301–310 of 618 posts
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Horse may be a better example. Meat from carnivores tends to concentrate more toxins, which actually is a rational reason to avoid it.
Horse meat is quite normal in western culture, unless if by western culture you mean anglophone countries.
It's all nonsense. None of it makes sense.
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> So if she insist, don't be angry at her - be angry at De Beers. I completely agree. My fiancé and I are currently two engaged Americans, and we had a couple conversations about how we envision our wedding ceremony to happen. For the most part, we had very casual viewpoints on marriage (we don't need to make a big deal out of it), but she wanted a ring and I wasn't too hot on giving De Beers more money. She agreed w…
What about the synthetic diamond excluded it from the options?
I cannot for the life of me remember suggestions, but the community came up with quite a few creative and meaningful materials that could make beautiful rings.
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Try the second-hand market, and buy the stone you like, and the ring you like (sperate). It's extremely in-expensive (usually included in the cost of the ring if you buy it at a store) to have your stone set into the ring of your choice. I spent a total of $500 to have a .75ct diamond set in a ring this way.
$500 is still an insane price for a glorified lump of coal.
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Yeah well, societal pressures only go so far in influencing a relationship. If the other party can't respect your values, an argument over a diamond is the least of your worries.
I dunno, I don't think it's that simple. For one, the "respect your values" arguments goes both ways: she values a diamond, he doesn't. If she insists on a diamond, she's not respecting his values. If he insists on no diamond, he's not respecting hers. It's very easy to justify going the no-diamond route, sure. From a financial point of view, it's just a bad idea. Some say the finances aren't the point, so you can tu…
I'm the OP - surprised to see this at the top of HN today, but happy to post a quick update: My wife and I have been happily married for ten years now. She loves her ring, and it has held up extremely well. (She just had the band resized, absolutely no issues with the stones.) No one has ever thought it was anything other than a diamond ring, which includes several years of daily scrutiny from crazy New York City bri…
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What about the synthetic diamond excluded it from the options?
Synthetic != "the real deal", which makes it (perceived as) worthless.
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The flashing red color in your peripheral vision? That's the warning light. It means you should reach down and pull the eject lever.
And what color is in her peripheral vision?
For girls, it's not personal, it'd social. If her "friends" are such that they will look down on her if she didn't get a rock, she will insist on one. As a man, you must understand this.
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Did you get to the point of explaining why you're against diamonds? Was she able to tell you why she wants a diamond in particular? To resolve this issue it would be good to exchange the exact, real reasons why one side wants the diamond and the other doesn't. But even then, it may end up your GF will insist on the diamond - while all the rational-in-the-vacuum reasons are against diamonds, there's this whole thing c…
> So if she insist, don't be angry at her - be angry at De Beers. By doing so, you're ignoring her agency and her role in the problem. It's not like DeBeers has some kind of mind control laser pointed at the brains of every woman in the world. They put out advertising, and some people fall for it. If you need to be angry about something, be angry about our education system which fails to teach people to think critica…
> If you need to be angry about something, be angry about our education system which fails to teach people to think critically about what they see on their glowing god-screens.
I would cut the education system some slack here. Advertising isn't a physical constant - it's a dynamic, optimized product of other humans. Smart humans who weaponize psychological and sociological research to maximize the impact of marketing techniques. An individual doesn't stand much of a chance against it by the very virtue of how professional specialization works. Even if people all suddenly became perfect critical thinkers, advertising industry would focus on exploiting some other weak spots.
> By doing so, you're ignoring her agency
A tangent, but I'm increasingly believing that individuals have much less agency than it is generally believed. We all strongly respond to incentives, especially in areas that strongly matter to our lives.
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I sent this to my SO and she now wants one instead of a diamond. Until now, it's been non-negotiable. Thanks for writing. I did not want to buy a diamond :)
> Until now, it's been non-negotiable. I really hate to be a random person on the internet giving personal advice but... diamonds being "non-negotiable" seems like a huge, glowing, neon warning sign. Don't be surprised to find out a bunch of other things are non-negotiable if you divorce.
I'm somewhat recently divorced now, but one good thing about my ex is that she was never superficial like this. She was perfectly happy to get a $70 Titanium wedding band, and loved how lightweight it was, and never wanted a silly gemstone on her hand. We did get her a couple other rings with gemstones (much cheaper ones, and prettier too; I think one was Tanzanite?), for wearing at special occasions, but wearing a gemstone ring every day is impractical and dumb really; it's just going to get in your way, and worse it's easy to take it off and then lose it. I knew a guy once whose wife dropped her $10k diamond ring down the drain while doing dishes! (No, they didn't recover it.)