Deformed Wedding Ring

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. My wedding ring has finally become deformed. For a long time, I've been trying to prevent my left hand from doing too much since the ring is thinner than most rings. I read recently from the internet that if I had been planning to do manual labor, I should have chosen a thicker, heavier ring. Well, I've been doing a lot of heavy work lately, and now it is deformed. No longer a perfect circle, as it should be. I am annoyed and it really weighs heavily on my mind.

It's my fault. I chose the ring for it's design and beauty, less for its sturdiness. I didn't know that caveat about manual labor, or I should have been more careful to choose something that is noticeably thicker. But I hated the designs of the few thick rings I saw, and at that time, with my then fiancée (now my lovely wife) I was on a quest for beauty. If you would check my post update on my wedding pics (or the picture below), you will see just how lovely those rings really are. Besides, I thought that at 18k it was already hard enough. My mistake.

But they are thin, as you can see in the scanned picture above. I had forgotten how malleable real gold is (oh, gee! I am so relieved that it's real gold :sarcastic smile:). It is now slightly flattened. It still fits over my finger and, I daresay, it fits "better" and clings to my finger "better". But I have been accustomed to admiring its symmetry and it's being a perfect circle. This ring, though losing none of its sentimental value, feels somehow less.

So, at the very first opportunity I shall try to find a way to have this "repaired". I am hoping that our jewelers are skilled enough to make this a nice and good circle once again without damaging it.

I wish this perfectionism does not extend to my relationship with my wife. One, of course, cannot always have the "perfect" marriage; though the definition of "perfect" when referring to marriage is, at best, a misconception brought about by what the movies, TV and written fiction have told us a "perfect" marriage should be like. At worst, most of that touchy-feely crap we see is just a lie. So when the honeymoon is over and one notices that the loved one is no longer surrounded by the fuzziness lent by rose-colored glasses, people who believe the lie think that the love "is gone" and one must "move on". I know a certain couple who periodically break up and come back together based on a variation of this, that is, I have never seen them actually stick together long enough while they are not "in sync". True love, I believe, is being able to stay together even when both are not in sync. Ærynn and I have stayed together so long during periods of being out-of-sync that those periods of being out-of-sync have become shorter and shorter. I expect, of course, that we will have much newer periods of being out-of-sync once we start living together in a foreign land. But we have learned that the best way to find a way to resolve the conflict is to see it to its bitter end without trying to extend that bitterness to each other.

So maybe this deformed wedding ring is the perfect metaphor as to how our marriage is to be like. If anything mars it, we try hard to mend it. If we can't, we don't throw the ring away. Or stop wearing it just because it is marred. I am still wearing the deformed ring, and though I may never have it fixed, it will still be the ring that Ærynn slipped onto my finger when she made her promises to me. For better or for worse, this ring is mine.