To have not been effusive when colleague was waving her engagement ring around

[Thelaughingtonepoliceman]

Just been taken to task by a colleague for failing to be sufficiently excited when another colleague told us she had just got engaged and was waving a medium-sized rock around the office.

The colleague who has just got engaged has been with her partner for about seven years and on two separate occasions has been in tears at work parties because of his behaviour (on one of these he accused her of going out because she was trying to sleep with other men). She has previously said they usually sleep in separate bedrooms, she has thought of leaving him and he refuses on principle to do anything social with her at all and has no interest in doing anything other than watching rugby. In short, he sounds like a world-class arse and she could certainly do better.

She was showing people the ring and everyone was gushing over it and saying how happy she must be etc. A couple of the other girls made comments along the lines of "wait until I go home and show Bob/John the pictures".

Full disclosure I find the whole business of engagement and engagement rings pointless and utterly embarrassing at the best of times. If you want to get married, get married but this ridiculous charade of having to be asked by the man and having to have an expensive ring to wave around as a badge of honour is just cringe. In the best of situations I find the business naff but I'm very happy to overlook it if the people getting married are happy.

But I know for a fact that this is not a happy relationship and simpering over this was more than I could bear. So I gave a peremptory nod, said "congratulations, very exciting" and wandered off, leaving the rest of them talking about the ring for a further 20 minutes. Much later on someone took me aside and said it had been noted that I was lacking in enthusiasm around the engagement and why had I felt it necessary to be this unpleasant?

I honestly don't understand why it should be mandatory to be interested in the engagements of people you don't know all that well in the first place but particularly when everyone knows they aren't well matched. I won't be rude and I wasn't rude, but why should I pretend to be overjoyed?

Did you mean to be do rude OP?

Op, you have opinions on engagements, marriage, and relationships. So does everyone else. I doubt that women who enjoy getting engaged believe themselves to be unequal or below the status of the men who have asked them to get married. Probably the opposite as the man gets down on his knee and is basically begging (asking, supplicating) the woman to please marry him. See how perspectives can vary? Remember that you too are a product of what you have been told during your formative years by authorities you trust. Being equal does not mean women suddenly do not want to be wives and mothers and homemakers. It’s good that now women are no longer tied to only those roles but that doesn’t mean we should devalue them. Being a wife and mother, those things are important just as being a husband and father. Those things are not unequal to any other role in life. Engagement and marriage are not obsolete. It was men who had power and used it to oppress that was the problem.

I agree with you that men and women should equally hold the power. In this case, your colleague’s choice is different from yours. In other words, what she wants and decides is not your call. You are not the boss of her no matter how much you think you should be. Men are not our boss and neither are other women our boss. We are individuals. You are free to have been short and on the edge of rudeness, I think you made your disdain plain to all. You should feel self satisfied and at peace but you come here looking for validation for your actions. You don’t really know this person and you only know tidbits that you’ve heard at work, who knows if those tidbits have been twisted, and you’ve made a concrete judgement. It may be true that she is making a mistake but it’s her life.

A good general rule of conduct is to be happy for someone who is happy, be sad with someone who is sad, simply support her. You intend to never be married or lower yourself to get engaged or married to a man, who you’ve branded not as an individual but as a terrible group to be shunned. Not all men are oppressive awful people. Some are and it is those who claw their way up to grab power to tell others what to do. Some women are that way too. It’s not about female and male. It’s about character.

OP I don’t think you did anything wrong. Even if you approved of the union, there’s still no need to gush over an engagement or a ring. I certainly didn’t expect or want anyone to do that for me. Luckily none of my friends are excitable squealing types either.

That's another gain for wfh - no babies brought in!

Before I had my own babies, I'd have run a mile - really not in the slightest bit interested! Probably did unwittingly cause offence - so be it - but there were plenty of coworkers slobbering over them without me, and I didn't bring my own in. I did become a little more tolerant but I don't want to be hoicking other people's kids around!

'Before I had my own babies, I'd have run a mile - really not in the slightest bit interested!'

Boring for people who are not interested, and very painful for people who might be struggling with baby issues of their own. I've had to hide and cry in the toilet when babies were brought in to my office a few years ago

I had a few years of that too - it sucks.

Oh hey, that's OK! I wasn't having a go (sorry!) Obviously great minds think alike @BellePeppa

Definitely! Most men don’t give a toss whether or not women are excited about someone else’s engagement or wedding.

A good general rule of conduct is to be happy for someone who is happy...

Sure, let's just ignore the part where the fiancé is an abusive arsehole.

It is possible to feel disdain or dismay about the prospect of a marriage without being jealous. Your observation assumes that all women place being married as a life goal ahead of everything else

except it doesn’t assume that though does it. It’s your assumption. That’s your interpretation. No one else has even alluded to all women seeing it as a life goal, only you.

You just keep repeating that all women see it s a life goal. Only you are saying it, I wonder why that is. why it’s so prevalent in your mind?

And it’s not just this woman, you said it yourself it’s all engagements that you react in this way to, you even said in the best of circumstances you see a happy couple getting engaged as “naff” and you need to put your feelings aside.

that’s why it looks like bitter/envy , it’s such an extreme reaction you can’t even see a happy couple in a healthy relationship getting engaged as anything but something worth lashing out at.

I wonder how many times women are accused of being rude - the cardinal sin along with 'selfish', apparently, if you're female - that men would be accused of the same for exactly the same behaviour?

Like accusations of feistiness or bossiness, I'd be willing to stake a hefty bet that it would be fewer. A lot fewer.

Twats exist in most offices, as do tone-policing, dominance-displaying bullies.

It's easy to spot them, they use triangulating techniques like "it has been noted" ...

😂

Is there only one kind of woman then, the universal woman where we all have the same political and personal thoughts, that we all have to relate to each other simply because we are the same sex! When we don't that is highlighted and mocked - so you are an embarrassment to the universal woman if you happen to reveal an engagement ring, where you screech at the sight of a shiny ring, where you are seemingly a bad judge of acceptable males to set up a life with despite the clear red flags all around you or are women like men individuals who shouldn't be lambasted for not fitting in to the universal woman mould!

I’m not single. I’m not married but I’m in a long term, monogamous, happy relationship.

You were polite. I don’t think there’s any need to gush effusively, as though an engagement ring in her case signals anything other than ‘I’ve just bagged myself an asshole’.

No she doesn't. I'm with the OP on this. I might try and fake a little more enthusiasm but it has disaster written all over it.

I can't get excited about engagement rings either as rings are just not my thing.

@TaunterOfWomenInGeneralSaysSayonarastu completely agree.

Pass-remarkable twats I call them.

They are generally people with zero self awareness, the type that tell ask people why they are so "quiet", "don't join in", won't take a slice of cake..."are you dieting"???

Just generally twats without a filter who erroneously think they can insert their opinions and tuppence everywhere.

I love to see them put back in their box by saying something to the wrong person who pushes back hard.

Oh please, I'm so terribly superior as I don't like engagement rings at best a symbol of love at worse a piece of jewellery (not a chastity belt) as unlike your colleague and by the sounds of it 'all' your other women colleagues, everything you do, think and feel is not an attempt to win men!

It's nothing to do with being "superior".

I don't like engagement rings anyway for the reasons I've discussed upthread. This is a personal, subjective and strongly held belief. I don't expect everyone to agree with me but this is how I feel.

But if you take your statement at face value and assume they are indeed "a symbol of love" and if I thought this genuinely was a symbol of love, I would of course have let that go and been happy for this woman. But it clearly wasn't.

To give another analogy, I'm not a Christian: I don't believe in the premises of Christian faith. However if someone I knew was becoming a priest in a spirit of deep conviction I would absolutely be supportive and happy for them. If, however, I felt they were doing it because they had been bullied into it by their spouse, their parent or their Church leader, I would have been less happy.

In this particular instance, a woman who I know to be in a relationship which, to put it kindly, is suboptimal, announces she is going to marry this man who makes her unhappy. This compounds my existing sense of unhappiness with the premise of the engagement.

So while I'm not going to be actively rude and dismissive to her, I won't feel obliged to participate in a round of general euphoria about this impending wedding. This has nothing to do with "superiority", its to do with a profound sense of discomfort.

She's being an idiot. That's clearly how you see it. I'd have told the person that pulled you aside that you meant no harm and are happy for her for the sake of office politics.

Are you happy to have your own relationship held to such deep levels of scrutiny & judgement by your work colleagues?

Would you pay any attention to their opinions if they did?

A couple of the other girls made comments along the lines of "wait until I go home and show Bob/John the pictures".

Both Bob-and John probably did their best to feign some sort of interest with an “Oh, right”, while hoping to be left in peace as soon as possible.

God OP, are you still going on about this?!

Its not your life - let it go!

"I’m not single. I’m not married but I’m in a long term, monogamous, happy relationship."

Oh my god, what will you do if he ever proposes? Hide under a rock? Make him eat the ring? Self-combust? Immediately take to MN in sheer outrage to proclaim in high that no, you are not like "all other silly women." Heaven forbid!