The Curse of Right Handed Wedding Rings

The damn bane of my existence. Some women are drawn to blond men, some to money, some to muscles. I am forever cursed to be inexplicably drawn to (non-obviously) married guys. Is this karma? Punishment for a bad deed in a past life? My subconscious turning on me? In my defense, it is extremely difficult to tell in this city. What happened to the days where you would slyly glance a man's (or woman's) left hand to determine if they're married or not? Maybe it's my small town way of thinking that sometimes pops up but this shouldn't be that difficult. 

I've heard many reasons as to why men in this city wear their wedding rings on their right hands:

• They're left-handed and it gets in the way (I have a friend who did this. It was probably why I was hitting on him when we met. Doh!)
• Culture - Orthodox Christians and Eastern Europeans wear wedding rings on their right hands as per custom.
• Gays and lesbians - this has been the norm forever it seems. Still, I just found out about this one.
• Openness to infidelity. I'm on the fence with this one, it seems very 1960's to me. Along with key parties and nudist colonies.
• They have no left ring finger (I had to throw this one in because there are tons of articles online about what to do if you don't have a left hand).

Yes, I went there because the drummer from Def Leopard only has one arm....

Still, I don't think very many of these apply to the men I come in contact with (I don't know anyone missing a hand or who is an Orthodox Christian). So I had to do some investigative reporting with the men I come in contact with on a daily basis. These are the answers I got:

• "It gets in the fucking way" - motorcycle mechanic 
• "How else am I going to date?" - Starfucks guy
• "My wife is Greek...I think" - guy waiting for the N-Judah
• "Wearing it on my left hand reminds me of my ex-wife. So I switched to be reminded of my new    wife" - Attorney in line at Good Vibrations
• "You mean there's a specific hand?!?" - college student
• "I'm gay" - guy with handlebar mustache and iPad
• "I stopped wearing mine because it got in the way of my bar tricks" - bartender at unidentified gay bar (straight...no he really is)
• "I'm getting a divorce and I guess it hasn't hit me..." - cute hipster in-line at Amoeba
• "As long as I have one, why should it matter?" - my sexy coffee slinging Muse

Muse was right - should it matter? As much as it broke my heart to find out he was married, it also made me realize that everything we think we know about "traditional" marriages may be wrong. Does that mean I should assume that every guy in this city with any type of ring on either his left or right ring finger mean he's taken? Sadly, the answer appears to be yes. It's hard enough to determine dating status normally but now we have throw this into the equation as well?

So I'm no closer to an answer. I'm still stuck doing the casual question about a guy's wife or girlfriend. I know what you're thinking: "hey jackass, you could just ask". Sure, I could but that's also the equivalent of being the woman on the first date who tells the guy about her dream wedding and that makes me cringe. The best advice I received on this was from my co-worker, "If you don't have the balls to ask a guy if he's single, how are you going to tell him what you want in bed"? Touche....