To replace or not?

I have a lovely engagement ring that’s natural diamond and a designer setting. I don’t/cant wear it.

I will never purchase another mined diamond but my husband on the extremely rare occasion that he gets me jewelry buys them even though I tried to tell him about labs.

I’m allergic to gold. Ten years ago I told this to my now husband before he went ring shopping and said “whatever you do I don’t care but get me a platinum ring” and he didn’t. The sales guy convinced him I was allergic to nickel not gold and that a nickel free white gold would be wonderful when my husband fell in love with a setting that didn’t come in platinum. Back then it wasn’t something that would have been easy to replace but it is now.

When it is freshly rhodium plated I can wear it for sometimes several months before I start getting a painful rash/swelling on my finger. I also can’t wear yellow gold.

I almost never wear it and that makes me sad. I worry of if I replace it that’s going to make my husband sad…. But it literally hurts me. It also happens to be much too large now and is not sizable.

Once we did talk about having my center stone reset into a platinum setting but I don’t want to do that. Maybe one of my kids will want what’s really a lovely ring one day. It didn’t really go anywhere after I said that if I replaced it I wanted a new ring entirely. That was a few years ago.

We can absolutely afford to replace my ring with an earth mined diamond but I am painfully cheap and I see no reason to and am even struggling to spend the money to replace it at all. I wouldn’t have spent the money on my ring 10 years ago and I’m certainly not spending that much on a new ring for myself now. I couldn’t bring myself to.

My wedding band is platinum but made to match my somewhat unique engagement ring. So, maybe I would decide on a whole new set? That feels wrong though? To replace my wedding band? I never take that off.

How do I decide if it’s worth it to have this conversation with my husband? I know he will feel hurt if I replace my ring. He would want an exact replica of my ring I suspect but I don’t. It’s his style more than mine. If I’m going through the trouble and spending the money I want to get exactly what I want.

It feels excessive to me to buy myself an engagement ring when I do have one and have been married a long time. How can I make myself feel better about this want? How can I talk to my husband about it?

Also, I would be looking for a platinum setting with maybe side stones of some kind and a 2-3 carat lab RB or OEC. What’s a reasonable budget? I am so torn about even doing it and I want to go into it reasonably if I’m going to do it.

How did you all decide to buy yourself a second or even multiple engagement rings? I see so many people here with absolutely stunning rings and sometimes many of them and I just 😍