Hi there 
I've never posted on a board before, I'm really not sure what to do. Please be gracious with me, I hope asking something like this isn't offensive. Looking for general advice/help
I’m 24 years old, my mother’s only daughter, and the only female grandchild of my maternal grandmother. My mother has a lot of family jewelry she’d like to pass on to me. My grandmother has specifically left me a pair of diamond earings specifically reserved for my engagement, as well as some gold bangles for my future daughters (God willing). Coincidently, I do have a long-term, boyfriend of the past 5 years, but we are NOT engaged. We’ve been living together for the past 2.5 years, recently got our first dog, very excited about the dog We’re not engaged though, and I’m not expecting a proposal any time soon! I’m in graduate school, he’s still developing his career, we are very, very young. We have talked about engagement/marriage to great lengths, and our relationship is very serious, we both see each other as life partners. If we did get engaged it would realistically not be for another 2 years. That’s not the point of this post, just providing some context. Maybe the fact that I’m in a relationship is influencing my mother’s opinion on this matter (see below)? I don’t know. I don't want it to be weird or put my BF in a weird spot by agreeing to wear it.
Christmas is coming up and my mother told me she had all of this jewelry she doesn’t wear anymore/wants to give me. She keeps telling me there’s no use in having things we don’t wear or enjoy, otherwise they just sit in boxes. She has this beautiful gold band, with a 6 small embedded diamonds that go all along the band. I don’t really know about the cut or quality. I don’t know but it doesn’t sparkle like traditional engagement ring does, I think the cut is a bit duller/not as refined. It’s quite beautiful, I loved the vintage details. My mother had very small, thin fingers, so the ring must be about a size 3/3.5? Mine are a bit bigger, I really have no idea what my ring size is.
Anyways, it doesn’t fit on my right hand ring finger, or any other fingers except my pinkies where it just falls off. The only finger it fits on is my left ring finger, which I know is traditionally reserved for a wedding band/ring.
My mother, who’s French, told me many women (especially during her day in the 70s-80s) chose to wear rings on this finger, and that it didn’t necessarily mean they were married/engaged. She told me this ring was her 20th birthday present from her mother. The ring itself looks very vintage, but it doesn’t scream ‘engagement’ ring by any means. It looks like an embellished wedding band though. I’ve attached a few photos of me wearing it for reference, sorry they’re a bit blurry.
My mother insisted I wear it, since it was her early Christmas present for me. I would love to wear it because I think it’s gorgeous and unique, nothing like my other gold/silver jewelry. My BF saw it and said it was beautiful, didn’t have a problem with me wearing it. Told me it was “good to know” that yellow gold bands suit me (in his opinion) perhaps better than white gold. I worry though that it would be weird to walk around with it. Would people necessarily assume I’m engaged/married? I don’t want to accidentally post a picture of us together over the holidays, where the ring is visible and have all my friends asking me what’s up. Does it look too much like a wedding ring? Am I going to get roasted for it when I see my BF’s parent’s siblings via zoom? At first when I was trying it on with my mom I was protesting “well I can’t wear it there! that’s for when I get engaged/married.” She told me it was fine and I was overreacting. We got into a bit of an arguement about it and she told me I was being irrational and she'd find it a bit of stupid of me to turn it down because of this reason. The ring reminds her of her mother (who passed away recently) and since it doesn't fit her anymore, she wants me to have it and wear. Could this be a cultural thing?
tl;dr my mother thinks its totally ok to wear it, is this a cultural difference in opinion
