x9200 wrote: It's a very special gift and IMO it should never be analyzed with a cold logic (like above). If they got married and later got divorced nobody would question her "rights" to keep the engagement rings. If what she did was morally questionable also for her, here is the answer. Sure this should be if she was brought up in the "Western" circle.
How is it in the local cultures? Are there any engagement rings/gifts?
But that sounds rather akin to someone saying marriage is special, and hence should never end in the ‘gutter’ of the divorce court. But the fact is that the legal position of the engagement ring does sometimes become a dispute, if the marriage does not come about. In fact in some respects it would be a blessing if divorces did use ‘cold logic’, as they can to easily become personal, and a ‘fight to the death’ (is this a western version of kiasu and ‘must win at all costs’? ). Yes there are engagement rings in her (intentionally vague) particular SGn culture.
SMS: What you say is correct, I’ve now voted, and you can’t view the results of your own poll unless you vote yourself. Seems odd to me, but there you go!
CathC wrote: If that's true, it sounds like they had fundamentally different understandings about the seriousness of the relationship. She doesn't seem self aware enough to really even understand that. In an ideal world, she wouldn't accept the ring in the first place, knowing that her feelings didn't match the gravity of the commitment it symbolised. But I'm guessing she didn't really think it through that far.
I wonder if it's even occurred to her to give the ring back. I wonder if he has asked for it back?
Therein lies the rub. My own impression of her, and feeling about this, is that she is probably not a particularly intelligent person (I’m not being bitchy, this is as reflected by the extent of her education, the one job that she did have for a while, and the fact that she had breast implants (for cosmetic reasons) in her early 20s). She is however quite striking, in a sort of Asian Victoria Beckham kind of way. I suspect she was seduced by his lifestyle, and he fell for her exoticism (aka ‘Yellow Fever’). I agree with a comment above, that he probably is better off in the long-term without her.
I’m not aware of him asking for the ring back, or whether she considered it. What I
am hearing though is how her family/relatives consider her behaviour, and she really does not come out of it well.