Not necessarily - depends on the nature of the wearer's situation. Like someone else said above, not everyone is sentimental in that way. This includes my own DH - not a very sentimental guy by nature.
For example, when DH and I got married we had only been together a short amount of time, I was a 20 year old college student and he was a 30 year old French citizen in the US on a visitor visa, just visiting friends. We didn't have 2 sticks to rub together! But we were in LOVE and got married so that we wouldn't have to be separated. We lived with my parents, struggled against all of the nasty snide remarks from the people who were supposed to be close to us, tolerated all of the speculation about what "special circumstances" could have led to such a short engagement.
Since all else about us was so non-traditional, I wanted a traditional e-ring. So I asked him to buy a cz in a gold setting (all we could afford) and that's what I wore for 5+ years. He made fun of me at the time, didn't understand the whole diamond tradition (it's a bit different in Europe - less emphasis on this) and only bought me a ring to humor me.
Eventually the cz dulled and I stopped wearing it, lol, then wore nothing on my finger for the next 5 years. Here we are now, 11.5 years and one beautiful 4 year old daughter later, and I am on my 4th diamond (all sold to finance upgrades). He now loves the idea of a family heirloom to pass down to our daughter and I am 1000x more sentimentally attached to the new diamond ring (4 times the charm, I think this last one is THE ONE) than I ever was to that old e-ring (though I still keep it in my jewelry box and giggle whenever I look at it).
Sorry, this wasn't supposed to be all about ME but my point is that each unique situation is different from everyone else's and let's not judge us upgraders (and serial upgraders) too severely, eh?
