In male/female couples, it’s still overwhelmingly common for the man to propose marriage to the woman. I realize that there’s generally an unspoken level where both people will signal their desires but it seems to be regarded as the role of the man to explicitly ask the question.
How does this work in same-sex couples? Are there situations where both people want to get married but each is waiting for the other one to propose? Is there an alternative tradition in same-sex couples, like the older partner is supposed to be the one to ask? Does it work differently in male/male and female/female couples?
Males have been proposing to females for hundreds, probably thousands of years. Legal, culturally accepted same-sex marriage has existed for, what? Maybe a couple of decades now? It’s not surprising that it hasn’t evolved a rich body of traditions comparable to those which characterize male/female marriage.
And this kind of chaos is the breakdown of society that the anti-SSM people warned us about. If you can’t even answer this, what will happen when a man marries a chimpanzee, or when two octopuses marry a porcupine?
I had gay male friends who were going out for a special dinner, scheduled for a meaningful date to them. At the end of the dinner, one of them reached in his pocket and pulled out a jewelers box with a pair of rings – only to have the other pull out his jewelers box of rings. So they effectively proposed to each other at the same time.
(The boxes were from branches of the same jeweler, and the rings were nearly identical. Those two really do have nearly identical tastes.)
Heck, if I’d thought a marriage between me and The Bestest Boyfriend had any chance of succeeding, he wouldn’t have been able to propose: I would have asked “ok, since we’re different religions, church or judge?” “uh, what?” “where do you want to get married, church or judge?”
Like panache45. My Wife and I just knew. We had bought ‘xtra’ property together (40 acres) and had been living together for about 3 years when she just said that we should start planning the wedding. We both just knew.
It will be 20 years in August.
Oh, I’m a guy. But think that the old stereo types about the man having to ask are going away.
We had been together 28 years when DOMA was overturned. My other half turned to me and said “Well, now that it’s legal, I guess we should get married.”
Then, right before we went down the aisle, I got on one knee and proposed. (and cried)
I think they are getting worse. The elaborate, orchestrated proposal that involves family and friends and props and a theme seems to be more and more the expected thing. So figuring out who is the “proposer” may matter more to kids today than it did to our generation.
Modern Family did an episode on this when marriage equality was passed. The whole episode was Mitch and Cam each separately trying to arrange a fancy proposal, and everything goes awry (of course).
At the end, they find themselves on the side of the road reminiscing about their relationship and each on one knee fixing a flat tire. They look up at each other and both say “yes”.
Our agreement was that I wouldn’t propose until I had a real job (I was doing intermittent temporary work while searching after finishing my degree). My wife surprised me with a proposal and ring on Valentine’s Day.
It seems like you’ve come upon the basis for the rule. Queen Victoria was the more “powerful” part of the couple and certainly the one who could be viewed as being in a position to “take care of” the other. It would perhaps have even been considered impertinent for him to propose to her.
So if we’re looking for an answer to the question of who proposes to whom we should look for who is the more successful of the two.
I’m not a romantic, and I don’t think Gay marriage norms are completely identical to straight norms, so there was no one knee moment. I did notice my husband eyeing a hand crafted bring at a Christmas arts fair…I liked it too, so I went back and bought two. I bid them in the Christmas ornaments and told him to look for a special surprise…it was not unforeseen, but i think it was a cool way to do it. I just said, this is an engagement ring, do you want to married? He did, we did, and thats how it ends
