An engagement ring is a one-of-a-kind purchase: a leap of faith, a promise for life, a symbol of a love that knows no end. But… what if you found out that the symbol you had been wearing on your finger for eight years, wasn’t all it seemed?
Welcome to the Divorce Diaries. In our past instalments over the last year we’ve covered everything from when you’re most likely to divorce to whether they’re contagious to whether being on the contraceptive pill can effect your chances! and have now spoken to dozens of women – including one whose husband announced he was leaving her to have an open relationship with a 19-year-old, another who was quite literally ghosted by her own husband and one who discovered the real reason her husband divorced her was because he had a baby with her SISTER.
If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, share your thoughts, experience or advice about, drop a line to alice@capsulenz.com.
“Look,” says Rochelle. “I wouldn’t say my ex-husband was cheap. But… I would say there was a lot of inconsistencies and things that just didn’t add up sometimes.”
Rochelle and her husband Ian had been married for seven years and had two young children when they decided to separate.
“Maybe it was a long time coming, I don’t know,” says Rochelle. But one thing was for sure – their lives were becoming more separate, with them spending more and more time apart.
“We’d always been very independent,” she says. “We had different hobbies, different things we enjoyed. I’m probably quite loud and outgoing in comparison – I love spending time catching up with friends and family, going out and doing activities. He’s always been a homebody. He enjoys time alone and hobbies he does alone.”
For a long time, that seemed to work, but Rochelle says that over time it seemed to create more and more distance, until it got to a point where they realised that, no, it was no longer working.
“We went to therapy and talked through it,” says Rochelle. “We both admitted that we’d considered or been tempted to have an affair, but hadn’t acted on those feelings. I think deep down, we knew that there was someone out there for us who was better suited to us. I felt heartbroken. I felt I’d failed because our marriage didn’t work. But I don’t think it was ever going to work.”
Rochelle says they were both very much in different routines – Ian did the same thing on weekends, including taking their eldest to a sports match in the morning and then he’d spend the day in the garage. Sunday’s he’d catch up on sport then mow the lawns.
“I stopped asking him to come with us and do things,” she says. “I stopped asking him to have the kids while I went and did something for myself. It’s like our lives were running parallel to each other, not together, even though we lived in the same house.”
Another area in which they seemed to be on different tracks, was their finances. At no stage did they combine their finances, or open a bank account together.
“We earned a similar amount and I’d just transfer half of the mortgage to his account every fortnight,” she says. “We did the same for bills – some were in my name and he’d transfer half and vice-versa.”
Rochelle says it was one area in which things could get frosty between them. “It was just a bit embarrassing when you’d go out for dinner with friends or family – once in a blue moon, mind you – and it’d be time to split the bill and we’d have to have a conversation about who was going to pay.”
“Sometimes Ian would get annoyed that I was out taking the kids to things or going out for meals and spending money, but it was coming out of my account,” she says. “I was the one paying for it! Meanwhile, I didn’t give him a hard time that what he’d put his money toward was expensive gym equipment, or gaming stuff. That was his own business. We had a few decent arguments about it. Like, I just wanted him to sometimes pay for the kids to go to the zoo, or to pay for a birthday present or to pay for their clothes. He’d transfer me some money every now and then, like at Christmas and on their birthdays, but it was like I was supposed to be thankful for this favour, not that he was just giving me a little bit of what was his share.”
But then, yes, through therapy the pair realised that there was no salvaging their relationship and the best thing for everyone was to move on in two separate lives.
“In a lot of ways, it wasn’t as hard as I thought, because we already lived so separately,” says Rochelle. “But in other ways it stung so much more than I imagined it would. I didn’t really expect to feel the level of embarrassment I felt. My self-esteem really took a knock.”
While things seemed to be fairly amicable, they both consulted a lawyer when they separated. They worked out a plan for the house, the kids and their living situation with the help of lawyers.
“Then there were all the mundane things you have to think about splitting,” she says. “Like who gets the couch? The TV? The vase you got for your wedding? The wine glasses? The vacuum cleaner?!? There’s so much to think about. It’s such a strange process.”
Rochelle says it seemed like such a tedious process, they both agreed it would be a waste of time and money using lawyers to go through it all and that surely they could work together to split their possessions evenly and fairly.
“I told my lawyer and she gave me one very great piece of advice,” says Rochelle.
She told her to not assume or guess anything – to not make a guess what something was worth, or to take her ex’s word for what anything was worth. “She said to spend time doing research – know what things are currently insured for, what it would cost to replace them today, look at the receipts for items,” says Rochelle.
And so she did. She got a folder and started noting down things that were valued over $100.
Some things they had receipts for, others they didn’t, but were easy to get an idea of, like electronics.
But one item suddenly started to surprise Rochelle: her engagement ring.
They were living together when Ian proposed, and he was the one who had organized home and contents insurance on their house.
“I remember him talking about adding the ring to the contents insurance,” she says. “And I remember vividly us talking about how much the ring cost. He’d been told or read that the ring should be three months’ worth of wages. He said he was earning $6k a month, so he brought an $18,000 ring. It cost more than our cars put together back then, so I was terrified of losing it.”
But now, Rochelle couldn’t find any info about what it was insured for. So, she decided to get it valued. She couldn’t go to the jeweler where her husband bought it, because it had since closed down, so she went to another shop to see if they could help.
“Straight away, something wasn’t right,” says Rochelle. “He looked at it a bit weirdly, got out his little magnifying thing and asked me how long I’d had it and where I’d got it from. I’m kind of embarrassed saying it now, but when he was asking that I felt a little flutter that maybe it was worth more than I thought.”
Instead, it was more the exact opposite that was the truth.
“The jeweler was quite impressed because the ring was definitely platinum gold… but… the diamond was definitely not a real diamond,” says Rochelle. “And not like we’re talking about a lab grown diamond, this one was cubic zirconia. It was a fake. I’d been wearing a fake for eight years.”
The jeweler said that because the ring was made of platinum it was a much better fake than others, but still a fake. The platinum did mean that the ring wasn’t worthless – the jeweller put it at $1,100 – still a fraction of what Rochelle had been led to believe it was worth.
“The ring made me question everything, to be honest,” she says. “It seemed like such a bullshit way to start our marriage – with something fake.”
To make matters worse, Rochelle said when she confronted Ian he said he couldn’t understand what the big deal was and she had loved the ring, so what did it matter.
“If anything, it made the whole divorce easier to go forward with,” she says. “It made me think back to all the times I’d felt gaslit by him. That kind of became my symbol of it all.”
Rochelle says she found the whole situation to be very embarrassing, so she only ever told her lawyer and her two best friends – until very recently.
It’s been six years since Rochelle and Ian split, and a few months ago Rochelle got engaged to her new partner, who she has been with for two years.
“I cried I was so happy when he got down on one knee,” she says. “A part of me thought I might never find someone – especially while I was trying to raise young kids. I felt so lucky to find love. And, later that night she enjoyed telling him something special about the ring.
“Telling him that it was the first diamond ring I’d ever worn made it feel extra special,” she says. “When you’re divorced it can feel a little strange the second time round – there aren’t all those ‘firsts’ or special things – but, in the end, although it wasn’t his intention, Ian ended up doing me a favour buying such a cheap ring.”
