Do We Really Have To Put A Ring On It?

My husband and I have stopped wearing our wedding rings.

I'm not entirely sure when it happened, and I wasn't even really aware of it until we went on vacation with a few other couples, and I thoughtlessly tossed my ring in the hotel safe.

You're not wearing your ring?

Nah.

I never want to take mine off.

Huh. I don't know. I'm not really a ring person, I guess. And I plan to eat a lot, so...

To be fair, we've been married eight years, and she was recently engaged. I totally recall being newly engaged and beginning all my conversations with a subtle face touch and giggle as my hand caught the sunlight coming through the window.

But how will people know you're married?

I guess I don't care if they do?

Is that horrible? I love being married, and I adore being in love. But, somewhere along the line, the ring stopped meaning married, and it just meant pretty ring.

I had more tangible definitions. Like the three small kids who wander around our house. Or the familial melting pot on our Holiday Party invitation guest list. Or the ugly f*cking couches I let inhabit my home .

I remember when I was pregnant with Wyatt and the day before baby Jude's baptism, about 80 lbs. too big for my ring, I went out and bought a fake cheap wedding band, because in my head, the thought of showing up in church without it was out of the question. I was pregnant and holding a baby. For some reason, at that point in my life, I needed that ring. Now, it sits in Gigi's jewelry box full of shiny play baubles.

We don't need to show people we're in a committed relationship by some ring, but rather by the way he rests his hand on my back in line at the theater without thinking, or the way we automatically put the armrest up between our airplane seats, or from the respective scars we carry on our bodies from moments of love; like the burn scar on his arm from when I accidentally shut the grill lid on it when a bee came to close to me while we were making kabobs, and the gash on my labia because he's horrible at romantic shaving.

When I was younger and saw Andy without his ring, I became insecure. Now, whenever I worry he doesn't love me like he used to, which is especially rare because we just had sex for a year and neither of us are great at faking it, instead of reaching for his ring, he kisses me and says buried together. Which is apparently his morbid form of "I love you."

But, I take it to mean that should I go first, he'll poison himself so that we can share a giant love coffin with nothing between us but our box of wedding rings and a body pillow because I'm a horrible back sleeper.