The Bonds of Love (Bands Optional)

By Lisa Armstrong
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, February 11, 2008

About four months after our wedding day, my husband lost his ring. He said he thought it might have slipped off at work -- it had always been a little loose -- and that perhaps after drying his hands in the bathroom he might have tossed both ring and paper towel in the trash. I was a little disturbed by his nonchalance, especially since he'd never wanted to wear a ring in the first place, and I wondered if he'd "lost" it on purpose.

I asked if he'd put up a note in the bathroom or wherever, just in case someone found the ring.

He sighed and said he thought it would be "a little bit sissy" putting up a sign asking about a lost ring.

I didn't understand the logic, but then after four months of marriage, I was starting to realize that little about this guy made sense.

When he lost his cellphone he made quite an effort trying to retrieve it, I countered. One would have thought he'd do the same for something as precious as a wedding ring.

"I didn't put up a note looking for my cellphone," he said curtly.

"Fine." I shrugged. Much as it bothered me, I wasn't going to continue along the downward spiral our discussions had more frequently been taking, where nothing was ever resolved, where each of us eventually was defeated by the futility of arguing with someone who was always right.

For months, we danced around in an uneasy game of chess in which one of us was always trapped in checkmate. Then one day I decided not to wear my engagement and wedding rings. It wasn't as bold a move as it appeared -- I just took them off to clean them one day and never put them back on.

It was weeks before he noticed but when he did, he was annoyed.

"You have to at least wear your engagement ring," he said. "Do you know how much I spent on it?"

"And that's what makes it important?"

He didn't answer, but after a few moments of silence he suggested we sell it so we could buy something that would at least be used. The proposal left me speechless. To me, the significance of the engagement ring had been the sentiment supposedly behind it; to him, it was tied up in the money spent.

Ultimately, my action had an effect; he went out and bought a ring to replace the one he had lost.

We'd had the original rings engraved, with the other's initials and our wedding date, so he had his new ring engraved, too -- but with something of his own choosing. I should have been happy it even occurred to him to get it engraved but instead I was upset that he (a) didn't remember what was written in the original ring and (b) hadn't taken the time to find out.

My husband lost his second wedding ring shortly before our first anniversary. This time at the gym. He thought maybe he'd left it in a locker. Again we went through the back-and-forth of whether he'd called to inquire about it and if not, why not. As it turned out, when he went to the gym the next day it was at the lost and found. He might as well have left it there because he lost it again a few months later, that time for good. I made no suggestions for ring retrieval. And he didn't make much of an effort, either.

A year and a half into the marriage I was pregnant and bloated, my fingers too fat for rings. But I wore them anyway. I wore them to hang on to the notion that my life was continuing down this perfect, predestined path. I wore them to hang on to my marriage. But in the moments that I was honest with myself, late at night when I lay awake, I wished I were somewhere else, married to someone more compassionate, more thoughtful.

By the time I realized my fingers were really too swollen to be wearing rings, it was too late. I managed to get my engagement ring off but my wedding ring was stuck. I tried everything, including tricks involving dental floss and Vaseline (not at the same time) that I'd found on the Internet, but in the end had to go to a jewelry store to have the ring removed. The jeweler clipped it off with a pair of pliers and underneath, my finger was worn and sore. The jeweler studied my finger and noted it was going to take a little time to heal.

I wondered about the symbolism: My wedding ring had to be cut off my finger, and the process of soldering it back together erased our initials, the wedding date, everything. At first, I saw it as a sign that the marriage was dead, that I should move on because there had never really been anything there in the first place. But in reality, it was an offer of a clean slate.

If the stress of the first year of marriage doesn't split a couple apart, having a child often will. I ultimately snapped under the strain of working and taking care of a baby and a home all on my own. My husband comes from a traditional family, where housekeeping and child-rearing fall under a wife's jurisdiction. He was under the impression that beyond providing an income, little was required of him. I, on the other hand, expected that living in the 21st century meant sharing household duties, perhaps not equally, but at least somewhat. We both wanted out, but for the sake of our son decided to try counseling instead.

I'd like to be able to say some miracle occurred during those weeks on the therapist's couch, that light bulbs went off, that we suddenly became soul mates, in tune with each other's needs. But that isn't what happened.

I can't put my finger on what did change, but a gradual shift occurred so subtly neither of us noticed. For me, it had to do with examining the quiet things -- private jokes no one else would get, the way we fit together as we sleep, somehow maintaining contact even with our toddler nestled in between.

It had to do with looking at lost rings not as a sign he didn't love me but simply as an indication of his absent-mindedness, a trait that, though infuriating at times, can also be endearing. As actress Simone Signoret said: "Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years." The same can be said of rings.

I used to wear my ring because it said I belonged to someone, because I believed in the symbolism of this circle as a love without end. Now I do so when it suits me, not because I no longer care but because I've come to understand the success of a relationship isn't reflected in external things.

The marriage isn't in the metal, it's in something else. Something we're closer to finding but haven't grasped just yet.