Diamonds aren’t special and neither is love
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Being in love does feel earth-shatteringly special, unimaginably unique, irreplaceable; but the author is right that that’s how everyone in love feels.
I don’t think that cheapens love, or means that my love for my spouse is “less” because others feel symmetrically the same, or even because I could have felt it with someone else, too.
I think that is what it is to be in love: an overwhelming all-consuming feeling of everything being one-of-a-kind and precious and Right. Thank God it’s not impossibly rare, or only possible under the most specific circumstances!
(This is not to say that love is easy or feels like that all the time—it takes a lot of work, but that work feels worth it and important because of how it feels during the moments when it does come effortlessly.)
This was the part that really resonated for me enough to share the article. We live in societies that simultaneously make love and marriage the end point of every movie, while also all being insanely cynical of the whole institution. So I think there is some kind of rationalization going on in our heads trying to handle the fact that we don’t believe in marriage, yet we’re getting married!
It is common in many countries where De Beers, A British-South African company, marketed diamonds.
'A Diamond is Forever' is very well known advertising slogan. So much so that it was voted as the top advertising slogan of the 20th Century.
It's even used for a James Bond film title.
Since you haven't said which country is your part of the world it's hard to judge whether it's common there too or not.
I live in Europe and in my experience a stone in a wedding ring is very uncommon.
At least that is how it was when I was young; fifty years ago.
:-)
Wait, these are different rings? You have two of them? In Russia, people don't propose to each other kneeling with a ring like they do in American movies. They exchange rings at the wedding registration, and those rings usually don't have any stones in them.
You wear the band all the time, the fancy one as well when you want to dress up.
Well, in Russian there're definitely words for "obruchal'noye" I "svadebnoye" rings, so they aren't the same. Agree when my parents got married in the USSR, there was only the wedding band. But somehow the history of Russia and its language has both.
In many cultures, the engagement is a commitment to a marriage and is signified with a ring, and then the wedding itself is signified with another ring. As the other person said, the engagement ring is generally more ornate that the wedding one.
The engagement ring signifies among other things, a hefty commitment and seriousness about getting married. The wedding band signifies the infinity you'll spend together. In Judaism, the wedding ring is meant to be completely plain to not mar the infinity aspect of it in any way.
My parents married in the GDR during early-mid 80s, for them big diamond rings were definitely out (since one wouldn't have been able to get one anyway) and AFAICT they still really like their old wedding rings from back then: gold, not that wide, the surface looks kinda woven and each ring has three or four tiny specks of diamond integrated into the weaving pattern of the gold.
OT:
Growing up watching TV series' from abroad (US, UK etc.) I always wondered why people would throw around huge amounts of money for engagement rings (i.e. not even the real wedding ring), then spend thousands or more likely tens of thousands on a wedding, hundreds or more likely thousands on a wedding dress (which will only be worn for one day anyway) and on and on...
It just doesn't make sense to me spending such a huge amount of money making a committed relationship official when what actually matters is the sentiment between the significant others not some pathetic posturing in front of "friends and family".
What is especially ridiculous is that people get away with calling it "the happiest day of your life". Think about it: if it really is, then there is not much to expect after marriage. It's time people start changing their attitude to this ritual and focus more on understanding the ways they could make each one happier in the long term.
A wedding rings themselves are plain bands of metal, in my experience.
There are several comments in this thread saying that this trend is specific to the US or specific to America interchangeably.
The cost/expectations for these life events seem to spiral in direct proportion to how much so-called-reality TV is broadcast. Idiots outdoing other idiots because they are on television, and a viewing public seeing more of it and believing it represents some kind of norm.
On a general note, I wish people could say "XXX isn't common in [insert your region]", instead of "I guess XXX is an American thing". There are countries outside North America and Europe.
The ideal proposal object would be a thing that costs a billion dollars and loses 90% of that value as soon as you buy it. That would demonstrate both that your fianceé is a multi-billionaire, and if for some reason he/they dumps you, you're still more than set for life.
patio11 has talked about the situation in Japan, where, if I recall correctly, expensive engagement rings are not [as much] a thing, but the ability to plan a long honeymoon (taking extended time away from in-person work, since that is or was the norm) is a much stronger signal of status that everyone's impressed by.
Or maybe it's generational. Either way, none of my friends or family in the UK seem to have gone in for this stuff. That's not to say that there have been no diamond rings, just no stupidly gaudy rocks.
Perhaps it's down to changing traditions - the "big day" is no longer the start of life for a couple, they've usually been living together for some time, may even have kids already. And perhaps it's down to changing gender roles, now that most couples have two earners, the 'signal' you talk about may be out of place. It certainly seems old fashioned.
Either way, I don't think diamonds are important as once they were.
If I marry my current partner in a traditional ceremony, any diamonds involved will be synthetic, because science is amazing and De Beers are manipulative exploiters.
that is a terrible way to describe your partner ;)
Interesting cultural take on wealth. When I think wealth, I'm not thinking about someone who wastes their money on investments that lose money. I'm thinking about someone whose assets actually make money. This is like drinking poison as a show of good health.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite
Diamonds are tainted in the modern world. It costs nothing for the internet to reveal that they're actually not that rare, that lots of corrupt practices go into making them expensive, and that there are perfectly acceptable alternatives.
Gems and workable gold allows are not that expensive.
I mention this because my wife is extremely unassuming, and socially and environmentally conscious, and she still couldn't shake the diamond thing. She was 100 percent aware of this and it bothered her but in the end decided it mattered to her nevertheless. We ended up getting a small polar bear diamond: the metalwork (by a local metal artist) is really more what you'd notice about her ring.
I'm still not sure what it was, nor is she. If I had to guess now it's that for her, once you decide to have a gem, it's all the same issues at some level, so why not use the one that has personal meaning for you, whatever that is, for whatever reason? We looked into synthetics, but at the time they weren't actually available. I think if there weren't other options she might have went with a repurposed stone? Maybe no stone?
Moissonite is a great option, one I wish were more used. We learned about it from the metalsmith who made our rings, and I noticed recently she had stopped actively promoting them.
I think to see a shift from diamonds, these types of conversations just need to happen repeatedly more than everyone thinks. The idea needs to be suggested when people are very young that different symbolic expressions of marriage are fine, and that what's important is whatever is meaningful to the members of the couple. By the time people are adults the schemas might already be indelibly fixed.
But then again who knows what marriage and commitment will be like for my daughter. I don't envy the young in certain ways.
It's not really bullshit to want something but wrestle with the ethics of it, or to balance different options. Like I said, she probably would have went with a repurposed stone or none if we exhausted other options.
Moissonite for her was this thing she had never heard of, something that didn't have meaning outside of a substitute for something else. It was untested. Heck, my guess is if she lost her stone she'd probably be fine getting a moissonite stone as a replacement now just because it's been settling in her head for years and years now.
In the end this is just me inferring how she feels. From my standpoint, I just wanted to do what she'd be satisfied with... which is another angle on the issue.
Just to add later: she did like the color and brilliance of moissonite. I remember her worrying about the hardness and not having an intuitive sense of how durable it was. I think if someone had been able to say "this has the same hardness as diamond" scientifically speaking she would have been ok? I have no idea. It was a strange gem to her and she was just as skeptical of it as she was about claims of any given diamond's provenance, ethics wise.
It's fascinating to hear how people react to that over the years, mainly along the lines of "I wish I'd been that brave". So there's definitely a social pressure to conform.
I suspect this has already happened to some extent; diamonds are on the list of things that the dastardly millennials are no longer buying enough of, along with golf, and, weirdly, raisins.
I’m an early millennial (35) and my peer group’s weddings have been definitely a lot less traditional and more varied than my parents’ generation. I suspect a big part of this is that people get married when they’re fully-formed adults these days (average age of first marriage here in Ireland is now 35) and are more likely to do what they want to do vs what is stereotypically expected.
For most of my single life I thought of diamond engagement rings as something I'd like to get away without, or at worst begrudgingly buy. I understood the economics and history of diamonds and reached a logical conclusion.
And then 2 year ago, I bought a high grade diamond to propose to my wife and I loved it. From the process of visiting diamond dealers, to seeing it sparkle, to seeing her reaction - it's some of the best money I ever spent. I love seeing it on her hand now as she plays with our baby. I'll probably get joy out of seeing it for the rest of our lives. That comes out to cents per day over the next 40+ years. Worth it.
To be clear, it was never "the ring or the downpayment" kind of choice. I've seen people be dumb here. Don't do it. My point is that there's something to these rings beyond the analysis, much like tasting a mango.
The ring also indicates that I am serious. Yes that's "signaling" but with so many marriages failing because people are half-assed / don't have their shit together, it's a valuable signal.
So let's say DeBeers nailed product-market fit.
As for how special love/marriage is: we are partners in an enterprise of life, we chose to face the future and make people together. We both made the choice and understood its weight - and chose each other. What could be more meaningful?
Unless the dealer literally mined it himself, I wouldn't want to have 0.0001% chance of my wife waring a rock that a child took out from the earth with armed guards watching him.
I'd rather have lab-grown if anything, which are free of ethical concerns around labour, and are getting their energy footprint down into the tens of kWH per carat range.
You're looking at it in a very limited way. I would say that someone who is happy with their purchase several years down the line is not bamboozled. I am also realistically pretty qualified to think through the economics of it (many years in finance and deep study of Econ.) I am by no means saying "great investment everyone should make" - I am pointing to this being a rather experiential thing.
Do you have the same strong reaction to people who invest time and money into "pointless" hobbies, or makes career decisions that don't maximize their income? Because I can easily argue that even having a TV-watching (vs study) habit costs you more over your lifetime than the most expensive diamond - yet hardly anyone poo-poos those choices.
I also invite you to see whether there are many guys on this thread or in your life who proposed with decently expensive rings and regret it. I am not seeing it. Are you? Otherwise, it seems like you have only analytical experience of the topic while we have both the analytical and experiential (that was the point of my mango analogy) so you may want to recognize you have a limited perspective here.
Whether the signaling is outdated and misogynist, I guess you can decide for yourself, but I'll have you consider this: while my wife and I are equal in all tangible ways: education, income level, etc. she still absolutely bears most of the risk of pregnancy and birth. Even afterwards, it's theoretically easy for me to say "never mind" and reset my life, while she's saddled with all the consequences. I recognized that when I was proposing and felt it very heavily, and on some level the ring does speak to an investment and commitment from my part. I don't think my wife gave it that level of analysis but I bet this is at least some of the history behind the "burden of proof" being on the guy.
I am by no means saying everyone has to do it this way - there are tons of different attitudes and approaches people can take, and here's ours. And by the way, it's far from uncommon. EG: I have worked in finance, with some very high powered women who were certainly not reliant on any guy for anything - but they universally had nice diamond bands on their hands.
Nobody in my life proposed with a "decently expensive" ring as far as I know, people here (UK) don't routinely do that to the same extent americans do, and showing off huge rocks socially would generally be considered gauche.
Further, nobody is going to admit regretting such a purchase anyway due to post-purchase rationalisation. Not even to themselves. The more expensibe something is, the stronger this effect.
Your idea that you, as a man, could leave post-childbirth and the woman couldn't is also rooted in gendered assumptions. And a diamond changes none of it anyway, losing half of its value at least from the moment you buy it, it's hardly an insurance policy. I also can't imagine being with someone to whom the idea of "burden of proof" in a relationship would be meaningful.
People don't get criticised for wasting their lives in front of the tv? Which world do you live in?
I've been working in and around finance for years, never noticed women wearing huge rocks around the office. Maybe it's an American thing.
To me, you got suckered by DeBeers. Glad you don't feel that way, but it looks a hell of a lot like rationalisation from here.
(You bought a shiny thing for your meaningful other and she liked it! Good for you! You spend your money how you like, go for those status symbols if that's your thing. The idea that it's meaningful to spend so much on a trinket, not so much)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
As a non-native speaker, can anyone explain to me why „they” is used here? To me, this reads as if another person was involved here and is utterly confusing.
EDIT: Apparently Matt identify as "they". I like to think of them as a collective.
Particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century, there was were attempts to impose hard rules, sometimes _new_ rules by reference to Ancient Greek and Latin, which were then believed to have immutable rules. Some of the grammarians writing the books introducing this even complained that great works of English literature didn’t obey the rules they’d just made up, which you’d think would have given them pause.
In a sign that there’s nothing new under the sun, there’s at least one example where we have fragments from important second century Roman historical texts only because a fourth century Latin grammarian used one as an example of ‘incorrect’ grammar (in reality the language had just changed).
This is also where we get the idea of not ending a sentence with a preposition. That's a very Latin rule, but makes no sense in a Germanic language where prepositions are sometimes used not directly as prepositions but rather to modify a verb.
Think of the sentence "I sit up" as an example.
There are no ordained rules but if that grammar and lexicon is confusing, as in the case of 'they' noted above, then it is de facto invalid.
The purpose of language is to communicate in an unambiguous and expressive manner. Not to make shortcuts for the locutor.
It's ok people. Mandatory romantic love is a few decades old social convention. Before that it still existed and it was optional, and it was understood that people appraise one another more on ego level, and materially first. You could have marriage and children with or without romantic love. It was an extra some people had the luck to have.
We still do these things automatically, but unfortunately in secret. Before that it was done openly.
I'd even say that the „mandatory romantic love” might do more harm than good for quite a few people. Women fall in love with abuse/violent men and stay together with them because they let their feelings decide. Loverboy ploys. Catfishing and other scams. Losing a fortune in a divorce after a rushed marriage.
If falling in love was seen seen as an optional bonus for an already healthy relationship instead of the current „all you need is love”/ Disney - ideal, a lot of harm would be prevented. After all, it's just a biochemical reaction to ensure that genes are passed on. Romeo and Juliet was supposed to be a book about the perils of romantic love, not about idealising it.
A diamond isn't just any stone, it's a stone that has been selected for its visual qualities and cut by an expert craftsman. It's a beautiful human artifact.
Sure, there is no fundamental reason to associate diamonds and "love", and the whole diamonds politics are horrifying -- but that doesn't mean diamonds aren't interesting or fascinating.
You know, the long term fixed and recurring costs...
You know, the EBITDA, the COGS, the line items, the Chart Of Accounts, and all of that good stuff from Accounting... <g>
In other words, if someone is getting married, the high cost of a diamond, while indeed substantial -- is still probably only going to be the least of that married person's financial problems, present or future... <g>
The argument "Over my lifetime I'll have lots of expenses, and this $50K that I withdrew from my bank in cash and burned in a barrel in my back yard doesn't even represent 5% of them!" is a weird argument.
Wow. I haven't seen that form of emoticon in a long time.
Thank you for sharing, fellow time traveler... <bg>
But the author does have a point concerning diamonds.