Guy Gets Dumped, Trades Engagement Ring for Halo Armor

There’s more than one way to sooth a broken heart.

For gamer Eric Smith it was selling the engagement ring he purchased for his girlfriend who dumped him and using the money to buy armor based on the game Halo instead.

Smith had picked out the ring after hearing his girlfriend describe her ideal ring on several occasions.  He planned to propose but she dumped him before he could.   He decided to sell the ring on-line and found himself wondering what to do with the money he made.

“The funds in my PayPal warmed my heart for the most part, but lurked there, reminding me of what I lost and where that money came from,” Smith wrote. “I had to get rid of it. And not just some of it, but every last penny. On something I always wanted, but could never afford. Something that would make me feel a little less empty inside.”

He bought a 40-pound suit of fiberglass-and-metal Master Chief armor from an artist in Detroit, and topped it off with an authentic helmet custom-made by a stormtrooper armor maker in the Philippines. The armor arrived in seven shipments over eight months, and Smith still says it’s what he always wanted.

“The Halo armor was a long time coming. For years I’d mused over the idea, driving my closest friends mad,” he wrote. “One day when I have the money, I’d say, thinking about that canary yellow diamond. I have to be responsible right now.”

Smith needs two other people to help him put the armor on, and even when he visits cons and other events to show it off, he has to move very slowly for fear of toppling over and damaging both the armor and himself. Still, he says that somehow that armor helped him get over the girl who broke his heart.

“I’d wanted the suit for so long, and after such epic heartbreak, receiving each piece of armor—arriving in seven shipments, over the course of eight months—became an unintentionally cathartic proces,” he wrote. “As the shoulders, forearms, chest-piece, and helmet arrived slowly, one section at a time … well, with each part I got a small piece of myself back.”