“Yes, I’ll marry you!”
Cue in the flowers, the tears, and the congratulations after the man stands up from his bent knees to slip the ring on his fiancée’s fingers.
Marriage proposals have been a thing around the world, and remain to be a thing even until now, with a few twists and surprises.
With the advent of apps and technological innovations that allow us to witness everything from the other end of the world real-time, proposals have become even more publicized, with a single video enough to gain millions of views and thousands going “aww” over a proposal clip.
Upload your proposal video on TikTok, and you’re gonna have a field day after it hits the algorithm. There are those with sweet yeses that received well wishes and cooing sounds typed out on a comment box, but the ones with nos have made things... well, quite awkward.
So in celebration of the recently held National Proposal Day, let’s talk about what proposals are not (well, what they should not be), and what they could be instead.
Public proposals are... not it
The grand gestures of love, some with flash mobs in malls, in parties, may seem appealing to many, but to most women it’s just not the thing. Only 15 percent of women agree to public proposals, a published study on the American Psychological Association said.
“Rejected proposals were more likely to occur in public than accepted proposals, and when present, audience members often participated in the proposal by encouraging couples to follow the proposal script and by expressing dissatisfaction when the script was violated. Some audiences became hostile when the woman said “no.” Hoplock and Stinson found out in their study.
The pressure to say yes in an expectant crowd rises, with onlookers cheering when someone finally goes down on one knee to pop the question. In a more recent happening, a 2023 New Year’s Eve party in Hawaii became the choice of venue proposal for a guy, and while the woman ended up saying yes in the first part of the video, another clip was revealed with them fighting when they got off stage. The woman could be heard asking “why would you do that?” in the clip.
Proposals are weighted. They’re essentially the door you open before you step foot into the commitment of marriage, and having it in a crowd of people you both may or may not know, may not be the best option. Public and grand proposals add burden and pressure on one party, with the unsaid weight of having to say yes because “how could they say no in front of all those people?”
What proposals could be, instead...
To spare both parties the possible embarrassment and humiliation that public proposals have a tendency of bringing to the table, proposals could be the thing where you talk things through instead.
Perhaps the simplest answer to the woes of proposal is communication. When you both know that marriage is where you’re headed, and have been talking about finally tying the knot, then the ring is logically the next thing in the order of things.
Maybe a quiet evening with the both of you is better, or even if it’s in public but without the grandiose involvement of a whole throng of people who don’t really know you. Proposals have so much potential to be sweet, something which both of you could maybe one day look back on and smile and reminisce about.
Additionally, maybe it’s also high time to change things up in the world of traditions where the men have to be the ones to propose. Women could, and should if they want to. Gone are the days when we stick with the structures of traditions that have boxed men, women, the LGBTQIA community into categories and roles that no longer make sense in today’s world.