Ending a relationship with someone you planned to marry is a really tough thing to go through. There's a lot to unpack there — one day you think you're getting married, and the next you might never speak to that person again. There are also a lot of practical details to attend to, especially if you were far down the path toward planning the wedding. For a lot of couples, figuring out what to do with the engagement ring is one of those practical details.
A man recently wrote on Reddit that he and his fiancée decided to end their relationship. Like many couples, they discovered that the pressure of the current health crisis revealed a lot about what wasn't working.
He explained: "Me (35M) and my (33F) ex-fiancée recently broke up. At first we blamed all our issues on lockdown but turns out lockdown just revealed how [expletive] the relationship was. We had too many problems that couldn't be resolved and lockdown really made us confront them."
He says they didn't agree about ending things, and that made everything a lot harder.
"Unfortunately, my ex didn't see it that way. Even though we had extensive conversations about how we don't want the same things out of life and had the same fight about immediate future plans over and over, she didn't want to break up and wanted to keep trying. When I refused to back down from ending things, she got very angry and very bitter."
His ex got so mad that she even threw the engagement ring he gave her into the trash. So he decided that he'd keep it, but turn it into something else.
"So, I shouldn't have been surprised to find the engagement ring in the garbage. But I was, and I was hurt. I don't know what I expected, that she would sell it or something I guess, but I never thought she'd throw it out. So I took it, cleaned it off, and I kept it. I saved up for months to buy that ring and while I was fine with her keeping it, I don't want to see it totally wasted."
He adds that he doesn't want to give it to someone else down the road, he just wants to make something nice out of it.
"I figured that in a few years I'd get it turned into something else. I don't know what, but I don't see any reason to waste the materials. It's been well over a month since I moved out and took the ring with me, and she and I have never spoken about it."
Unfortunately … it's not that easy.
"Well a few days ago a mutual friend told me that my ex was talking about how she shouldn't have thrown out the ring because she didn't like the idea of it being lost in a landfill. I told the friend that I'd fished it out and planned on repurposing it in a few years."
Apparently, both the friend and his ex now think that his plan is "disrespectful."
"Now both the friend and my ex are saying I'm an [expletive], that turning it into something else is disrespectful to her and the relationship and that I have no right. My ex hasn't asked for it back, but even if she had, I kinda feel like she forfeited her right to it when she threw it out? If she wanted it so bad she could've taken it out of the trash before I did, and it's not like she went looking for it. I don't know."
The guy is wondering if his friend and ex are right: Is it OK for him to repurpose the engagement ring that his ex threw away?
People were quick to reassure the man that it was fine, but that telling his friend, and by extension, his ex, about the ring was the mistake.
"…you should NOT have told her friend you kept the ring. That's another reason your ex can use to keep contacting you, and sounds like you all need distance."
Other commenters are surprised the situation has even escalated this far.
"What?! Have they both lost their ever-lovin mind? She threw it out… in the trash. It really doesn't get more disrespectful than that. You dodged a bullet on the marriage. Perhaps you need to do the same on this friendship if their judgment is that impaired. Best to you."
Traditional etiquette dictates that the engagement ring is returned to the person who gave it, if the other partner is the one who initiated the break-up, or if that's what the couple agrees on. If the person who gave the engagement ring is the one who ends things, then traditionally the other person gets to decide what to do with the ring.
However, that doesn't really make throwing the ring away a great choice. Plenty of people think it was a pretty immature move on his ex's part, and it sounds like his ex would agree.
"What your ex did was very childish and insensitive, so much so that she realised the mistake of her haste actions later. The ring no more represents your unity and since she clearly doesn't want it anymore you should be free to do what you want with an object you spent so much effort in buying."
Another person echoed this idea, and pointed out the hypocrisy in the situation:
"So… You repurposing something she considered trash, is disrespectful to the relationship. But her considering the ring trash in the first place… Is not disrespectful to the relationship? Even if it was in the heat of the moment, her reaction to the breakup cannot be justified this way. I have anger issues and am hot-headed as well, but I would never ever do something that childish."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
