I got out of bed buck naked and proposed on one knee. 30 years later we are still still going strong. Best decision I ever made.
Nope. It was morning, we were sitting up in bed, having been cuddling for a long time, and feeling very happy, when I popped the question. Really couldn’t think of a better time/place.
We got rings later.
Then boyfriend and I were texting on his birthday (we lived two hours apart; he’d spent the day at work, I’d had a bunch of commitments that meant I couldn’t drive up to see him), and he told me that he’d never been happier than since we’d been together, and that he couldn’t see a future without me. That I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he never wanted to be without me, so would I agree to spend my life with him and create a life with him.
Through teary eyes, I said (well, texted) yes, and we did a daytrip to Chicago to meet up with my mother, brother, uncle and aunt two weeks later (4th July holiday in fact) to get their blessing. Three months later…
Kinda long story, will condense best I can.
My husband can be, well, a little dense sometimes. We’d been living together for a bit when, near Valentine’s Day, he presented me with a toilet paper tube stuffed with tissue as we sat on the side of the bed. A little baffled, I pulled out the tissue, searching the pieces, and came up with nothing. His face fell as I looked and finally gave the empty roll back to him, saying “what was that all about?”
He turned away and did something (now I know he was looking in the tube) and handed it back saying “look closer.” I did, and there was a ring taped inside the tube. We’d been seeing each other for a couple of years and living together for months, but we’d never discussed the M-word, so when I withdrew a cute little opal ring I didn’t really think anything other than “oh, my birthstone, pretty, thank you!”
He looked crestfallen.
“What?” I asked.
“Put it on,” he said. There was something about the way he said it, and the way he was staring at me. I found myself in a really lousy situation – do I put it on The Finger? What if that’s not what he means? What if I don’t put it on The Finger, and that’s what he means for it to represent? Do I? Don’t I? He wasn’t saying a thing. No winning . . . finally I asked “which finger should I put it on?”
“The right one,” he said. He’s lucky I didn’t brain him.
After lots of explanation and apology, it turned out that he did intend this to be an engagement ring, but 1) didn’t have the money for a solitaire, which would have made his gift more easily interpreted, and 2) HADN’T BOTHERED TO DO HIS HOMEWORK TO FIND OUT WHICH FINGER IT WAS MEANT TO GO ON, relying on me to connect the dots and react in joy, and 3) never actually asked The Question. Aaaauuiiigghhhh!!
25+ years later, I still get lots of mileage out of that story. Sometimes we’ll be watching a movie, and a proposal scene comes up, and I turn to him and say “hey, what are they doing? I don’t get it . . .”
Mine proposed to me via Sharpie on a Taco Bell hot sauce packet, left for me to find on the coffee table when he had to leave early for work.
I still have it, it’s one of my most cherished possessions …
I did. Here’s proof! And in public.