This past weekend I finally took the plunge and let my partner Jeff buy the wedding ring of his choice.
Jeff, otherwise known as Jey to our friends and family came into my life close to a decade ago. We met at a time when my life as a young adult was just getting started – I had just finished getting my teaching credential, and was officially brought on board as the new art teacher at William C Overfelt by principal Vito Chiala, a former teacher of mine.
As most people know, teachers – especially teachers in the beginning of their career – don’t make the kind of fair wages they deserve and essentially can’t live on their own without having some form of additional financial support; whether in the form of parental help, roommates, side businesses/jobs… so on and so forth.
That was me in 2010. I was living at home with my awesome parents, spending every waking hour on campus – often being the first or second one to arrive in the morning (it was usually a toss up between either Vito or myself) and being one of the last to leave (Vito usually had me beat regularly) and all for a measly annual gross salary of $47,000. To add onto my stress, I had accrued over 6 figures in student loan debt and the first payments were due soon and credit card bills from college, a car payment… you name it. Thankfully, I was living at home, so that was one less thing I had to worry about and yet here I was at 22, living check to check, dollar to dollar.
When dating, I wouldn’t mention a word about my financial situation – having read one too many articles of people breaking off engagements once one reveals the amount of debt one was in. That was something I figured I’d save for maybe the 3rd date… or 10th. In my mind, I figured it would be best that someone would fall in love with my personality before going in for the kill.
And that’s what I did with Jey.
We had already split once or twice before for a day here and there (our personalities were really night and day – it’s kind of insane how compatible we are now), but the time had finally arrived where I felt it was time to let him know about my financial situation.
I remember we were sitting on a couch and I kind of spilled the beans and he sat there and was processing it all and I remember being incredibly stressed. Once it was all out, he said he needed a day or two to process it and then we could talk about it fully. I was fully convinced he was going to leave and in my mind I was already mentally preparing for it – Jey himself was forced to learn how to be financially independent very early on and had 0 debt.
To my surprise, he said we’d work on it together. And here we are 10 years later shopping for a ring. For a second I was stressed out about the exuberant amount of money I’d be throwing down on a diamond – something that for a person like me who was in a financial situation like I was back then just seemed so insignificant to have. But as the thought of buying the ring settled in more and more and I saw how important it was to Jey, and thought about how he stuck it out with me – who was I to say no? Money at the end of the day comes in, and goes out – but something that always remains a constant is unconditional love.
Loving someone unconditionally means loving someone through their struggles, their dreams, their successes and failures. Loving someone means giving more for them than sometimes you would for yourself. He showed me that almost 10 years ago and with this ring I am showing him the same.
Today is also his 35th birthday – couldn’t think of a better time to celebrate him. <3