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?

I generally just say "oh wonderful, congratulations" with my smiling mask on and then quietly fade to the background. I couldn't give a shit if people are engaged, I'm divorced and still in my "marraige is stupid and pointless" misandrist phase and that's the best I can do while holding back "noooooo don't do it, don't do it you'll regret putting it on paper!!!".

But then I've always been a bit cold and now I'm also a bit salty and bitter.

I'm with OP. If I don't agree with something I will find it hard to pretend otherwise. If an engagement ring is a symbol of love, why don't men wear one too? The moment they don't, it removes an element of equality in the relationship. Suddenly the woman is 'marked' as owned (or soon to be owned), whereas the man isn't. I obviously have an issue with being 'branded' as belonging to someone else, so much so that while married I didn't even wear a wedding band (my ex husband did though). So while it's important to be polite, it's also important not to give in to traditions or anything else that you don't agree with. Personally I find the whole proposal thing cringeworthy and cannot understand how any self-respecting woman can think it's OK to hang around and wait for their partner to decide it's time to take the next step.

She hasn’t attempted to? She congratulated her and then was pulled up by a colleague for not congratulating with what she deemed to be sufficient enthusiasm. That’s what the thread is about.

By her own admission, I don't think people are reading the same thread that I am. Why would anyone care and think (overthink) about this beyond the office walls. Posters make not like it (and purposefully misunderstanding the point) but it's 2023 now, women can make their own choices about the men/women they have a relationship with, they can have sex with who they want, they can have preferences of how they get engaged, if they get engaged, they can openly cry about the state of their life. It is really none of your business.

You're starting to make yourself look a bit foolish now and I think you need to take yourself off and have a little cry or something.

I don't know if you've actually bothered to read the thread but I have literally made no attempt to decide how this woman lives her life. I was invited into her relationship when she required everyone in the office to talk and look at great length at her ring.

I was then pulled aside and told off for not showing more enthusiasm about the ring.

At no point have I made the slightest pronouncement as to how she should live her life, I've simply said that knowing what I know about her relationship I'm not disposed to be hugely enthusiastic.

If a colleague pulled me aside in the office and said I think you should have been more effusive in your congratulations or more sorrowful in your commiserations or laughed more at a joke you are right I would dwell on it. It’s about policing women and their reactions. You have gone off on a tangent of your own completing missing the point.

Although to clarify if anyone attempted to do any of the above to me I would tell them to go f themselves and be straight to HR

You don't need to understand it, you just need to accept people don't make the same choices as you, you need to tolerate difference.

I really can't imagine being so angry to the point of frothing about these mundane events that arise all the time in life.

Ah. That explains the bitterness 😉

Of course it does. So all unmarried women are bitter. Stands to reason dunnit. Silly me.

You don't work, do you?

Well done for picking up on the 'tangent' line and running with it in solidarity with other posters that happen to disagree with those asking why the F the OP gives a shit about this. Hardly a tangent, it is hypocritical to say that you should not be told how to react, you should have the choice to react how you wish because it is anti feminist or some such crap but then go on to explain and describe the better 'choices' this colleague should make. FFS please don't go on to ask me to explain the meaning of hypocrisy, just Google it!

I don't work, I very much do work in quite a male dominated industry of cyber security and privacy.

Op I don't think you did anything wrong. Ignore all the daft replies. No one knows you on here so don't see any need for all the horrible judging comments.

I haven’t read all the other posts, I haven’t read any others saying you have gone off on a tangent. I’ve just read your posts and noted this woman has completely missed the point. Do you have any powers of self-reflection? If so haven’t you paused to think maybe I have gone off on a tangent?
The OP is allowed to think this woman is making a terrible mistake. She didn’t say that to the woman, she congratulated her. She was then criticised for not being effusive enough. The hypocrisy is in the person who criticised her who wants the OP to be totally OTT about something she thinks is a bad idea. You’ve missed the point of the thread which is that no one should be telling anyone else what an appropriately enthusiastic response is.

Would you expect all your colleagues to be running in and crowding round a woman who just got engaged shrieking and ooooooing over a ring??? If not why not?

You were rude.

YANBU to have opinions on the relationship or engagements, but there's such thing as manners and putting others feelings above your own in some circumstances.

You could have know your actions would be hurtful.

Damned right it isn't.

In which case I don't want to hear about the tedium of their lives within my office walls. I don't need the atmosphere permeating with the emotional negative energy of people crying about the state of their personal relationships at work. That behaviour is highly unprofessional. Leave your private life at home and take your gossip elsewhere: you're being paid to do a job, not drain your colleagues' energy by emitting emotional histrionics. Work isn't the time or place.

Given I fully accept colleagues' personal decisions are none of my beeswax, I'm happy for them to remain precisely that. I have precisely zero idea who most of my colleagues have in their beds out of hours, and couldn't give a screw either way. If one of them has a kid or gets engaged, I'll congratulate them - hell, even be happy for them in some cases - but beyond that there's a limit to which a mere colleague's interest and responses can be expected to extend.

No colleague has any business deciding those limits on behalf of other colleagues. This is rudeness and cheek beyond belief. It isn't the OP who is attempting to place strictures on other women's decisions: she patently couldn't give a shit (a thoroughly healthy response). It's they - and you - who are putting those strictures on her.

Novel idea I know, but how about people just stop oversharing their pure tedium? Not least, attaching antediluvian, gendered assumptions to other women's responses to it with a load of garbled protestation about 'women's choices' they were never interested in in the first place?

Job done.

Why have you just read my posts and why wouldn't you read the thread your commenting on.

I don't think the OP should be told how to behave but neither do I understand how you can be so judgemental about another woman's choices.

No, highly unlikely to happen as I am the only woman as my office is like the office in the IT Crowd but no I just stated above I don't think people should do that. I think what is likely is that my colleagues would demonstrate good manners and probably suggest the pub after work.

She has kept her thoughts to herself. She congratulated the woman even though she thinks it’s a bad idea. It is crazy to think that you could possibly sit and watch a woman in tears repeatedly in the office as a result of her partner’s behaviour and then wipe that from your brain. I haven’t just read your posts, I just haven’t read every post on the thread or any others saying you have gone off on a tangent, which you absolutely have.

Very good but my brain has just exploded!

In my past office I have seen a few women colleagues teary and crying, in my present office my colleagues have seen me cry, I haven't seen them cry but maybe it is because they are men, I have seen them very stressed. People are not robots they have souls(some of us do) and feelings about things - how are feelings unprofessional. Bizarre.

Oh bloody hell what a fuss over nothing! YANBU, someone else’s engagement is exactly that…someone else’s. As long as you weren't rude then I don’t see the issue. It’s like when people bring their babies into the office and expect everyone to coo over them, personally I couldn’t give a shit but always say something positive then get on with my day.

Convenient.

I thought the colleague had cried twice about this boyfriend, hardly repeatedly unless she has only worked in the office for a week.

How in the name of all that's holy did you come up with that crap???! "You are not the boss of her" - are you 5??? "Stalker", "psycho" - now I would really, really like to know where you dug that conclusion from. Your posts are making you sound like the deranged one!!

And jealous? What, of some poor cow who has been so upset in the past about this 'fiance' that she's openly cried in work, and her colleagues all know that he doesn't trust her and thinks she is going to shag around. What a prize catch!

The OP said all that needed to be said. I certainly wouldn't be making a hypocrite of myself either, knowing the background here. She congratulated her which is fine, totally acceptable, nothing more needed. The person who took her to task should have been told to fuck off and mind her own business, because, well, as some randomer on the internet says, she's not the boss of the OP either.

I am willing to bet that the two-faced 'gushy' congratulations were followed by gossip in quiet corners.

I know what I prefer.