Why I Don’t Wear a Wedding Ring

S.R. Karfelt/The Glitter Globe

Fact is I'm uncooperative by nature, but I really don't think I'm trying to make a personal statement, buck tradition, or anything beyond choose what is comfortable and works for me.

Dear Hubby and I are in a committed long-term, monogamous relationship and we don’t wear wedding rings. He never has worn his, he works in electronics. Shortly after the wedding he took a zap and flat out refused ever again. This is a man who is paranoid about static electricity. He’s taken one too many volts. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy wool socks in winter and sneaking up beside him and touching his ear.

Even after all these years we still chase each other around the house screaming. Mostly in a good way.

For the first twenty years I did wear my wedding ring. I stopped wearing it after my BFF lost the diamond out of her wedding ring at Lowes. I’ve never liked anything on my hands, but I put my time in. It's not just rings I dislike, as a matter of fact I recently got a Fitbit and it’s driving me nuts. Once I hit my exercise goal I take it off for the day, can’t bear it, and I even wake up at night and rub my wrist where it was touching me. I can’t stand Dear Hubby’s watch either. It bothers me that it’s on HIS wrist. I swear I can feel it on his wrist!

The thing is I like jewelry. I like to purchase sparkly stuff and admire it where it belongs—in boxes and drawers and those hangar pouches that keep it all lovely and organized. I just don’t like it touching me. On occasion I will wear it, because I do like the way it looks. But the first thing I do when I get home is take that crap off ASAP.

People ask us why we don’t wear rings, and I never know what to say. We’re not fishing for new spouses or lovers. We just don’t. Don’t want to. Don’t like to. I asked Dear Hubby if he ever worried someone else would ask me out. He said, “Not as long as you say no.”

I would say no, except for the Mr. Darcy Clause. I have a freebie Mr. Darcy Clause and Dear Hubby has one for Catherine Zeta Jones or someone. I told him that wasn’t quite fair because an actress is an actual person, and Mr. Darcy is a Fictional Character, but he said that the odds were about the same—and to feel free to have my way with Colin Firth should the occasion arise.

It could totally happen.

Does not wanting jewelry on my hands sound like an excuse? It really does bother me, but I have the type of physiology that can tell thread count and fabric constitution by touch. I detest certain fabrics, especially synthetics. It might be genetic. I have one kid who forever ran around with a hole in the neck of his shirts where I had to rip the tag out. Cutting it out wasn’t good enough—it was still touching him. It had to be torn out completely. It doesn’t help that they make those suckers out of plastic and sew them with fishing line anymore.

That was the same kid who rolled around the floor of the shoe store yelling that the shoes were touching him too. Isn’t that a tad dramatic for a perfectly “normal” college student? Kidding. But not really.

Somewhere in my stacks of home movies are scenes of little girls bursting into the house with pretty Easter dresses yanked up over their heads as they ran around blindly screaming, “Take it off! Take it off! It hurts! Oh! It hurts!”

So I suppose one might think it is a freaky genetic preference, but the fact is I did endure wearing it for years. Yet at some point the fact that I didn't like wearing it overrode the expectation to wear it. 

In an awfully big nutshell that’s why I don’t wear a wedding ring. I love my husband. He’s my best friend (and nemesis during hunting and fishing season). He’s my lover. My boyfriend. And my prey during static electricity woolen socks season. But I’m not going to do that wedding ring thing, and I know for a fact we’re not the only ones. What about you? How important do you think wearing your wedding ring is? And at what point does preference override tradition?