When Patrick and I tied the knot in 2010, I remember the days after the wedding being upset that Patrick had forgot to put his ring back on. For a man who never wore jewelry, getting use to wearing a wedding band was challenging. I would text him, “Found your ring again.” Time after time. The immature 19 year old in me had silly thoughts like, “why doesn’t he want to wear his ring?” …. I am so thankful that Patrick loved me continuously even when my thoughts were a little crazy.

Patrick has always been a man who works with his hands. When we first got married, he did maintenance for a Property management company. He worked on motorcycles, boats and four wheelers in his spare time. He renovated his (our) first home. Wearing his ring was hard for safety reasons, along with the fact that it often got scratched and damaged. As the years passed, he was promoted to Property Manager which brought him into an office. After a few years of that, he went back to school and ran his own company. Again, wearing a ring wasn’t an issue.

Now, he works on airplanes everyday. How cool, right? I’m still amazed at what he does. He has stopped wearing his ring though.  Compared to when we first got married, I was shocked at how much I didn’t care that there wasn’t a ring on his finger. It didn’t make us any less married. 🙂

Marriage isn’t defined by rings. Although they are pretty and make identifying married people easier, they aren’t a necessity. Patrick stopped wearing his ring for safety reasons even though he often wishes he could wear it like he use to. Unfortunately, there were times that his ring would get snagged on something he was working on and it has the capability of ripping his ringer off. It just isn’t worth it to me (or him). 5 fingers is better than a ringed finger in my opinion! 🙂

After almost 5 1/2 years of marriage, we are stronger than ever in who we are as a couple. Rings make it easy to identify us as married… but we want our marriage to be easily identified by our commitment to God,  our unselfish love, our faithfulness to each other when times get hard, our patience, our kindness, our friendship, our understanding, our open communication and our romance.

So, if you see us out and about and one of us is ringless, don’t you worry (not that any of you have probably noticed). All is well in the 1/2  ringless Tobler household.

Anyone else have a ringless hubby? 🙂

Check out these babies. ❤