With This Diamond Ring

Published on 27/05/10

A CELEBRITY’S left hand can often break big news. “Sandra Bullock Not Wearing Wedding Ring,” one recent tabloid headline said. Another: “Tiger Woods’ Wife Spotted Ringless!”

But these days the symbolism of a gold band — or its absence — may not be so clear-cut.

When her divorce was nearly final three years ago, Wanda Dibben, 41, who lives outside Kansas City, Mo., asked a jeweler, George Rousis, to transform her wedding ring into a divorce ring. Ms. Dibben, who had been married 13 years, said she had been “very attached” to her wedding ring and hoped that reconfiguring it could “be kind of a buffer into my independence again and help facilitate healing.”

Her jeweler severed the gold band and refashioned it into a ring with a gap, across which strands of silver are stitched. For Ms. Dibben, those strands represent her son, Trevor, now 14, “because although the bonds have been broken, the stitches still keep that unity together,” she said.

While divorce rings are not exactly all the rage, they are showing up here and there, as are other rings that are worn on the ring finger but signify something else. Single and looking? Perhaps you need a silver band with a symbol of Mars or Venus on it, like the ones designed for gay or straight people at MySingleRing.com. The site says that those who wear its rings project to the outside world: “I am an intelligent, empowered individual and available to meet the same.”