That’s not true. The far greater purpose is for the man to signal commitment to his bride. By spending a lot of money, especially if it’s not easy for you to afford it, you signal to her that you are seriously committed to her. You signal that you trust her with something very expensive that would not be easy for you to replace.
You can’t bypass that sort of thing. If the price of diamonds collapsed completely then we’d need to find something else to replace them.
I categorically disagree with this, but let's run with the logic. If we are talking about financial commitment and signaling to a partner, why not gift a house, a car, a long term bond, cash, expensive clothing, a watch, literally any other piece of jewelry, etc? Why does it have to be a diamond which is literally the worst possible use of the money short of burning it? Why does it have to be publicly displayed on a ring if the intention is personal signaling? Why does it have to be the guy that does it; shouldn't the wife also signal equal levels of commitment or is she incapable of that?
Also, we can bypass this kind of thing and did up until the last century. Further, certain couples bypass this type of thing all the time routinely. You don't see gay male couples giving each other diamond engagement rings and yet their marriages aren't exploding in spectacular fashion.
It doesn't even make sense from a financial penalty standpoint. Anyone who is on an upward trajectory would be able to bounce back from losing a month or two of salary relatively quickly in which case it's not really forcing long term commitment.
There is no real point to this ritual other than showing off. The guy gets to show off how much cash he has and the woman gets to show off to everyone else that she has a guy with a lot of financial resources. It is completely arbitrary and we have arbitrarily converged on a diamond as a mechanism to do this. Sure giving rings makes people feel good; receiving and gifting any present makes people feel good; but it's absolutely not a necessary requirement for a healthy relationship.
>It is completely arbitrary and we have arbitrarily converged on a diamond as a mechanism to do this.
This isn't quite true.
1) Who's "we"? Outside the US, no one really cares that much about diamonds. Outside the US, western Europe, and Japan, no one does. It's largely an American phenomenon.
2) People didn't just "arbitrarily coverge" on diamonds; this was engineered by DeBeers almost a century ago, in what's probably the most successful marketing campaign in human history.
>If we are talking about financial commitment and signaling to a partner, why not gift a house, a car, a long term bond, cash, expensive clothing, a watch, literally any other piece of jewelry, etc?
This is literally what's done in other cultures, and has been for ages. Though usually, it's the bride's family who has to pony up all this largesse, in what's called a "dowry".
>Why does it have to be the guy that does it; shouldn't the wife also signal equal levels of commitment or is she incapable of that?
This is a very good question, because again, in other cultures, it has traditionally been the bride (or rather, her family) who had to provide a dowry to get a decent man to marry her. This of course has, in more recent times, driven families to abort their unborn female children in favor of male children.
> usually, it's the bride's family who has to pony up all this largesse, in what's called a "dowry".
Pedant here. Hello everybody!
There is a difference between dowry and bride price. Traditionally the dowry in culture with custom of primogeniture was the portion of inheritance the bride brought with her. It's a bribe to the groom's family not to contest the rest of the inheritance when his father-in-law dies, not to put a fine point on it.
Following Anglo-Saxon customs (which was heavily influenced by the Vikings) brides were given morgangifu, literally morning gift, from her husband the morning after the wedding. This is hers to take with her and her children, after a divorce or death of the husband. See also morganastic marriage, where a woman and her children get nothing except the morning gift, that is, she and the kids don't get the traditional inheritance (crown, title, land, such). It's a payoff to the bride's family to not contest what's regarded as the groom's family's property, not to put a fine point on it.
The bride price is the cost paid by the groom to the bride's family, this practice was more common in Asia and the tribal Middle East. Women were regarded as property, her leaving the family home and joining the family of her husband is regarded as a loss to her clan. In ancient Chinese text, lesser wives not just concubines were bought, literally.
The GP seems to be referring to the (today illegal) practice from South Asia wherein the bride's family is required to provide a payment to the groom's family as part of a marriage contract, a practice which was is itself a reflection of the traditional state of disempowerment of women.
The British colonists, upon observing the similarities of this custom to their own, applied the English term "dowry" to it. The practice, while largely extinct in mainstream British society, has held on in parts in South Asia (though many modern South Asians consider it abhorrent), and therefore its modern colloquial use is more connected to the South Asian custom.
There is a separate practice of the bride's parents gifting her with items of jewelry which are intended to be her sole property - a sort of insurance policy against an unreliable husband - and not that of the groom or his family. Whether that was honored or not obviously depended a lot on the situation. This practice has actually continued relatively unabated, and it is partially responsible for the high demand for gold in South Asia during wedding seasons.
We have or had in Europe something else under the meqning of "dowry". The groom asking in mariage a bride had to prove that he had the means to provide and usually had to have a household (or at least land, in case of peasantry) ready for the future family. The inner items of a house however, had to be provided by bride's family, usually with the pitched idea that the (textile) items done manually were a demonstration of bride's skills and a proof of her ability to contribute to her future family.
> You signal that you trust her with something very expensive that would not be easy for you to replace.[...] You can’t bypass that sort of thing.
Is committing to spending your life with someone not trusting them with something that wouldn't be easy for you to replace? What's more irreplaceable than the years of your own life? Not every couple gets a diamond engagement ring or precious metal wedding rings (the prevalence is trending downward) and I've heard no studies that establish correlation between successful marriages and diamond engagement rings. Your line of thought is very lucrative for corporations like deBeers, however.
Is committing to spending your life with someone not trusting them with something that wouldn't be easy for you to replace
And how does she know you’re committed if you’re not willing to risk anything up front? You can say “well she knows me! We’ve been dating for years!” but then you balk at trusting her with something valuable? Maybe she doesn’t really know you. Maybe things are great now, when nobody has committed anything of value, but will it work when things get tough?
Of course a diamond’s no guarantee of that. It’s only a starting point.
What's more irreplaceable than the years of your own life
We’re talking about the beginning of a married relationship: the engagement. When people talk about engagement rings, they don’t look at dollar figures, they look at number of weeks salary. That is the point! You’re putting time into the relationship up front. Think of it like putting a down payment on a house.
Your line of thought is very lucrative for corporations like deBeers, however
There are plenty of other diamond sources besides deBeers. Lots of people are buying diamonds mined in the Canadian arctic, for example. They have the added benefit that you know they aren’t conflict diamonds.
People do this research when buying diamonds these days! When your fiancée is showing the ring to her friends, if she can tell them a story about all of this research you put into it, then it means even more to her.
That's some properly fucked up logic of yours, to be polite. Literally every sentence is garbage from my perspective, pointing to crappy mindset/lifestyle of desire of approval by others.
This is NOT how happy long lasting marriages are done these days. I would argue that even any days. But reality is, most people are not really happy in their lives, somehow 'lost' drifting around, and combined with sheepish mentality they can accrue this mindset of 'if he spent enough money on some piece of rock then and only then he must really love me, otherwise not', because others are saying so. Desperately immature.
If others are saying so, it must be right, no? Well, in this case, no. Some people take lifetime to understand this simple truth, some are fast learners (ideally from other's mistakes), and of course some never learn.
Exactly. Once the woman is pregnant, she’s all-in unless she has access to an abortion (and she’s okay with having one).
Plenty of times the guy has been all-in right up until the moment he becomes a father, then he bails. If he has no financial stake in the relationship either then there’s nothing holding him to the marriage except his word and his feelings, both of which can be broken.
Single motherhoods is ridiculously common these days. I think a big part of the reason why is that tradition and commitment are dying out, and marriages based on romance are dying along with them.
You cultural background probably very different from mine (I’m coming from an ex socialist country).
I’m pretty sure there are much better ways to put time into a relationship upfront, since probably nobody said on their deathbed I wish you worked more to get me a bigger diamond for our engagement. Spending time to actually know each other instead of working for piece of carbon which is very useful for some industries.
Also this weeks of salary is also something I cannot wrap my head around, I was engaged a few times, breaking off the engagement had nothing to do with the value of the engagement ring.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Given that diamond engagement rings are most valued in the US, the US's extremely low divorce rate proves how well this system works. Oh wait...
> The far greater purpose is for the man to signal commitment to his bride [..]
> You can’t bypass that sort of thing.
Q: Any actual evidence that cash is any kind of reliable signal for commitment to a relationship? There would appear to be plenty of celebrity divorce counter-examples.
[In the spirit of full disclosure: my wife didn't want - or get - an engagement ring]
Really it was more "able to provide for" as opposed to "would wind up worse off if married". The commitment was far more financial in the past than relationship sense. In some cases jewelery was divorce/unexpected widowing reserves that she could be sure were there and hers.
The social context mutated yet the artifact remained - mostly out of the resistance to thinking known as tradition and the desire to sell overpriced baubles.
A diamond is primarily an engagement stone, not a wedding stone. The wedding nets you community property, worth even more than a diamond.
Think of it as earnest money, or buying an option. It's too expensive to buy a diamond and promise marriage just to string your girlfriend along if you aren't intending to follow through in the next year.
> The far greater purpose is for the man to signal commitment to his bride. By spending a lot of money, especially if it’s not easy for you to afford it, you signal to her that you are seriously committed to her. You signal that you trust her with something very expensive that would not be easy for you to replace.
I agree with this, and it even makes rational sense. I just wish we could "spend a lot of money" on something else like gold, or a house downpayment. At least those are assets - you aren't simply throwing your money away. Even a charitable trust would be a more impactful way of demonstrating commitment through sacrifice - spending money on diamonds is like throwing it away.
The problem with a bunch of gold or a house is that she can’t carry them around with her throughout her day. With a diamond ring, she can.
Why is that important? Maybe it’s less important today, but if you turn on her and she has to strike out on her own, then her engagement ring becomes a bit of wealth she has access to in an emergency. In that regard it may seem rather silly (why not a bank account?) but in the past, women didn’t have bank accounts or other easy ways to access wealth.
Mind you, in the past there were no diamond rings. Diamond rings are an invention of DeBeers in 30s, because nobody was buying diamonds they keep digging out of earth.
chongli's posts really just seem like they are encoding their own superstitions about relationships in a backsplanation for why things are the way they are. It really sounds like someone coping with buyer's remorse for having wasted so much money on a ring.
I've seen people do the same thing with their wedding that left them $30k in debt.
I totally buy their reasoning for why they did it, but they lose me when they prescribe it to everyone else.
I don't agree with anything you said. That said, it is a pity to see so many people downvote you because they don't agree with you. You've respectfully stated your opinion and we shouldn't down vote comments which we disagree with.
I used to feel that same way as you, but I've changed my opinion over time. It's just one of those community norms that (for me, anyway) makes HN an interesting place.
Thanks for those links! I do know how it is used on HN (and other places on the Internet). However, I don't really think that is how it should be used and I haven't CMV. I don't think down voting disagreements adds any value to the discussion. I'd rather prefer upvoting agreements and leave the down vote button alone.
are you aware there are societies, western, that don't have anything close to the diamond craze that US ladies seem to display? i'd rather set a stack of dollar bills on fire than buy a diamond, same price, same utility, less kids with hands chopped off for not meeting quotas.
This diamond craze is mostly a US phenomenon. Japan is a distant #2, some parts of western Europe perhaps an even more distant #3, and the rest of the world doesn't even register.
I guess this is another one of those weird things where China starting trying to be more like America. The other one is cars (and for some really strange reason, Buicks in particular are very popular there).
That’s not true. The far greater purpose is for the man to signal commitment to his bride. By spending a lot of money, especially if it’s not easy for you to afford it, you signal to her that you are seriously committed to her. You signal that you trust her with something very expensive that would not be easy for you to replace.
You can’t bypass that sort of thing. If the price of diamonds collapsed completely then we’d need to find something else to replace them.