aibu to think that if a man wishes to marry you he'll propose?

[clicarhel]

I'm not talking about the thousands of long-term couples who have a heart-to-heart and decide to get married as a sensible option and to have a nice 'icing-on-the-cake' wedding here.

I mean younger couples with no dc's. Isn't really a case in these situations that if a man really wishes marriage, he'll propose and women who actually do the asking are just forcing the issue when they guy doesn't really want to be married to them (or at least not yet)?

YABU

Where has this assumption that women want to get married and men don't (but only because they don't know what's good for them) come from? You're doing women and men a disservice here.

Surely most couples at least discuss long term plans and marriage now? And whoever brings it up first has actually "proposed"?

We discussed that we would like to get married, he said lets go to Vegas this weekend, I said no, we talked about what sort of wedding we'd like and he went and bought me a ring because he wanted to.

Do women actually wait around for a proposal of marriage without having any idea of whether their partner is on the same page?

Well I do want those things and I am a feminist NoddyHolder although I am not a SAHM.

It is hardly a feminist viewpoint to tell other women what they can and can't think now is it?

Nobody's doing that though - they're saying it's not very feminist to sit around waiting to be asked by the man, who gets to determine the time and nature of any proposal, and must pick up on the silent signals given out by the woman. And that a man who has to be proposed to probably doesn't really want to get married, whilst a woman is waiting only to be asked.

My husband took 10 years to propose, I never doubted that he loved me.

solidgoldbrass, Actually this has nothing to do with feminism at all. I happen to agree with you that women are actually better off on their own, this does not, however, make me blind to the obvious differences between men and women.

People should discuss marriage like adults but, if they are going to go down the road of 'romantic' road of proposing, they should be aware that if men wish to marry they tend to ask. A woman proposing is making a bit of a tit of herself by doing the asking herself because men don't tend to piss about. Unless he is a wimp. Simply put, if he wishes to marry her, he'll ask her. If he's not asked, it is because he does not want to.

There'll be a lot of men tomorrow dreading their partners 'popping the question'.

Anyway, if it is not OK for a man to put a woman in this awkward position of being proposed to, why is it OK for women to put a man in an awkward position?

I am not telling you what to think I am giving my opinion. And IMO this waiting around for a man to decide which way your life is going to go is not feminist and is handing over a lot of your power to another and to an institution which was created so that men could own their wives. I think you should as an adult know what your partners views are on being legally joined in marriage before you embark on a long relationship.

If men wish to marry they tend to ask.
Men don't tend to piss about. Unless he's a wimp.
If he's not asked it is because he doesn't want to.

So you know all men do you clicarhel?

I do not see how a man is in control when he is doing the asking. The woman saying yes or no is surely the one with the control.

The asking is a submissive request.

I proposed to DH.
We had been together for a year and half, and I knew he loved me and wanted to spend his life with me. Being quite a traditional kind of girl, I wanted to get married before really building a life together.
The timing seemed right as we were both finishing our studies.
So I proposed, in a no pressure, take your time way (even then, I was really nervous, let me tell you proposing is not easy ime), he said yes immediately, and we got married 6 months later.
That was 10 years ago, we are very happy and I still have the lovely memories of DH looking excited and pleasantly surprised at my proposal.
And he is most definitely not a wimp.

I always found the idea of the sweeping romantic proposal a bit meh, especially after it happened to a friend of mine in front of a whole bunch of friends at a restaurant - so cringey.

She came from a very traditional family who didn't approve of the couple living together before being married - I can only imagine the bloke had come under severe pressure to propose from her parents.

The marriage didn't last :( and she plagued herself afterwards saying 'he says he never loved me and didn't want to go through with the wedding' - makes me wonder if the OTT proposal was a way of him convincing himself he really wanted to go through with it, in the style of 'the groom doth protest too much'. She is better off without him, anyway.

I was with a bloke for 7 years who was anti-marriage and I didn't have a problem with that - I was happy being not-married to him and I wouldn't have wanted to marry someone who was uncomfortable with the concept of marriage itself.

However when he finished with me he said 'Actually I WAS going to propose to you on X date but you said the wrong thing/looked at me funny/trod on my toe and I changed my mind'. Like I really needed to know that?

Haven't read the thread but wanted to say that I am far too insecure as a person to ever publicly propose, I would rather wait for my bf to decide that he is ready and to then ask me. I have to admit I would like the whole romantic thing, but I doubt that'd happen. We both want to marry but can't afford it. I'm looking forward to the day he thinks we can!

I prefered the whole romantic proposal but with no one around. No need to do it for everyone to see as its too showy, but then again thats just my opinion and I feel the same way about weddings.

As most people are not, actually, mindreaders, when that time comes in any couple-relationship where one partner decides to initiate at least a conversation about the possibility of getting married, there is always the possibility that the other partner will say, er, no, not yet, no thanks, we're fine as we are, aren't we? If you would like to marry the person you are currently shagging, it's not a crime to bring the subject up. Someone has to, at some point, unless both partners are happy enough carrying on dating indefinitely (which is, of course, not a bad idea anyway).
This is why it's usually a major mistake to do one of those horrendous public flamboyant proposals if you have never even discussed the possibility with your OH: anyone who isn't a heartless tosser will say 'Yes' at the time, but may well drag you off into the corner the minute the cameras have gone and say 'Are you out of your mind, of course not!' (I have seen one or two of these on TV shows, and the terrified-stunned-rabbit faces of some of the poor folks on the recieving end would make a cat laugh).

OP, I really don't think you are getting that men and women are variable and not all the same in terms of what they see as acceptable and desirable behaviour in a relationship.

Some men will want to ask, others won't mind the woman asking, and others will positively love being asked by a woman.

I really loathe the whole set-up/surprise/special location thing, I just don't like it, not personally. I'd be just as happy if he said it during a shag, in the car, wherever and whenever. Or gradually, or mutually or anything really. The whole point is, if he likes me enough to marry me I don't think he will hang about not asking because basically, well, if he wants it he will say so. And if he doesn't, he won't.
And there is the pressure of knowing that if you don't sort of stake your claim on someone (male or female) then they might think you're not that bothered, or worse, go off with someone who gets in there first.

They are not all the same and neither are we, and saying that a woman who asks a man to marry her is making a fool of herself is just really silly and fairly unkind as well. Speak for yourself, but not everyone else.

if a man really wishes marriage, he'll propose and women who actually do the asking are just forcing the issue when they guy doesn't really want to be married to them (or at least not yet)?

I don't think this is true.

But even if it is true - what's so wrong about a woman forcing the issue? If she wants to be married and doesn't know if he does, what is wrong with her asking? Seems an entirely sensible thing to do.

You could say that a man who proposes is "forcing the issue" if the woman hasn't yet said she wants to marry him...

I asked DH if he wanted to get married over 20 years ago.

As a result of this thread I asked DH why he didnt do the asking keeping in mind we have been happily married for 20 years and he shows no signs of being a wimp. He came up with the following:

• apathy, why change anything
• no family push from his side (His DB living with GF, not married)
• hadnt occurred to him

Once presented with the opprtunity to get married the way we wanted (quietly) he leapt at the chance.

Given that men tend, in my limited experience, to exhibit the same characteristics my DH described above it is really quite surprising that the proposing job was given to men in the first place!

Handing the proposing job over to women is only sensible.

YABU.

Your argument fails abysmally, as it rests entirely on the premise of, 'this is the way things have always been done, ergo any other way is wrong and weird'.

And also, just for good measure, your argument fails also, as it rests on the premise that all men are Just The Same. 'Straight-forward' was one objective used.

For goodness sake...!

Women - you can't keep your own name after marriage, because it's too confusing with all members of a nuclear family having different names, plus whose name do you give the children - Mum's or Dad's?

It's really best that all people with mental health issues are put into asylums and given lobotomies and/or electric shock treatment because anything else means they are a danger to society.

Slavery is the most economically viable means of harnessing a workforce in many agricultural societies.

It is best that new babies spend a minimum of two hours a day at the bottom of their garden in a pram, getting plenty of fresh air and an absolute minimum amount of human interaction - it helps them become independent and be less clingy.

Women shouldn't enter politics as they are too emotional and don't have the required logical, objective brains.

Be wary of employing Mexicans - they are work-shy procrastinators.

Seriously - this is the level of your debating.

Times change. Relationships these days are very different beast from those of our own parents' generation, let alone a century or more ago when marriage was the be all and end all.

People - men and women - are brought up very differently these days and have very different ideals and expectations. Every individual and every relationship is unique.

Your argument might have held very true once, but it simply doesn't any longer. Relationships have evolved more in the last 30-40 years than they probably ever have. From 'living in sin' being utterly frowned upon to people jumping in and out of relationships, living with many different partners over the course of their life (serial monogamy), having children out of wedlock, having children with different fathers/mothers.

How and why is it OK to move on in all these different ways, but not in the way we initiate marriage?

I have no axe to grind - I was proposed to in the traditional way, by a man who made it clear he wanted to marry me in our first week together (actually, he pretend proposed to me before we even go together but that's another story!).

But my way isn't the only way of doing things.

Take off the blinkers and stop coming to silly conclusions based on out-dated ideas and stereotypical generalisations which simply don't hold true across the board.

My dh proposed to me on a romantic weekend in Paris. I said yes. Then I suggested getting married the following autumn (9 months on, not horribly short notice) and he visibly blanched. So basically, although he planned an elaborate proposal he STILL wasn't ready to actually marry me.

I think my point is that although he proposed getting engaged I was the one who actually proposed getting married. We did, and we still are.

And I disagree with the OP for reasons unrelated to my ramble about my own relationship.

There seems to be an assumption here that no man expects or wants a woman to take any initiatives and that every woman is happy to wait for her man to take them because this is their experience of life.

And that every man who does not live up to this expectation of Constant Initiate Taker is a whimp- while any woman who occasionally does take an initiative is presumably a harridan?

Well, it's not been my experience of life, and imo we will move further and further from this blueprint the more we get used to the idea of equality, as in men and women being able to act as they see fit without stopping to worry about the expectations on their gender.

YABU - I didn't realise MN had a portal to the 1950s.

If one person does the asking (rather than it being a discussion) then in either direction it could be seen as "one person forcing the issue", or it could be seen as "a romantic gesture".

OP's view is horribly immature and outdated in my opinion. People should do whatever they think is most likely to make them happy. If your partner does not want to be with you in the long term (and you've been together for long enough to know how you feel) then surely better that you find out and can decide whether you want to be with them.

I agree with the OP

flees

16 years today since I proposed to h.

Note lack of d.
Good luck women on a mission today!

I think if you raise the subject and the significant other whatever sex they may be looks delighted then job done! Anything else is pestering