Wedding Rings

February is a lovely, romantic month for me with Valentines Day and my Wedding Anniversary. It has been a very champagne, chocolates and red roses sort of month complete with a home made card (and terrible poetry). It would take a harder heart than mine not to be charmed by it all. It has left me feeling all rather loved up and content.

There has been a lot of sitting opposite each other in a dinner for two fashion with a lot of hand holding. I can't help but feel stupidly happy when I see our matching wedding rings - the symbol of our commitment to each other.

Of course, my life wasn't always this way. There was another marriage before this one. Another wedding ring. That particular symbol of commitment inspired a completely different set of emotions.

I actually had two wedding rings in the duration of my first marriage. The original one had been ripped from my finger that many times in the big I don't love you anymore and I don't want to be with you gesture that it stopped having any of the weight and solemnity that an important symbol should be imbued with. It was just a ring. Sometimes I wore it, sometimes I didn't.

In a rare moment of optimism, we decided to make a fresh start with new matching rings. There was no ceremony to accompany this. I liked my ring very much, Clogau welsh gold in a celtic design, but a ring alone is not enough to save a marriage.

We divorced. The ring came off for good.

A survey has revealed today that Britain has the highest divorce rate in the EU.

There must be an awful lot of obsolete wedding rings .

So the question is, what should one do with a wedding ring that maybe once meant something good but now stirs potentially damaging, negative feelings?

In my life, I enjoy the beauty and magic of ritual and symbolism. I wanted closure on the bad marriage chapter of my life and I am almost too embarrassed to admit that I attempted to wash my lovely wedding ring in my own blood to cleanse it from the bad emotions attached to it. It didn't work and I still have a stupid scar where I cut myself to harvest the blood!

I'm not keen on the idea of giving the jewellery I don't want in my life to my loved ones, which would be an option (although that is exactly what I did with my engagement and eternity rings). A bad ring does not deserve to be given 'family heirloom' status.

A better option perhaps would be the cash for gold route. An indulgent treat could be bought with the proceeds.

My new husband is a good man and he expressed a desire to donate his old wedding ring to a worthy cause. He vaguely remembers handing it to a friend in Switzerland for safe keeping but doesn't know what became of it since.

 My unwanted rings lie mostly forgotten at the back of a drawer.

The ideal solution for me would have involved an epic trek through hostile terrain, the final part of the journey featuring an ascent up the deadly slopes of an active volcano. Upon reaching the summit, the ring would be ceremoniously cast into the fiery molten rock - Tolkien's Mount Doom style. That would certainly have given me the closure, the ritual and the symbolism I desired.

If, perchance, that ring could pass through the all consuming lava and land in a collecting box for a worthy cause to convert to cash, I wouldn't be at all unhappy about that either.