• RION [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The whole idea of single sided proposals feels weird as hell and kinda emotionally exploitive to me

      Oh yeah. Proposals should never be the moment where you're actually asking and unsure of what your partner will say - that's just a recipe for heartbreak. Typically, you talk about feelings towards marriage in advance, and then once you're sure this is what both of you want then whoever the proposer is gets to do the fun little minigame of how they're gonna do it.

      Disclaimer: I am a little baby and this is just stuff I've read that seems to make sense

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      The whole idea of single sided proposals feels weird as hell and kinda emotionally exploitive to me.

      In my experience, they're very rarely one-sided. The actual "popping the question" is a formality. The real proposal is when one or both partners decide to have the "Where is this relationship going?" conversation.

      Maybe my partner and I are just freaks, but we were together for like 9 years before deciding it was a good time to just sign the papers so we hopped over to the clerks office

      I mean, nine years is a long time. Once you've been co-mingling assets for two or three years, marriage is mostly about consolidation of paperwork. Even then, throwing a big party to make it official is fun. I won't argue that the money we threw at a wedding could have been better spent, but I don't regret inviting a bunch of friends and family to a big fancy party with some light religious overtones.

      her family got straight up enraged at the way we did it

      There's a lot of emotion bound up in weddings, and people see it as a kind of cultural milestone. When they don't get to participate in it - particularly parents and siblings - they're going to feel hurt and left-out. If my sister ran off to Vegas with her boyfriend and didn't say anything until the deed was done, I'd feel genuinely hurt that I didn't get so much as an invite.

      But that's just family, for you.

    • LangdonAlger [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      We did a courthouse ceremony after 8 years cuz his new job had better insurance. Then we did a big party with family/friends and it was mostly fun