Oh Snap!

So today I have had to think really hard about a few things--practical things that they won't ever teach you in school--and I have been persuaded on a few different subjects and I think at 11pm I am starting to come to a level of truth.

My girlfriend is the real deal. She means everything to me. She and I have been talking the big "M" word and at this point in time we are essentially engaged. Here is where my rhetoric comes in.
The thing we are missing is the "formal" asking. --Of course you want it to be special, you want it to be memorable, you want the ring to be nice, the moment to be nice, and everything to be practically perfect. But I think the thing I like most about my relationship with her is that we are both very real. I open up to her really easily, and she me. We're honest with one another, we're willing to make the steps to make things work and we know it's going to be really hard.
Today I described my relationship with her to a couple people. I used the words: open, honest, trusting, and real. --It must be right because when I went over my life goals last night I have written down that I want to be open and honest with everyone. And that's the relationship she's letting me have with her. --I don't have to be phoney, I don't have to tell her that I can do things that I don't think I can. I don't have to tell her that I expect things of her that everyone else does. I have always wanted a real relationship, my entire life, and that's what I am getting. A real wife, who I can be open and honest with and trust her to be real about it.

That said, I've asked a few close friends to help me think of ideas to ask her. All that people come up with are phoney things these days... "put on the tux, go out on an amazingly romantic dinner, and ask her in front of everyone".
Being in the show business I never liked that phoney stuff and my initial intuition has been something simple, something real. I'm not going to go into details in case she reads this ahead of time, but I'm really going to go with that idea and explain it later.

She has been telling me about how she is fine with a cubic zirconia ring since day one. --I like that. I have always wanted a girl who would say that because it shows she doesn't care about money...of which I have none anyway. She presented me with several scenarios about CZ and insisted that she loved me and ...yet...for a long time I have been saving up money for a nice ring for my future wife. I even wrote a poem or two about it. I set this amazing goal to have all this money saved up so that I wouldn't even have to think about it, and today I didn't think about it all day. yes. I have precisely the right amount of money saved up for a nice ring. The side of me that is ambitious and sets goals and has follow through that side of me acted today without even really thinking.

But after getting home and thinking more and (sorry to throw this out of chronology now) talking to my parents and etc etc. I am now persuaded to follow another side of me about the ring, about the whole thing really. --Having the knowledge I do about marketing, I think with the way our relationship has always been, and what we want it to be, in order to fit our own little "brand" (marketing term), it would be in our best interest to make it very REAL, very TRUSTING, and very OPEN and HONEST.
They say that the reason why you fork over a few large to buy a ring is because you don't want it to be dwarfish compared to the jewelry/gifts you buy her later in life.
Who is "they" though?--What I know about marketing and sociology is kinda mixing at this moment... "They" is the jewelry companies. They sell a "precious" commodity that can only be purchased in a special place in a special way in a special manner that makes it SUPER expensive. It's just a rock! What does that rock mean?! Well according to the italic saying above, it means that this is the best you've got! This is it! You're giving everything you've got, it's SUPPOSED to be a burden to show that you're a man and know how to spend money on nice things. Wow. I could go on forever about this little gem.
If you don't catch what I'm digging up: there are certain people controlling the market for a piece of rock that takes a skilled person to create the actual use of it which has not practical use and is really not as barterable as they make it out to be...go check pawn shops, they're full of them! So based on supply and demand that is kinda counter intuitive... They're selling a product that the world is flooded with already...hmmm. Crazy.

Ok, so here's the scoop of how it all relates to everything to:
I'm in a bind where I want to make this memorable, and I want this to be real and open and honest, but I want to prove that I think she's worth it. I want her to know how much I love her even when I think my own words aren't good enough. I want her to know I'm sincere about it and not phoney. And I want this to not be dwarfed by future gifts I give later on. Yet, I also want to follow through with my goal of using that money for what I intended it for.
She knows I have the money, and if not, she'll know anyway once we're married just how much money we have. heh.
What I am getting at is that isn't it more real to focus on the important things in life? To be open and honest about it with her and let her tell me where we already know where our priorities are: surviving until we can get a real foot on the ground and become financially stable and have a good family.
We talked about this a few days ago really, that I would much rather have a family rich with family than a lot of riches without a family. She told me that I just say that because of the family I grew up in and that she would trade me because she would love to have a lot of money. --The best I know about making a lot of money is investing it in investments and not assets. Assets usually depreciate in value, particularly when similar products flood the market making supply very high, and especially when knock offs threaten to overtake the genuine assets.
So... I think I'm going to take a happy medium with the ring. That's how rhetoric works ya know? you play with the moderate ground and you generally win everything out in the end.
Yes, I have the money. Yes, I can get it all right now. But I would rather have a cushion to make sure we're fed and happy and if not we can fall back on, than a stone that symbolizes something unnecessary, and isn't worth the resale. It's like a dodge neon. the value of it drops substantially after 60 days.

I think I'll show her I listen and that I care about her future by not spending all of that money...after 5 or 10 years we can make it better...much better. When we're on our feet. If we don't brush into that cushion, we'll still have it, plus interest.

I think what happened today was really marketing genius convincing me something I didn't necessary want, and wouldn't solve my real problems. I hate when marketers do that...marketing should market real needs rather than perceived needs, but I suppose for some people it IS a real need--everybody else just gets trapped into it.