Do you wear a wedding ring? If so, in what circumstances do you consider it acceptable to remove it?
At the time of writing, I am in Australia. My wedding ring, however, is 11,000 miles away at home.
It’s not the first time I’ve found myself in this situation. I also made a brief visit to Australia last year without my wife and family.
Before going, I informed my wife my wedding ring would be staying in Blighty. No, my intention was not to live out some seedy fantasy, pretending to be unmarried while sidling up to bronzed Sheilas in Melbourne’s bars. If anything, the reverse was true.
My thinking was both highly personal and practical. My wedding ring means a lot to me. The potential risk of losing it while so far from home filled me with dread.
I’m not perfect. I have mislaid my wedding ring in the past. Thankfully it has always turned up.
In fact there was one occasion that’s become family folklore. Several winters ago, my ring came off while I was digging the car out of a snowy car park. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find it.
In the back of the car was a large cardboard box. Using a spade, I filled the box full of snow from the area where I thought the ring had landed.
I drove this snowy / icy mix home and chucked it in the bath to defrost. Sure enough, my ring was encased within it and it dropped out when the snow and ice melted.
Not that I would encounter snow in Australia at this time of year, but If I had a similar experience, the ring would probably be lost forever. It’s not a risk I want to take.
Okay, at the end of the day, it is only a piece of jewelry. Many men choose not to wear one at all.
Physically it would be easy to replace and, yes, it is merely a symbol of marriage. It does, nonetheless, have sentimental value. I therefore feel it better not to wear my ring on such occasions.
I keep meaning to get a cheap alternative. Something made of steel that I can wear while travelling.
It’s just one of those many jobs I never get around to doing. Until I do, on the odd occasion I find myself thousands of miles from home, I’ll be doing it with no ring on my finger and an obvious mark where one should be.
Would you feel comfortable with your spouse travelling overseas without wearing their wedding ring? Are you liberal about wearing a ring? Finally, what lengths have you gone to retrieve your lost wedding ring? Bet you’ve never had to retrieve one from a huge chunk of snowy ice!
6 thoughts on “When is it acceptable to remove your wedding ring?”
What a great article. Its amazing what a small band of metal can mean to a person I have only been married for just under two years and that ring has more sentimental value to me than most things I own. Fortunatly I have never lost my wedding ring and i think the major factor contributing to this is that I never take it off for the fear of losing it. However you have a massive valid reason not to take your ring half way around the world imagine loosing it on a Australian beach people would look at you a bit funny taking a box of sand to your hotel room to sieve it out to find your ring.
Yeah, based on my previous track record, returning to my hotel room with a box of sand would probably be the result. That said, I an thinking of getting a cheap copper ring to wear when overseas.
A very interesting piece. I have never been precious about wearing my wedding ring.
I developed an allergy to my original yellow gold band, and then had a platinum one which I never work at work when I was a clinical Practitioner, and worked in casualty and theatre.
I used to wear to work and then take off when I arrived but stopped that after I left pinned to inside the pocket of my scrubsone day, and it almost ended up in the hospital laundry! I also do a bit of acting and rarely wear on stage unless character calls of it. So off and lost again !!
Then 2 years ago I fell and fractured my elbow. I removed my ring straight away as my hand was swelling,,and didn’t want to have to cut it off… I haven’t worn it since, apart from odd special occasion, as my finger swells and I can’t get it off
Wow, so many stories there! In truth, I think you can get too attached to these things. That said, if you can avoid the risk of loosing a piece of emotionally valuable jewelry by not taking it to the other side of the world, best leave it at home I think.
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Thanks for your share. Some of my friends lost their wedding ring in travel, so I don’t recommend to wear a real one when you are in travel, if you want to show that you are married, you could wear a imitate ring.