Due to a recent conversation and my never married status, I am curious about something: ladies, did you nag, hint, gently push or hit your man in the head with a bridal magazine to get him to propose?
I have always worked under the assumption that the man just asks when ready? Obvisouly after conversations about all the important things, babies, money, religion etc. but I just thought that was how it works and I should patiently wait my turn?
I had no idea so many of my friends had to basically wear thier men down to submit to the idea of marriage?
Well in my case, I proposed only two months after we had met (I was 30; she was 29). So I didn’t really give her much time to get impatient. But I recognized a good thing and figured I’d better lock it down as soon as possible. Next month will be our 10-yr anniversary.
For me, this is one of those things that’s regularly present in pop culture but I’ve never seen in real life. My married peers all made the decision over time as a unit, no pressure or ultimatums. If a formal proposal happened at all, it was only as romantic gesture and nod to tradition after the decision had been made together.
Confirmed bachelor here. If she starts talking or worse hinting about marriage, odds are I’m heading for the door. If she waits for me to do the proposing…well, she shouldn’t oughta hold her breath. I don’t do marriage. It ain’t happening. I’m all over weekends of carnal joy, but that’s about all I’m ever going to put on the table.
We had discussed marriage (not just our general thoughts on marriage, but discussed marrying each other), but when he didn’t propose before I started law school, I put it out of my mind until after I finished law school, making me super-surprised when he proposed in my 2nd year.
I proposed to him, basically. We’d been living together for five years. I knew he was scared of the whole idea of marriage (his parents had a bad divorce when he was young and he didn’t have any other good marriage models) and I knew I wanted to be married. I sort of gave him an ultimatum, if you want to call it that – I told him that if he decided he didn’t want to get married, I would think seriously about leaving/moving out. He decided he’d rather get married. We did, and it worked out well, that was more than seven years ago, and I think he’s glad to be married now.
Um, I was always under the assumption that the couple discussed it first “I would like to marry you someday” type of discussion. Then it happened when the money/finances/life situations were in order. I would be horrified if I were proposed to without discussing it first. It seems like the craziest SURPRISE! situation of all time.
We’d been having all the important conversations, and they had gradually shifted from “If I ever got married…” to “If we get married…”. Eventually, they were concrete enough that I asked him, “So, are we really talking about ‘if’, or ‘when’?” He said, “‘When’.” And poof, we were engaged. We bought me an engagement ring a few days later, told the families, and started planning the logistics.
My recommendation is, if you’ve already talked babies, money, religion etc., great - now all you have to do is talk about the following:
Do you want to get married?
If so, to me specifically?
If so, when? (Does it need to be soon - to have kids while we still can, etc.? Would it be better to wait - until I’ve finished school, etc.?)
Once you’ve discussed those - openly and clearly, not “hinting” - then you’ll either be engaged, or (if you insist on being proposed to) you’ll have a good idea of when that will happen. Or, you’ll have discovered that marriage is not going to happen for you two, and you’ll either be fine with it or break up. Seriously, this is not a bush to beat around.
No formal proposal here. We had talked about marriage kind of vaguely. When I decided I was ready to either make a commitment or move on, I told my BF that. He agreed that it was time for us to get married. He is in some ways a pretty traditional guy, so maybe some nagging or hinting would have produced a more traditional proposal. I’m not really one to take the nagging/hinting approach, though.
Guy here, married seven years. Our route to engagement was, as was noted for other couples earlier, an evolution with both of us fully on board and clued in the whole time. Officially, I proposed, but it was on an evening that we’d planned just for that purpose. It took out the element of surprise, but I was still glad we did it the way we did- it let us both get vaguely dressed up, we ate at the restaurant where we’d gone for our first date, we had a camera and champagne on hand for the special moment, and she had a card for me. It also meant we didn’t have the moment of our engagement go down like that of friends of ours: he sprung the proposal question on her just as she was really feeling the need to pee. She said 'YES!!!- Umm, I’ll be right back!"
For more on the disadvantages of an unexpected proposal, search Google or YouTube for “marriage proposal rejections.”
Totally the opposite for us. I hadn’t even seen my intended for over a year, though we had started talking on the phone frequently - we lived about 1,000 miles apart. She had left grad school, and I sensed she was ready, so I invited her to help me move from Illinois to Louisiana. I popped the question as we were getting ready. She said yes, but I don’t think she knew that she knew it was a good idea.
First, I should clarify that I am very opposed to the nagging-tactics that said friends have admitted to using.
Secondly, yes my bf of 2 years and I have talked about it and we openly agree that we plan to marry each other. I guess it is the time frame that has not been nailed down.
I am ready to get married to this man because I love him, but I am NOT one of those needy whiney chicks that has dreamed of this magical day.
I just wanted to hear some other folk’s experiences since I really dont have any of my own.
I’m going to (very sheepishly) admit that I did hint once at wanting to get married - after we’d had all the conversations. By that time, it was a question of when, not if. As it came out of my mouth, I was horrified. It was one of the most obvious, bald-faced hints on the planet. Whacking him over the head with a save-the-date card would’ve been less obvious. So I backed up, apologized, gave myself a stern talking to and knocked it off, knowing that he’d tell me when he was ready. I would’ve proposed to him, but he’s really traditional and wanted to propose to me. Eventually he proposed, and in a remarkably romantic way. It was well worth the wait, though I would’ve been just as happy had more casual.
When I hinted, it was mostly out of insecurity. I try really, really hard to be a confident person, but occasionally I fail. That was not one of my finer moments. The moral of the story is that I’ve learned that directness has far better results than hinting, which often reeks of passive-aggressiveness.
I’m a guy, and we had a very open attitude about it. We discussed it for a long time before “the moment”, and it wasn’t a surprise when it happened. We actually discussed how the proposal would happen that afternoon. She was going out with a friend for dinner, so we decided I’d take that time to ask her son’s permission, which we thought would be a good idea just to show him that we realized that this would affect him too, though of course it was just a formality, and then when she got home I’d ask her to marry me. She jokingly gives me crap about it every now and then for being so unromantic, but I think it worked well for us.
I did not nag, nor did I even particularly want to get married. But he seemed to want to get married, and if not me, it would have been someone else. Couldn’t let that happen.
No hinting. We’ve talked about it and I’ve proposed a couple of times now. His answer went from “I want to marry you, but I’m not ready yet” to him feeling like marriage won’t change anything, so what’s the point. Since he doesn’t seem to care either way and I do, he’s agreed to think about it. We’ll see how it goes, but I refuse to drop hints - either I’ll keep my mouth shut or try to start a frank conversation.
I didn’t nag or plead, although I suppose I pushed. In our social circle, couples date for, say, 3-8 months, and are engaged for 3-5 months, then wedding. (Some people, including both of my siblings, took longer, although in one case both were nineteen when they met, and in the other they were long-distancing it the entire time.) After we’d been dating for three months, and had certainly discussed our intent to marry at some point, Mr. GilaB started to inform me that he’d propose in about two weeks. This was at around New Year’s, and he continued to inform me about once a week that he’d propose in about two weeks. In late March, I sat him down and told him to take as long as he needed, but to please stop telling me that he was about to propose, because he was making me crazy. In late April, I asked him if he wanted to get married in August, before I started a graduate program, or if he wanted to wait until the following January, when I’d be on winter break; he announced that he didn’t want to wait until January (not that he wanted to get married in August, mind you!). I then asked for permission to look at wedding halls, because things get booked up, and I ended up booking a hall (with a $500 deposit, nothing that would be incredibly tragic to walk away from if necessary) about a week before Mr. GilaB finally proposed. We’d been dating for seven months, and he’d been telling me he was about to propose for over four of them.
Did I push too hard? Perhaps. Mr. GilaB’s previous fiancee had left him the night before their planned wedding (more detail here), and I knew he was gun-shy enough that he might never propose if I didn’t nudge in that direction, even though in the abstract, he wanted to get married.