.png)
2 hours ago
6
I have been a divorce coach for five years. Every client’s process is different, but occasionally I notice new trends. One afternoon, a woman showed up to her session fuming. Her soon to be ex-husband was trying to claw back her engagement ring through his attorney.
“Absolutely not,” she said, her jaw stiffening. “That ring is mine. I earned it. And I already know exactly what I’m doing with it.”
“You’re going to repurpose it into a divorce ring?” I asked. Many of my clients had already done this, refashioning their wedding rings or buying new baubles, and it had made me regret that I hocked my own rings – from two marriages – too hastily.
She shook her head and flipped me the bird. But she wasn’t mad at me – she was illustrating.
“No,” she said. “An F-you ring.”
I had never heard the term before. But I started hearing it more during conversations with clients and members of the support group I run, and even socially. The term “divorce ring” gained traction over the past couple of years after celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski and Rachel Zoe publicized theirs. That idea felt too soft and controlled for what some women felt during an upheaval that makes them rethink their entire lives.
“It’s a defiant way of saying, screw the relationship – but I still love the diamonds. They still have value to me,” said Katherine Rosenberg-Pineau, the co-owner of 21C Designs in Madison, Connecticut. Rosenberg-Pineau first heard about “F-you rings” after one client came into the store requesting one. Now, she and her business partner, Jaime Polk, use the term with other customers.
“They say: ‘Oh my gosh, that’s perfect!’” Polk said. “It’s spreading.”
Some might think the expression is crude, angry or hateful. But that’s not necessarily the case, according to Marcie Bianco, author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom. “It’s not an F-you to an ex-husband, necessarily,” she said. “It’s an F-you to the expectations, to the norms, to this belief that a woman’s sole purpose is to be a man’s wife – not their own person.”
I spoke to seven women about their F-you rings.
Julianna Spain, 57
When Julianna Spain split from her husband, whom she’d been with for 27 years, she wanted to recycle her engagement and wedding rings. When he moved out, he left his wedding band on the bathroom vanity – so she used that too.
Spain’s new ring, which features diamonds set on a modern chunky band, turns heads. “I tell them it’s my F-you ring, and I say the full word,” the Connecticut empty nester said. “It was designed for the middle finger, because when people say ‘I like your ring’, I put my finger up and say, ‘Thank you, I do too.’ Everybody laughs.”
She wanted a bold design, to represent taking her power back. “I don’t wear this ring as an angry thing,” Spain said. “I wear it as a fresh start.”
Erica Tannen, 66
Two months after the Covid pandemic started, Erica Tannen’s husband walked out.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said. “I could not imagine forging a life on my own at 60 years old after 34 years of marriage.”
But she did. Tannen founded The E List, a popular newsletter for the Connecticut shoreline.
Once the trauma subsided, Tannen asked if her daughter wanted the old engagement ring. “She said ‘No, Mom, I want a diamond that will sink me’, instead of my tiny one carat version,” Tannen remembered, laughing.
She then decided to create “something beautiful out of something disastrous”.
“It’s always on my right hand on my middle finger,” Tannen said. “It’s attached to me now like my wedding rings were.”
Mollie Suarez, 46
Mollie Suarez never dreamed she’d get divorced once, let alone twice.
When she split from her second husband, she didn’t want to break up with her diamond. So she reset it in an antique setting.
“To some, [calling it an] F-you ring sounds negative, but no – it’s saying I’m strong enough to do it,” she said.
A gemologist since 18, Suarez owns Westshore Diamond in Tampa, Florida, where she sells engagement rings and gives old ones new life.
“The shame that used to surround divorce 10 years ago is gone,” she said.
Julia Azeroual, 32
Julia Azeroual called off her engagement before she made it to the altar. At first, she wanted to resell the stone that had represented a joint future.
Azeroual sells watches in Manhattan, where she also advises women on divorce jewelry. “I saw how little I would get for the diamond,” she said. “So I decided to create a jewelry piece for myself.”
Rather than a ring, she opted for a necklace strung with coral pearls, which she said are symbols of strength and vitality.
Alex Weinstein, 32
Influencer Alex Weinstein’s divorce ring was originally supposed to be on her pointer finger but then her dad said: “Put it on your middle finger – like F-you!” The new creation has a wrap design, and features her birthstone set in the back.
“I’m proud of myself that I didn’t settle. So many women stuck in marriages are not happy about it,” said Weinstein. “For me, to poke at divorce and myself in a humorous way allows others to be empowered too.”
Rachel Moon, 45
Rachel Moon started planning her F-you ring before she filed for separation. Instead of reusing parts of her wedding ring, she wanted to start from scratch.
“I bought a lab diamond that I love years ago and it’s just been sitting there,” she said. Then, the Maryland mom saw Alex Weinstein’s post on Instagram and took the plunge.
“There is zero attachment between my marriage and this ring,” Moon said. “It’s mine. No one got this for me.”
Melinda Brown, 69
When her marriage of 34 years ended, retired corporate executive Melinda Brown didn’t want to wear her wedding jewelry any more. She happened to wander into 21C Designs one day. “They encouraged me to bring in old stuff to reinvent it,” she said.
One of her wedding bands became diamond hoop earrings. The rest was converted into an emerald and diamond necklace, a new modern ring and stackable gold bands.
“You can only rely on yourself. Period. Full Stop,” she said. “I don’t care how loving your husband is. At the end of the day, it’s you.”
-
Amy Polacko is a divorce coach, journalist and the host of the podcast Girl, Wake Up!
