-mouth in grad school, and it seemed deeply, deeply unfair to make him buy some expensive diamond." To her, he seemed tortured: "He wanted to get me something big that he thought I wanted, and I was stressed because I didn't want him to feel he had to do that."
So ingrained is this notion that marriage must be paired with a grand diamond that Susan says her family kept asking, "'Where's the hardware?' They didn't believe he was going to marry me because he didn't buy some big diamond." In the end, Susan and her fiancé opted for a smaller, less expensive sapphire that means just as much.
Still, for many women, a pricey diamond remains the price of admission. Dee Anna, another San Francisco friend, says that while inexpensive diamonds are fine when you marry young and are just starting out in life, the calculus changes with age. She's 35 and getting married later this year for the first time. "When you're in a better financial situation and earning a good salary and sitting on a lot of cash you've saved, then it says something if you don't want to spend up to buy a nice diamond," she says. Dee Anna, after much negotiation with her fiancé who wanted to spend less, has $25,000 worth of nice diamond.
The wife of a colleague of mine puts it more bluntly. Her rule: "Over 30, over a carat."
What is it, though, guys like me wonder, that makes women think that costlier is better in the context of marriage?
"Bragging rights," says my friend Alex, who married 17 years ago when her husband was a public servant. He bought her a small, affordable diamond that, Alex says, "was lovely." In recent years, though, she upgraded the diamond because "even though you don't gauge love through material things, as a woman, a nice diamond is your way of telling the world you're loved." (This issue of upgrading a diamond is a subject I'll return to in a future column.)
* * *
I'm going to go out on a limb here -- and no doubt incur the wrath of many. But to me, presenting an engagement ring is the height of romantic gestures, and I don't believe women should play much of a role in its purchase. Other than announcing a preference on metal or a stone's cut, they shouldn't dictate its precise design. And they certainly should not mandate its expected value.
An engagement ring represents a guy's commitment to the woman in his life, not his commitment to make her ring finger stand apart amid her friends and family. The value of the ring is in its sentiment, represented by the effort a man puts into its selection, not the dollars he puts into its acquisition.
I know, women fear that men are clueless when it comes to selection. Some of us are. But my friend Debra sums it up pretty well: "If he knows you, he knows what you like. And if he doesn't, he's smart enough to talk to your friends about what you like. Give him a chance; guys aren't totally dumb."
For all my friends now hunting for engagement rings, I offer this: Be romantic and act alone. Don't worry about bragging rights, and feel free to ignore the supposed conventional wisdom on what a ring should cost.
It should cost what you can afford. No more. No less.
http://sacbee.wsj.com/articles/SB108...683724605.html
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