I always think about this one when I hear about marriage proposals in front of an audience, two scenarios;
Scenario A: Someone proposes to their partner in a public forum with lots of witnesses. Their partner doesn’t want to get married and rejects the proposal there and then.
Scenario B: Someone proposes to their partner in a public forum with lots of witnesses and their partner says yes, only to decline it later in private as they didn’t want to humiliate their partner in public.
If you’re the one doing the proposing, which scenario is worse?
Just put the ‘C’ option on there as the obligatory ‘other’ option just in terms of answering the question, as opposed to another version of the proposal, my bad.
Scenario A would be the most humiliating. So I voted that was the worst. But really, how do you get to the point of proposing, especially in public, if you aren’t 100% certain of the answer? As in, you’ve talked about it and you definitely want to get married, but haven’t made if official. A marriage proposal should never come as a complete surprise. Surprise time and place, yes. Surprised the person asked, no.
This. You never, ever propose to someone in a big public way unless you are absolutely sure of the answer. “B” is hardly ideal, but at least your humiliation doesn’t play out in front of witnesses.
If you really don’t know if your proposal will be accepted, going public has to be for one the the following reasons:
You suspect a rejection and hope the public spectacle will persuade a “Yes”. AKA “Emotional Blackmail”.
You are just the kind of (redacted) that would do almost anything in public.
If you are doing this with open heart (no blackmail) a public “Yes” followed by a “btw, HELL NO, you Moron!” is going to be harder.
If you are going for blackmail (why am I reminded of the old “get pregnant! then he’ll HAVE to marry you”?) you deserve an equally vicious cut down. I’ll leave it to the person involved to know the best way to hurt the asshole,
There’s something to be said for knowing the truth at once.
I suspect these folks who get the camera at a professional sporting event to zoom in on him at “this exact time” are manipulating assholes.
I was once at an not-yet-on-web scenic viewpoint and saw a guy do the bended-knee thing. I thought it was sweet.
In the stadium with 10,000 others on national TV? Not so much (the actual characterization is Pit-Worthy).
I don’t like being humiliated in public…but I’d feel ever stupider if the whole crowd erupts in applause, claps me on the back, buys me drinks…and then I find out it’s been a fool’s paradise all along.
B is worse.
Tell me the truth, right up front, right away. Yeah, there’s ways to soften the blow. The other person might temporize: “I’m not going to say yes or no right now.” (The crowd goes, “Ooooh!”) Or the other person might be diplomatic. “I love you for asking, but the answer has to be no.” (The crowd goes, “Aaawwww!”
If she’s someone I love well enough to ask, I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to be the sort to say, “Are you kidding? Fuck no!” (The crowd goes, “OOOOOOOH!!!”)
I think the public proposals are all about trying to manipulate reluctant women into at least temporarily saying yes. What other purpose do they have? They aren’t romantic. Most of the victims look totally trapped and traumatized. I’d automatically say NO, but a lot of women schooled in “always be nice” would say “YES” just to not mess the moment up.
Actually, yeah, that would help, just a little. A sympathetic word at a bad moment can be a very consoling thing.
Total agreement.
How about asking, and getting an answer, in the usual fashion, and then using the answer as a trigger to celebrate…or not? Like, if she says yes, then I push the green button, and the balloons and pigeons fly into the air, but if she says no, then I don’t, and the stuff all goes back to the caterer.
My now-wife and I are baseball fans, and proposals at the stadium happen from time to time. I never would propose that way, but never told her of this. We’d been talking marriage already. But at one game, a proposal was being shown on the jumbotron between innings and she turns to me and says, “I’d never want to be proposed to that way.” Fine by me.
The only possible exception would be if they had already discussed and agreed they would marry but left the details for later. In that case, I can maybe see making it official with a big show.
C: don’t make a big public production of your proposal, because then you’re making it about you. Unless your intended is an attention whore, in which case you should be marrying him or her in the first place.
That said, I would take instant rejection over a pretend yes if we were with a bunch of friends. After all, they’re going to know the real story soon anyway. I’d take the fake yes if we in front of a bunch of strangers (like on the kiss cam at a baseball game or something), since they’ll never know any different so my humiliation would be private.
I said they were the same because someone who makes a public proposal needs to not only know that their partner will say “yes,” but also that the partner wants a huge show. Finding out that you don’t really know your partner is going to hurt no matter what.
They had a program in Japan where they would work with the guy (no SSM in Japan) on a proposal somewhere and they would throw in sometimes where there would be rejected.
The interviews with the guy before the proposal and the woman afterward sounded like they were describing two completely different relationships.