My boyfriend gave me a promise ring when I was expecting a proposal. I was upset — until he explained himself.

• When my boyfriend told me to get my nails done, I thought he was going to propose.
• Instead, he gave me a promise ring. I was upset and thought the gesture was noncommittal.
• When we calmed down, he explained his intentions with the gift.

I pull my car into the parking lot at Kay Jewelers and breeze through the door. An employee looks up with a friendly smile.

"How can I help you?"

"Well, my 45-year-old boyfriend sent me to get my nails done and then bought me a promise ring for Christmas. I'd like to have it resized."

She's pleasant and demure. "Let's get your ring size."

"Sounds good, let's fit it to my middle finger," I say, high on my own sass.

"It's your ring, you can put it on whatever finger you want," she says without an ounce of drama in her voice. "It looks like we have his number on file. Would you like us to call you instead when it comes back?"

"Oh, no, thank you. He didn't get the right size, he can do the labor of picking it up."

I thank her sweetly and leave the shop, but then I start fuming again when I get into the car, and by the time I get home, I am ready to pick a fight again.

He led me to believe I could expect a proposal

If he hadn't texted me a few weeks before Christmas last year telling me to get my nails done, maybe I wouldn't have been upset. A text like that comes with certain implications, after all.

It wasn't the size of the ring — although it's dainty, I think it's gorgeous. It would have been just fine in the context I was expecting.

Maybe if he hadn't used the word "promise," a naming convention I had filed away as the for sort of ring a high schooler buys or — worse — a ring to shut your partner up, it wouldn't have landed so much like a gesture of committed noncommitment.

I was mad about all of it, and I didn't bother to hide it. I snarked about the money I spent on my nails. I griped about "shut-up rings."

But by the time the ring was ready to pick up, I'd had some time to think it through.

In time, I realized the gift didn't exist in a vacuum

What I hadn't bothered to consider was that this gift was not some whimsical, one-off purchase. Tom was building up to something and had been putting together a set for me that began with a solitaire diamond necklace two Christmases ago. Then, on my birthday earlier that year, he gave me earrings.

"Well, you have the necklace and the earrings," he had said when I first expressed my disappointment with the ring. "You see where I am going with this?" At that point, however, I wasn't ready to see it.

I had vented also about the ring to my friend Suzi, without realizing I'd left out this important context. When I was in a calmer state, I mentioned the rest of the jewelry and the sequential gifting.

"Oh, you didn't tell me there was other jewelry involved. You've been underselling this," she texted back.

This helped me realize that I had downplayed the gift, both to myself and to my sounding board of sympathetic friends.

When I was finally ready to drop the pettiness and have a conversation about it like a grownup, I asked why he bothered with a ring before the ring.

"I wanted to express the intention," he said. "It sets a timer to move forward in less than a year. But we need to be ahead financially because I only want to do this once, and I want it to be right."

I've been wearing it on the ring finger, but it fits the middle finger, too. And when we do take the next step, that will be exactly where it's going.