Admit it, if you’re a woman at some point in your life you’ve had the fantasy: the dream of how your knight in shining armor was going to propose. How did you envision it?
Let me share a tale of two proposals. One that really happened and another that never came to pass…
The Proposal That Never Was
I never imagined all the details, like the where, how, or when. Not down to specifics. I didn’t even include a down-on-one-knee vision. I did sort of expect food to somehow factor into play, but that’s just me. I always associate any happy occasion with food.
But in a general sense I did expect that my intended (a) would want to propose, (b) would propose of his own accord without any coercion, and (c) both the asking and the ring would be presented to me as sort of a surprise. (I might speculate a proposal was imminent, but I wouldn’t know exactly when it was coming.)
The reality was nothing like that.
The Proposal as It Really Happened
As I’ve related many times before, Wayne and I have been together since I was 15. During my last year of college “the talk” started. The “when are we going to get married” talk.
Even though we’d been together six years at that point, “the talk” made Wayne extremely uncomfortable. He kept coming up with excuses and putting conditions on how and when we’d finally get married.
Well, by 1993 we’d been together seven years total, living together three of those. I knew –had known since I was 15 and had had the dream— that Wayne was the one. It confused and upset me to no end that he was hemming and hawing like he was.
He finally pissed me off so much I broke up with him and moved out. Four months later we were shopping for rings. Together. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day 1994, he proposed.
It was not a surprise. I’d shed innumerable tears and had known gut wrenching heartbreak to finally “convince” Wayne we should get hitched. I knew what my ring looked like because I helped pick it out.
The Moral of the Story
As engagements go, it’s a sucky story.
However, as marriages go, the last 12 years have rocked.
So I guess it’s all worked out because I’d rather have a crap engagement and a smoking marriage rather than vice versa.
Questions for Readers
When you got engaged was it a surprise or did you know the proposal was coming? Did you help pick out your ring or did your husband-to-be choose it by himself?
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