How can women get their dream diamond
engagement ring when it is the boyfriend making the purchase and
wanting it to be a surprise? To find the answer you need to understand
your man’s thought process. After all, he is shopping for
a diamond, the symbol of his love for you.
The man shopping for an engagement diamond has
three primary shopping priorities:
1) They want to make a good
investment
2) They want to make you happy
3) They fear disappointing you or worse yet,
rejection
On all three points, men act out of fear of making
a mistake. Their pride and desire to surprise their girlfriend
typically prohibit them from asking the woman’s advice.
As men so often do, they try to apply logic to what is a very
emotional decision.
Most men attack diamond shopping the same as
any other problem they face. They research the subject, gather
all the facts (often in a spreadsheet), and then make a logical
decision. They assume you will have the same priorities they have
so they focus on what will be a good investment. They seek a high
quality diamond fearing that anything less will as somehow imply
some lower level of love.
The man’s first stop is often the jewelry
store in the closest shopping mall. They walk in the door and
realize they just entered a world foreign to them. They look at
rings in the display cases and see more zeros in the price tag
than they have seen since they bought their car. Their heart starts
pounding as they realize they have to spend thousands of dollars
on a tiny little rock they know nothing about, then give it away
to someone else or worse yet, face rejection.
Now their legs are shaking so they decide they
need to do more research and do it in a friendlier environment.
They head home, turn on the computer, and start searching online
for clues on how to survive the diamond buying process. Their
goal is to find a pretty ring their girlfriend will like and have
a few dollars left in their pocket. They feel more comfortable
with the discussions of the four C’s (color, clarity, carat
weight and cut) where they can match up those letter grades with
their budget to find some possible options. However, with a little
knowledge comes the sinking feeling that there is a whole lot
more for them to learn in order to protect themselves from making
an expensive mistake. They become even more determined not to
make a mistake so they spend the next weeks and months gathering
ever fact and opinion they can find on diamond buying. It is almost
like trying to get a drink from a fire hydrant. There is just
too much to drink in.
It is at this stage of the shopping process men
sometimes forget the reason they started on this adventure in
the first place. They can lose sight of the fact that their primary
goal is to make their girlfriend happy.
If you are a woman, by now you are probably getting
the picture. However, you are asking yourself, what should I do
to help ensure the diamond of my dreams and the proposal moment
as romantic as I hope?
Here are some suggestions that can help make
your dreams come true:
1) Do some shopping yourself
so you can tell your boyfriend what shape of diamond you like
best on your finger. Do not leave it up to him to guess wrong.
2) If you sense this is going
to be mostly a surprise gift, drop some subtle hints about what
kind of mounting (solitaire, side stones, etc.) you want for your
diamond. If you do not know, hint you want something very simple
so he does not make an expensive mistake.
3) If you have a strong preference
for the type of metal in the ring (yellow gold, white gold, platinum),
find a way to tell him.
4) If you have the type of relationship
that supports it, get involved in the diamond buying process.
There are more couples shopping together for the engagement ring
now than ever before and the result is often higher levels of
happiness and lower levels of stress.
Many couples now shop together so the boyfriend
knows what shape of diamond the girlfriend likes, knows what style
of mounting she likes and then he takes that knowledge to buy
the ring on his own timetable and make the presentation a surprise.
The bottom line is your man is trying, to the
best of his ability, to do all the right things to make you happy.
You just need to be patient and try to appreciate the effort he
is making on your behalf. If you would like to see this diamond
gift giving repeated, then by all means tell him how proud you
are of his research show him how much you love that sparkling
diamond on your finger.
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