12 replies to this topic

[Coconut_007]

When do you all remove your wedding rings? My thought was that I would keep wearing mine until the divorce is final. Married until I am not married, right? Well, finding out today that H is dating makes me feel like taking it off and not wearing it. There hasn't been a "marriage" for a long time anyway....so what do you suggest or does anyone have anything to share?

Coconut_007

[Kokoca]

Coconut,

I took it off mighty quickly. 24 hours maybe. By the time I moved out, I was so entirely done that I didn't want anything to do with it. I didn't take it off to establish my availability or anything. It was a symbol of my commitment to her and I that was done. The legal paperwork of the marriage / divorce process wasn't really relevant to what the ring symbolized.

Funny you should mention it though. I still have it and I was just wondering the other day, over five years later, what to do with it.


Would it help to talk a bit about what it means to you to wear it or not?

Hugs

K

[thebewilderness]

For some people it is a symbol weighted with significance, while for others it is no big deal.
My divorce was a long time ago, when you still had to go to court and answer questions about the marriage and the abuse. It was such a horrible humiliating experience that when I got out the door the rings came off off off and thrown as far as I could throw them.

[DawnC]

I wore mine intermittently for years as my weight and activities fluctuated. Never meant anything by it. Husband took his off deliberately, oh, about three years ago. Mine is now in my parents' safe deposit box with the rest of my good pieces. His gambling made me nervous.

Take it off if you want, but if it has value, don't leave it unguarded. If you don't want a confrontation, you can say it is at the jewelers getting resized or something, but you actually should store it safely away.

You get to choose. Whatever you feel comfortable doing. The man who put it on your finger no longer exists, if he ever did.

(((hugs)))

[Coconut_007]

When the rings were put on my finger, they did have meaning, because I did believe in the man who put it on me. However, as DawnC points out - that man never did exist - he was only an image that tried to make me believe he was something he was not. So, in that respect, I am ready to take the rings off. Besides, people are already figuring it out at our kids' sports events and band concerts that we don't sit together so that must mean we are not together, Right?

thanks,
Coconut_007

[Kris]

Ha! Funny that you should ask that question. I agonized over that quite a bit myself because I, too, thought that even after filing I'm still "officially married" until the final papers are signed, but then at other times I worried that maybe by keeping on wearing my wedding ring, it might look like I wasn't really "done" with the marriage. So I googled the question and there are almost as many answers as there are people getting divorced, I think! For people whose spouses have cheated on them, almost all of them stopped as soon as they learned about the cheating (but that didn't apply in my case). But otherwise, some did when they decided they weren't committed to the relationship anymore, some did when they filed, and some waited until the divorce was finalized.

So I decided that wearing a wedding ring does have some advantages at least that you are not likely going to be viewed as "available" by guys on the dating scene. I have no desire to have to deal with any of that. So I resolved to wear the ring until the divorce was finalized. BUT.... then came the big tantrum in January that I posted about previously. And I just was so angry about it at the time that it became crystal clear to me that I needed to make my own statement that I was not going to tolerate that kind of treatment anymore, that I was really and truly "totally done" with being treated that way. So I took off the ring at that time. Seriously, if that hadn't happened, it made sense to my own way of thinking that technically I'm married until the divorce is finalized so wearing the ring reflected that. But once it happened, I felt that the symbology of the ring was more important to me... so removing the ring felt right.

So I would just think about your own situation, Coconut_007 and listen to what your own gut is telling you. For me, it became very very clear when it was time to stop wearing it!

[ktc]

My ex took the engagement ring he gave me back, came to my work and took it back. Yeah, not a good day at work that day. So no agonizing about wearing it for me.

Edited by ktc, 08 March 2012 - 11:39 PM.

[Kris]

Well, at least that makes the "decision" very easy! (but a sad lol)

[SteffieB]

Coconut,

I took it off mighty quickly. 24 hours maybe. By the time I moved out, I was so entirely done that I didn't want anything to do with it. I didn't take it off to establish my availability or anything. It was a symbol of my commitment to her and I that was done. The legal paperwork of the marriage / divorce process wasn't really relevant to what the ring symbolized.

Funny you should mention it though. I still have it and I was just wondering the other day, over five years later, what to do with it.


Would it help to talk a bit about what it means to you to wear it or not?

Hugs

K

Same here. I wound up pawning mine for practically nothing just to get it out of my life. I think it was healthy for me. By the time I was fed up enough to leave, I was divorced in all but paperwork in my mind. But it's all individual, Coconut. Do what feels right to you emotionally. This is 100% an emotional decision.

[Charlee]

I have been separated for 1 month now, but I stopped wearing my rings last November.
I have put them on once since November to please my H (it was in January) but we ended up having a heated discussion that lead to me having a panic attack so they came straight back off.