The older I get and the smaller the pool of single women seems to become, the more I've found myself inspecting the status of a woman's ring finger (the one next to the little finger on your left hand, for those who don't know).Until recently, I'd assumed that a woman wearing a ring on this finger was either engaged, married, or trying to put men off propositioning her.
But at a recent wedding (not mine) I was sitting opposite a woman who was there on her own, flirting with me, and wearing what looked like both an engagement and a wedding ring on that finger. Let's call this woman Helen. Not to keep her anonymous; just because I can't remember her name.
When the bride did the rounds and sat at our table, while admiring her wedding ring I loudly asked her whether she thought that I should generally assume that a woman wearing one of these was married. Let's pretend that I posed this question in a clever way, steering the conversation towards it, rather than just drunkenly blurting it out in the hope that Helen overheard us.
Helen, overhearing this, said "Oh, I suppose I should think about these things. I'm wearing a wedding ring, but it's not mine.", which just confused me even more.
I've since spoken to a couple of single female friends who wear a ring on this finger, unaware of the fact that men even look out for this.
This leads me to the following point: women, although men are generally totally unaware of most things, we do sometimes check whether you're wearing a ring on your ring finger. If you're single and not trying to put us off, please don't wear a ring there as this just confuses us.
