Admit it. Your first thought on hearing that Rupert Murdoch and his fiancée Ann Lesley Smith had called off their engagement was: is she going to keep the ring? It was certainly mine.
After all, the ring he so lovingly placed on her finger barely two weeks ago was an 11-carat solitaire diamond reckoned to be worth a jaw-dropping £2 million.
Should she keep it? Of course not. No decent woman would keep the ring having been together for just six months and engaged for a mere two weeks.
Manners and good form require she hands it back, or at the very least offers to. Besides, Ms Smith is an independently wealthy woman.
Her life would certainly have changed had she married Murdoch – but the ring isn’t going to make a difference to a glamorous 66-year-old worth many millions herself.
Admit it. Your first thought on hearing that Rupert Murdoch and his fiancée Ann Lesley Smith (both pictured) had called off their engagement was: is she going to keep the ring? It was certainly mine
Yes, there is a required decorum in these situations. Getting engaged, getting unengaged, parting at the last moment and never walking down the aisle – all follow a kind of etiquette, depending how high feelings run.
I speak from experience, some parts sad, others joyous. I have been engaged five times. In my defence, I have always believed in lasting love and happy endings, and still do. So shoot me.
My first proposal came, aged 21, after backpacking across the world with my adorably beautiful and brooding boyfriend of three years, Mark.
Madly in love, we arrived in Ireland three months into our wild adventure and there, surrounded by the magic of those fair green lands, he popped into a souvenir shop and bought me a £20 gold Claddagh ring – the one with the two hands clasped around a heart, symbolising love, and a crown for eternal loyalty and friendship.
Over a Guinness, ring outstretched, he asked me to be with him for ever.
If he says keep it, you can bank 75pc by selling it
Oh, I loved it. It didn’t matter how cheap it was. It is impossible to describe the joy a woman feels when a man pours his love and devotion into a gold ring and slips it onto the third finger of your left hand. I was euphoric. Drunk on the romance of it all.
Six months later he dumped me. He didn’t ask me to return the £20 ring. Back in Perth, Australia, I kept the Claddagh ring on my bedside table and put it on late at night, squinting at it on my finger and hoping he’d come back to me. He didn’t.
Heartbroken, I took a job in Sydney and there I met John, the funniest, cleverest, most handsome man I’d ever met. So far.
My second proposal of marriage, from John, who I did marry, came in the form of a modest, delicate Victorian band of rubies and diamonds. Yes, the diamonds were small, but our love was great.
When we divorced six years later after he cheated on me, I gave the ring to a homeless man and told him to sell it.
Should she keep the ring (pictured)? Of course not. No decent woman would keep the ring having been together for just six months and engaged for a mere two weeks
I thought, hell, this guy on the street is already down on his luck – it couldn’t get any worse. At least he’ll be able to flog it for £50 and have a hot meal and a good night in the pub. No matter how fleeting, some happiness would come of my misery. I hope it did.
My third engagement proposal was strange. It came from Christopher and was a proper down-on-one-knee affair. Out came a box so big I wondered how I’d get that diamond on my finger and I felt my stomach flip with anticipation… only to find within a Rolex Oyster watch.
Despite loving him, I was so taken aback I refused him. What kind of guy proposes with a watch! Yes, those watches were quite fashionable back in the 1990s, but even so.
I told him all a girl wants is that ring on her finger and that it didn’t need to be flash – I’d have been happy with a cigar band.
He did propose again, later, with a beautiful solitaire diamond.
I gave one ring to a homeless man in the street
Six years we were engaged, but never married, and when we broke up – both of us heartbroken – I offered the Rolex and the ring back, but he refused and told me to keep them as memories of a time when we were very, very happy.
I still wear them from time to time and think of those years, which were so wonderful. To this day I wonder why I ever left him.
Proposal number four. This time, I got engaged to a man I shall refer to as The Businessman. The ring came from Tiffany – a gold band encrusted with diamonds, albeit very small ones.
We went to that iconic store at 25 Old Bond Street together one lunchtime to choose it, and I remember feeling like Audrey Hepburn, seeing it placed in a small blue Tiffany box and then on my finger.
I speak from experience, some parts sad, others joyous. I have been engaged five times. In my defence, I have always believed in lasting love and happy endings, and still do. So shoot me
How ecstatic I felt wearing that ring. I’d find any excuse to show it off – gesticulating wildly, waving my left hand to anyone I met, a feeling only a newly engaged woman will understand. Sadly, that ended after an engagement of three years. I did offer it back, but he refused too, not I suspect from chivalry but churlishness, even pain. Why would he want to keep anything that reminded him of me, he asked?
I kept the ring in the small blue Tiffany bag it came in for years, and sometimes I try it on for old time’s sake. A slight aura of guilt hangs around it, but I still love the way it looks – and the time we had together.
My fifth – brief – engagement didn’t even involve a ring, but a ‘keepsake’ necklace from a High Street shop with the invoice enclosed in case I wanted to change it. I didn’t want to change it. I could barely speak for choking on the lack of romance, the thoughtlessness of it all.
Why do men not understand that all a woman wants is a proper proposal and a ring of any kind – even from a beer bottle or a cigar or a keyring – and maybe, later, just the smallest diamond to declare their commitment to the world?
If you can’t afford one, do what I told a friend to do after his beloved refused his ‘no ring’ proposal, and buy one from a second-hand market, then pretend it’s your grandmother’s and a family heirloom. It worked for him.
How ecstatic I felt wearing that ring. I’d find any excuse to show it off – gesticulating wildly, waving my left hand to anyone I met, a feeling only a newly engaged woman will understand
So are there rules to the whole ‘giving-back-engagement-ring’ question? Yes, and it’s complicated.
The first rule is that if you are engaged for a short period and never married, you must give it back. Graciously. If you are engaged for a long time but never married and he dumps you, then think about returning it. Not so graciously.
If he’s the one who bails out of the commitment, gift it to a homeless person, like I did, because their luck couldn’t get any worse and it will only bring you bad luck.
What about after a wedding? If you are married for a brief time and it all goes sour, offer it back to him. If he says keep it, you can get between 50 and 75 per cent on its re-sale.
And if it’s been a long marriage, as is the case for many of my newly-divorced girlfriends, then don’t even ask. You’ve very much earned the right to keep it.
So sell it, wear it, give it to charity, do what you like with it. It belongs to you.
Perhaps we should all take a leaf out of Jennifer Lopez’s book. In 2004, she returned the $2.5 million 6.5 carat pink diamond her then-fiancé Ben Affleck gave her. And then accepted one worth up to $10 million when they got re-engaged in 2022, and then married. Ain’t love grand.
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