Fake engagement ring

[Poppy1324]

I got engaged 2 years ago and married a year ago, my engagement ring is huge, very eye catching and gets lots of attention. A few people have commented about how much it must have cost and people have said it’s 2 carat at least, my husband has always said it is a diamond and made comments about how much it set him back.

Several people have said it’s worth a fortune and I’ll have to get it insured, my husband agreed and said he’ll have to do it and he will give receipt to insurance so I don’t see how much he spent. A few weeks ago someone said it must be 15-20k worth of diamond! Now we don’t have that kind of money so I assumed they must be mistaken and put it out of my mind, then last weekend I was at a dinner and a friends husband who’s a jeweller noticed the ring made a huge fuss of it,his wife compared her ring which was half the size and then they chatted quietly to each other looking at the 2 rings and looked at me with what I can only describe as mixture of sympathy and confusion as they gave it back.

I probably shouldn’t have done this but it’s been playing on my mind, I know the name of the store so I just looked it up, found the exact ring and it’s cubic zirconia, it’s still lovely and it is expensive although obviously not 15k expensive.

I don’t have expensive things, never have, it’s always made me cringe the thought he has spent so much on a ring, it felt wrong when we have struggled for money and we have friends and family around us struggling to make ends meet. Although I was obviously happy to be engaged I’m not really the attention seeking type and I’ve always felt embarrassed at the huge amount of attention this ring gets.

I feel a bit uncomfortable now wearing a massive flashy attention seeking fake ring and pretending it’s a diamond, I don’t know much about diamonds, obviously! However other people do and I feel a bit embarrassed to wear it now I know.

I don’t know how much my husband knows about jewellery, perhaps he saw it was sparkly and assumed it was a diamond or more likely he has lied about it this whole time. I have happily worn it for 2 years and I don’t want to upset him or be ungrateful for what is still a lovely and expensive ring.

Do I ask him about it or just carry on wearing it, the majority of people won’t examine it and I’d guess most wont realise so does it really matter anyway.

The but I’m confused about is that you’ve always been a bit self conscious about the attention the ring brings even before knowing the truth so why are/were you wearing it?

You’re married, you really don’t have to now and you didn’t even have to then.

What I find strange is that so many people apparently comment on your ring. I wear a 2.4 caret ring on my engagement finger. My mum gave it me, not DH. On the rare occasions someone asks about it, I either I say 'Thanks, yes I like it' or just say it was my mum's. I don't go around waving it under people's noses. I do always wear it because it is only insured on my person or in the bank.

How did you not know? You must have known it was fake, deep down in your heart? Surely.

Any ring with a huge diamond 💍 like below costs £10k-£20k and would sensibly be listed on your house insurance as a separate item.

My 3 marching rings are listed on our house insurance.

I don't really understand how you didn't know.

I think he has been a total shit here.
He is happy to lie to you and accept the comments about the ring without worrying that he’s making you look like a fool.
I think I would tell him you are intending to get it valued rather than you have already just to see what he says. If he doesn’t come clean and actually lets you go to a jewellers then i’m not sure I could continue a relationship with him.
I’m not sure I could bring myself to wear the ring either- I think he owes you a replacement even if it is much smaller

In your shoes OP I wouldn’t be upset about the stone or the value, I’d be upset about the deceit and being taken for a fool, and made to look foolish in front of others

My wedding ring cost £70 and I don’t have an engagement ring even though we could have easily afforded one. It’s not about the money it’s about the lie. I would feel like he was playing a joke on me and I haaaate that feeling.
That he could watch you talk about the ring and tell other people it’s real and not feel bad about it is really upsetting.

Good idea @Poppy1324 I would actually get a proper valuation done. The jeweller and his wife just might have screwed up?!

Bluntness and colditz yes word for word exactly how I feel. I have a ring that was my great grandmothers engament ring it has a lovely story they were incredibly poor and ran away from service to be together, it’s made of tin and tiny glass stones and worth about £5. I will pass it on to my children with the story and I treasure it. My engagement ring is a lie and I’ve been looking up similar looking diamond rings this aftrernoon and it’s the size of about 2.5 carat. Yes I’m an idiot!

I’d be inclined to defend the jeweller who everyone else is lambasting. It’s easily done - you’re sitting next to a stranger at a works do, the conversation turns to her massive rock, you are professionally curious because twenty grand diamonds don’t come your way often. You may be primed to be polite about how pretty it is even if the owner has clearly traded quality for size, but if she thinks it’s a diamond and you’re 99% sure it’s actually CZ then what the hell do you do? Nightmare scenario in the heat of the moment.

I think you need to speak to your dh and not jump to any conclusions.

If you really think he's lied to you, you could stop wearing the ring for a few days. Tell him you lost it but have picked another in local jewellers of same size and it's currently been sized for you, you've left a substantial deposit and could he sort out the insurance asap.

YES you need to kid on you have lost it and look totally green and see what his response is .

yeah, when i went to sell my engagement and eternity rings after divorcing XH the jeweller gave me that ‘oh dear’ look.

it’s not that they were worth a total of £65. it’s that XH had spent 5 years smugging and oh-but-she’s-worth-it blushing about my rings. he used to go on and on about the quality etc..

he was, and i expect remains, a lying prick. he also did a bit of financial fraud on my behalf, but i’m saving up to have a solicitor deal with that.

i dunno, OP. it depends on your relationship with your husband. mine was controlling and financially abusive. he was also very, very weird but that’s a whole other thread.

how is he with family money, OP? proper sharesies or totally separate?

Op, is there another side to this? Is he a bit of a flash harry? Tries to impress people with materialistic things? It might be he saw what he could afford, wanted to impress everyone, and sadly, didn't think of the impact on you or the fact this was your engagement.

He was simply focused on being flash and impressing people?

I'm gonna need to see the ring

It was one of many many lies and bits of gaslighting weirdness that went on, I basically spent our entire short lived marriage thinking I was going crazy.

I would throw it away. Tell him you were flinging bread to the ducks who were swimming in the river and it came off. I think your husband will be relieved as well.

Go pick out a nice little ring together.

I'm not sure you are being daft OP. I was present when a diamond ring was bought for someone and I was astounded by the price and simply would have had no idea of the value if, for example, I had been presented with such a ring. How would you know?

It's such a weird think to do (imo).

Did he think that you'd only settle for a "diamond" of a certain size and wouldn't marry him otherwise??

I think he has been an arse.

If he'd wanted to not spend much, fair enough. But he has lied to you and let you believe he has bought you an expensive ring.

He'd have to be an idiot to believe he got a diamond for £300, so he's obviously happy to lie and make you look foolish.

This is really sad. I’m sorry OP but your dh appears to have been very deceitful here and it’s at your expense.
This would not sit well with me and I would be very hurt if my husband did that to me. Sat there and lied to my face and in front of others.
You don’t have to wear it, I have a beautiful expensive ring but I don’t care about having one so I only wear my plain wedding ring as like others have said that’s what represents your marriage.
If you do want one I would expect him to get a nice one now on the understanding you’ve lived with this lie long enough and you’d lived and gotten married on the understanding it was a diamond ring.
On a practical side I’ve always seen my engagement ring as an asset I get to keep should it all go wrong. Mine is indeed an asset. I would be very hurt if I found out my dh had lied and it was worth not much. Not because it wasn’t worth anything but because my dh had told me it was and I trusted him. Definitely question it and see how you feel after he gives his answer.

2.5 carat diamond!!!! It must be like a headlight!!!

I'd be fuming, OP, as you say it's the embarrassment of people maybe knowing while you've been completely oblivious to it. And he knew he was deceiving you the whole time, that's what would hurt the most.

Yes oblomov it looks like that one, possibly bigger, and yes I now fully realise I was incredibly stupid to thjnk it was a diamond. The wedding ring is made to fit round it so without the engagement ring it has a bit missing and looks odd. I often wear neither ring. Today I am wearing neither! It just feels wrong to me to wear such a flashy ring that is just to impress, Ive not enjoyed the attention and comments it gets anyway, I’m more a low maintenance outdoorsy type, i knew he was going to propose and a mutual friend knew and asked about rings at the time and I showed them vintage type beautiful but subtle rings and said that was the type I liked. My husband knows my style. This ring is not about me it’s about him showing off. As the majority of posters on here have said they would have suspected it wasn’t real but as a real life friend or family would be too polite to say, stands to reason the majority or people around me know full well and think I’m being made an idiot of, or worse think I realise it’s not real myself and I’m trying to con them we can afford something we can’t.

I’m a jeweller, OP. It’s a tricky situation because, at the end of the day, it’s the sentiment that matters, however you want to know what your DH was thinking.
Jewellers can often do similar styles with different gemstones, sometimes real, sometimes syntactic. So to be absolutely sure, as you’re off this week, I would go to the jeweller in question and say “I believe my ring is a CZ (cubic zirconia), it came from your shop. A friend said they think it may be a diamond, can you please confirm that it is a CZ? If it is a real diamond, I’d like to have it insured.” By saying it in this way, the shop assistance will feel no awkwardness in telling it is a CZ or that they are betraying the confidence of their customer (your DH). This can be an issue in many jewellers. That way you will definitely know the truth.
If it is a CZ then I’m sorry to say that your DH did lie to you. Jewellers have the ethical responsibility to be honest about what they are selling, they legally cannot have told your DH that it was a real diamond.
I would definitely confront him. Tell him you took it upon yourself to sort out the insurance, as he hadn’t yet and you had the time, you went to the jeweller for an insurance valuation and found out the truth. Explain that it’s not the fact that it’s not real that upsets you, but the years of lies, and in turn, lying to your friends and family.
Out of interest, what metal is the ring from? Platinum, yellow, rose or white gold? And if gold, what carat?

Yes the jeweller wasn’t horrible to me, he told me that was his job and asked if he could have a look, he seemed quite exited about it then the look on his face changed, he spoke quietly to his wife and I was opposite and couldn’t make out what they said so he didn’t set out to embarrass.