A new sales opportunity for the wedding ring industry! Diamond sellers hate it!

New site feature:

An index of all posts, available here
Plus an archive page showing all posts, organized by month.

Background:

Historically, wedding rings in many Western countries have been a moderately reliable indicator of someone’s marriage status (Figure 1).

rings-classic-entwined — ***Fig. 1:*** *Classic late-20th-century wedding rings. Elegant! But they could always be more informative.*

The issue:

However, as it has become more common for people to postpone marriage or not get married at all, the ring has become a less statistically reliable indicator of someone’s single-or-not status.

Proposal:

In addition to the classic wedding rings, other relationship statuses could be indicated by alternative ring designs.

green-silver — ***Fig. 2:*** *The green pentagon ring might mean “separated, but still technically married.”*

red-purple — ***Fig. 3:*** *Red triangle: “married to video games and/or professional sports.” Purple square: “married to my job, so don’t even bother trying to date me.”*

orange-blue — ***Fig. 4:*** Various other relationship statuses could have their own ring specifications. With nearly infinite possible combinations of ring shape, color, inset stone(s), and overall design, there’s no chance of running out of options.

PROS: Would allow wedding rings to convey more information, yet still remain fashionable.

CONS: Addressing all possible types of relationship status could result in an incredibly large and difficult-to-memorize number of ring designs.