An Engagement Good for More Than Two
Photo by Hannah Kaminsky Last weekend marked six months since my fiancĂ©, Lucas Freitas, and I got engaged, and I thought it would be helpful for us to share how we (he, really) did it while keeping the event aligned with our shared values of altruism and rationality. Lucas proposed to me in the conference hotel where we'd first met in person, just one year prior. We met at the National Animal Rights Conference in 2016, and he got down on one knee at the same tent by the pool where we'd had our first kiss. When he offered me a beautiful ring, designed as the prairie diamond I'd gotten him when we were first dating, I was surprised and uneasy about the ring, and its potential cost, after saying yes while drowning in tears. Jewelry had always seemed to me the essence of frivolity; the sort of expense one can commit to a charitable donation. What I didn’t realize was that Lucas researched and thought critically about the matter, and arrived at a middle ground that I beli