AIBU - waiting for a proposal

[GladAllOver]

In this day and age, why do so many women think they have to wait for the man to propose marriage?
My best friend has asked me to drop hints to her partner that she wants him to propose. They have been living together very happily for a couple of years. Why couldn't she just tell him she wanted them to marry? She 'didn't think it was right'. WTF?

I agree, I told DH I wanted to get married. He was dead against the idea at first because he's previous marriage was shit but once he got his head around it, he was fine. We got Officislly engaged on a Valentine's Day, he did a mock proposal for me but we'd already chosen the ring together and set the date for the engagement 😂 Not very romantic but I can't be arsed with fannying around trying to reenact fairytails. It was marriage I wanted, not a big proposal of Hollywood style wedding.

I know two women who proposed, one who is married now and one who is pregnant. I personally wouldn't propose though, and I'm not a fan of dropping hints either. We've been together almost four years, but we are only 23 so I suppose there's no hurry

I will add we both want to get married, we've had that discussion, it's a case of when, not if, for us.

DH and I discussed and decided on marriage together. I think it's important to communicate and know you're on the same page. No way would I get involved in a friend's relationship and drop hints about marriage to their partner! It's all a bit school yard isn't it? 'My friend likes you!' Marriage is a big commitment, they need to be able to have a conversation.

I think the whole of idea of a proposal is really old fashioned now anyway.

Most people I know, just decide together to get married and get on with planning it.

Well said Damsel. My DH did a down on one knee proposal but only because he wanted to 'do it properly'. By that time we had already had lots of discussions about what direction our relationship was going in, what we wanted out of life, whether we wanted DC etc and agreed that we wanted to get married in the next year or so. I think honesty and communication is really important in any relationship so the idea that a woman shouldn't speak to her partner about whether they should get married (and instead wait for him to make the decision/guess what she wants/pick up on hints) seems odd.

We had the discussion and agreed we wanted to marry each other. I think that's much better than a proposal tbh.

However - we did end up with a proposal because we had somewhat different views on timing of getting married. Discussions about timing always ended up with DH going "oh yes... in a year or so I guess". That's the only reason I felt needed a "proposal", to set the clock running. I was happy to "propose" to DH to bring things along but knew he'd prefer to do it himself. In the end I told DH if he hadn't proposed by X date I would - he got in with 3 days to spare.

I'm with damsel on this, it's all very high school. I get that some people are shy and find it hard to talk about their emotions but I would suggest that if she can't have this conversation then any marriage would not work, you have to be able to have discussions with your partner without asking friends to drop hints

Thanks for the comments.
Of course I haven't done what she asked, it just seemed silly and even a bit out of character for her to suggest it. But then she is absolutely potty about the guy, and love does strange things :)
I'll be interested to hear what happens next...