> In this case, your wife values the story of a natural diamond that was formed through long, natural processes and required the effort of finding, excavating, cutting and so on.

I see this come up a lot, but I doubt very much that this story forms a large part of many people's thinking.

People want the status symbol and they want what they perceive as the ‘real’ thing, not what they rightly or wrongly perceive as an imitation.

As such ‘natural’ diamonds currently have successful marketing around them. I really don’t think the geology figures in many peoples minds. Geologists excepted of course.

Humans are indeed story telling machines, but you know what else they are? Hierarchy-driven apes who love showing off shiny, expensive shit to make themselves appear high status. The emergence of chemically, physically identical synthetic diamonds has triggered this in really very predictable ways - rationalisations of prior behaviour and desperate searching for ways to utilise this new phenomenon to maintain or elevate status.

The story here is a prime example. When both 'prettier' and 'not real' can no longer be defended, a new rationalisation for the large outlay of cash, and new explanation of how this makes the outlayer special, must be found. It doesn't have to be true (please don't try to tell me that all women have some sort of innate appreciation of carbon geology, I'm sorry but I don't believe it) it just has to sound right and allow the teller of the tale to continue to claim the high ground.

Because otherwise we have to face up to questions like "Did I spend all that and not prove I'm better than Bob who spent half as much?" and "Was I just doing this because of peer pressure and societal expectations? What does that say about me?"