My Take on Promise Rings...

I had a plan to write this post before my boyfriend decided to "surprise" me with a promise ring, but as life would have it, that didn't happen. However, we did have a talk about it a couple of nights before he did surprise me, so my mind is at ease.

So here it is, my take on promise rings.

I cannot, for the life of me, find the picture of the ring that I want to use. But, it was something like a "Past, Present, Future Promise Ring," the kind with three large stones in the middle, and three more on each side.

Many, many years ago my boyfriend of one year got me a promise ring. It was beautiful and I loved it. I wore it proudly for about another year, but eventually I found myself not contributing to the relationship as much as I once had. In a moment of strength, I worked up the courage to put the ring back in the box and explain to my boyfriend that the ring made me feel like I didn't have to do anything more to make the relationship work. I had the ring and the promise of forever, so what else was there to do? Well, flash forward a year after giving back the ring, and we were done.

Not the greatest experience, right? For the longest time after that, I didn't think about promise rings. What was the point? From my experience, they didn't really mean anything.

Here is the promise ring that I got from my current boyfriend, and the letter that he gave me with it is in the background. It's a little heart with a single stone in the middle and small black stones on each side of the heart.

Dusty would tell me that I'm lying if I didn't mention that getting a promise ring is charged by a bit of jealousy, and he wouldn't be wrong. I'm definitely the jealous type girlfriend, but for the rest of this post, that is not the point. When I first brought up the idea of Dusty getting me a promise ring, it was kind of out of humor. Then it kept coming up, and it started to scare me. If I got a promise ring, was I dooming this relationship too? I have had the ring for a little over a week now, and I feel pretty confident. When I got my first promise ring, I was young, a bit immature, still in high school, and didn't really have a plan for the future. Now, I am an adult, working as a personal care worker, soon to be starting as a CNA, and have two and a half years of college under my belt with two years to go. Also, living together forces us to face our problems instead of hide from them. There is a light and day difference between the ways that I had approached/have been approaching this relationship versus my past one.

So how do I really feel about promise rings?
They can be great, but don't think that a promise ring is the end-all-be-all. It's not a wedding ring, it's not binding, so you can get out of it without any legal dealings if you really aren't happy in the relationship. Dusty also joked that he's going to spend just a little bit more on an engagement ring than he spent on this one, but he has also said he is going to get my engagement ring from a quarter machine at Walmart, so who knows! ANYWAYS, if you want to give your girlfriend a promise ring, go ahead, but know that her giving it back is a possibility.