Why are Wedding Rings So Important?

When you first gaze at a wedding ring, what you see is usually a band of metal circling a finger.

But your wedding ring is a symbol of something massive, sitting on your finger as it is an emblem for your love, commitment, and marriage.

Let’s unpack some of those surface explanations for the reasons that ring you’re wearing is so significant.

A Never-Ending Circle of Love

Probably the primary reason your wedding ring is so meaningful is because it symbolizes infinite love.

The design of the ring is a circle. It is an especially meaningful shape because the circle has no beginning and no end – it just keeps going around and around in a never-ending loop, so like eternal love!

When you and your partner got married, and exchanged rings, you promised to still love each other 10, 20, 50 or even 60 years later. You promised you would stand by one another, for better, for worse, till the end of your days.

You never take off your wedding ring. Whenever you glance down at it, or twiddle it around your finger, you see it’s a symbol of your everlasting marriage vows, and that grand promise reinforces or renews the actual bond of love.

A Subtle Sign You're Taken

And remember, your wedding ring helps you signal your mating status, too.

The point is here that in public, it serves symbolically as an at-a-glance marker that you are spoken for. In a crowd of other people, your ring says (without uttering a syllable) that you are in a committed, cooperatively breeding partnership.

For many married couples, a wedding band is a must — a kebab-dance symbol of sorts foretelling your heart’s not on a whim for sale, but already in a secure attaché case somewhere. The ring draws boundaries. It deters unwanted enquiries and gives a false impression to anyone who asks that you probably have no interest in him or her.

And so: your ring represents, to you, a especially fine piece of costume, and embraces the specific extent of your devotion and love.

A Tradition with Deep Roots

If you think about it, the wedding ring custom is pretty special stuff. It has been going on for roughly 3,000 years. These long-ago folks helped kick off a trend that has lasted all the way to today. That says something so special and deep about marriage as an institution, it seems to me.

The first wedding rings came from braided reeds in ancient Egypt. Shortly thereafter other cultures would follow suit, many of whom believed that the fourth finger of the left hand contained a special vein running directly to the heart, the vena amoris. Hence, wedding rings were placed on this finger.

It is very emotional to realize that, when you swap rings, you are entering into this ancient ritual as it has been witnessed by so many hundreds of thousands of pairs of partners prior to you, and will be enacted by more into the centuries that lie ahead.

Chosen with Great Intention

The other reason your wedding ring is special is the role your partner had in selecting it. You picked out your ring together; you even bought each other’s ring, you finding one mindful of the other.

Maybe you shopped for a ring together at an antique dealer, or even designed matching bands. That said, they were chosen with care and meaning. You needed a symbol of your relationship.

When you look at the delicacy of the workmanship of your ring, you look away from the intention, your love that imbued it with meaning, and instead look toward the handiwork.

Passed Down Through Generations

Sometimes, wedding rings are meaningful for the fact that they can be heirlooms: that they can be passed down through generations. I don’t have a family where there are things that get passed on, but if you do, a ring could also help tie you to the marriages that came before you.

Say you wear your grandma’s wedding band as she did in the 1950s. When you look at this ring on your hand, you feel connected to your grandma’s marriage and your grandparents’ love for one another. The ring connects you beyond time.

Present through Life's Milestones

So you have to wear your wedding ring as you and your partner go through all the big life events — the birth, the home ownership, the retirement.

A no-fuss marriage will still find joyful milestone moments to confirm how radiant your ring gleams in the light and reflect on how grateful you are to be married, while a more taxing period with illness and job changes will concede you’ll need your ring to bestow moral support and forbearance.

Through rain and shine, through sickness and health, through thick and thin, whatever may come, that ring steadies you. Whichever way life takes you, the compass of the marriage it represents guides you on your way.

Reigniting Your Vows

You may even have some hard times in your marriage, when nothing is running as it ought to be run. When that happens, glance at your wedding ring: It might conjure up some of the hope you had on the day you first said, ‘I do’.

That unbroken circle serves as a reminder of the vows you made to each other, and encourages you to be open, let go of your ego and regain the feeling when it all started. You ring will remind you to save your marriage.

Keeping Your Partner Top of Mind

When you are busy, you might lose sight of your partner for a minute. But the ring on your finger reminds you of your partner immediately.

It’s also the ring that allows you to feel physically near even if geographical proximity isn’t possible because of business travel or other obligations. It also reminds you about the shared history that creates intimacy — and distance that doesn’t hurt as much.

Like a thread of souls that’s no longer pinged, your ring binds two spirits close and makes you think as if her soul is near, when you are far away.