When Should I Remove My Wedding Ring?

​Your spouse or life partner has passed. The worst moment of your life is unfolding around you. You clasp to anything to remember them and keep them close. So, when is the right time to take off your wedding ring? Or do you even have to take it off?

My answer to this question is whenever you damn well feel like it! I know some widows who took it off immediately after their spouse or life partner died. They didn’t want it to become a “big thing” to face in the future. Others took it off after the funeral or memorial. And some even keep it on for months, years or forever.

It’s a personal choice and one that weighed heavily on me after my husband passed away. I knew pretty early on after his death that, at 45 years old, I did not want to spend the rest of my life alone. My grandmother lived to be 96, which if that is my fate, I was not even halfway through my life. How could I spend all those years alone, without a life partner and best friend? So, deep in my soul I knew I’d have to take that ring off some day if I was ever going to date again. But the thought of it made my stomach hurt.

I waited a long time for that ring. My husband and I dated nine years before he proposed. I didn’t want to take it off. I loved that ring and everything is signified. I was part of someone else and wearing it made me feel connected to him.

So, I’m not sure if how I came to remove that ring from my finger was a terrible accident or my late husband telling me, in his very straightforward way of speaking, to “just take it off already and stop agonizing over it”. That is how we was – direct and decisive. Nearly two months after my husband died, I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot and felt a sharp metal object brush my middle finger. I looked down and my ring, still on my finger was missing the diamond. I did what any widow would do in that situation – I freaked out! Screaming and crying. How could this happen? Prepared to retrace my steps through the entire grocery store, I took a moment to look around the car and right there on the floorboard was the diamond. I tried to jam it back into place, but when that didn’t work, I found a safe place in my car and headed home in tears.

I don’t wish this horrific moment on any widow. When I got home, I took the diamondless ring off my finger, but kept wearing my wedding band. I wore it for four more month (six months after my husband died) when I woke up on New Years Day 2023 and decided I needed to take off the wedding band too. I wasn’t ready to be over him, move on from him or even starting dating again, but I did know I was ready to turn the page in the book of my life and start a new chapter. The chapter that would begin without my husband figuratively at my side.

There is no right or wrong time to remove your wedding ring. In fact, you don’t ever have to remove it if you don’t want to or fate can step in, like it did for me, and force you to remove it. The answer to this question will be revealed when the time is right and you are under no obligation to rush it or do anything you are not ready to do. Removing my ring did not mean that I didn’t still love my late husband immensely or that I didn’t miss him terribly. There should be no guilt or shame in your decision. Just follow your gut and trust your instincts.

What are your thoughts on removing your wedding ring after your spouse’s death? Share it here.