Comment by teorema | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teorema | Hacker News Reader

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We heard of them before we were engaged, and really considered them strongly. In the end my wife decided she just wanted a diamond because otherwise it always would be on the back of her mind.

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.

> The idea needs to be suggested when people are very young that different symbolic expressions of marriage are fine

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.

If you can't put your finger on why you wanted the diamond, it seems pretty clear you are victims of De Beers. If I say I don't want a Coke because it's bad for me, but then I drink it, it's because I want it. And you should call bullshit on me for saying I didn't want it.

I imagine they are knowing victims, and there’s a lot of social pressure to conform. I’m sure many people would not be excited to repeatedly explain the De Beers situation to everyone who questioned their decision not to get a diamond. And it’s even harder to make an “against the grain” decision on behalf of your spouse. And if they don’t want the diamond ring, you still may choose to get it for your own social comfort. So with De Beers as the historical root cause, you have a situation where both spouses need to want to go against the grain to not get a diamond ring.

I can't speak for her but my guess is she'd say at some point, even if debeers started it, its not about debeers anymore. Or she'd say something like why do we value the art we do? Isn't it all socially shaped? At what point does it become personal? If she wants a diamond because that's what she had in mind, and what her parents and grandparents had, and she likes the color and brilliance, what the hell does debeers have to do with it? Couldn't people still want white diamonds even if you could dig them up in your backyard?

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.

My partner-to-be agreed to do without an engagement ring, mainly for pragmatic financial reasons: we considered what better things we could do with the money.

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 think it's really easy to claim to be socially and environmentally conscious (especially nowadays with social media), but when you are faced with a scenario where your principles and values are put to the test, the decision you make reveals just how important to you those principles and values really are.

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