Marriage proposals are kinda manipulative... aren't they?
This is something that's been on my mind for a really long time now and I just can't get it out of my head. It's been in there for so long that I'm finally deciding to get it out there.
No but like, for real... aren't they?
I guess that's kind of a hot take so before we continue, let me sweeten the whole thing with some disclaimers. Here's what I am not saying:
I am not saying that making a public or elaborate marriage proposal makes you a bad person. I'm not saying that people that do are being purposefully manipulative. I know some people are just into that and it's their dream of having a big show and so on, more power to them, what I'm talking about is the culture in general. We live in a society, and all that.
I'm really not a fan of marriages as a concept in general, but the proposals have a tendency to bother the hell out of me. And I don't think it's just me being an overly opinionated twat, no, there's lots of that in lots of my beliefs, but here, I genuinely believe that there often is something wrong.
I'm actually sure that if I look it up, I'm gonna find lots of better written articles and blog posts about this but if I do, I'll lose my motivation to write so I'm not going to.
People look at marriage proposals and go: "Oh, that's so cute! That's so beautiful!" but often, I'm the one person in the room that's like... "no!"
I feel like it's very much a heterosexual thing to do, and it's very much a hetero cis guy thing to do especially. Marriage as a whole, even Queer marriage, is very much tainted by heteronormativity. Which doesn't help at all with my beliefs about marriage in general.
Some guys are like: "Oh, we always have to make the first step!", hey, my guy, you don't have the hard part! It's not about you making the first step, it's about our culture seeing you as a customer and seeing women as the products, the product is not going to choose you!
A story about a boy and a girl.
So. Picture this: You're a manly boy. And you're with a girly girl, it's going great. You have been for some time. That's good, happy for you. I get it. I like girls too. Girls are awesome. But now, you want to ask her to marry you... well first: Why? Like, really. Why? What would you both gain from it? I think we collectively should start to question that, but whatever, let's move on.
What do you plan on doing to propose to her? Do you want to do something special? Like, going to a live concert of your favorite artist together and do it there? Going to a really fancy restaurant? Make a trip to some place like Paris? Yes? Well, I fucking hate that.
Because A, this city smells like piss, and B, once again: Why?
Why do you feel the need to make it a whole thing? Is it because you want her to feel special? Or is it because you want to make sure she says yes?
Should I cut to the chase? Is this getting too long? Alright, fine.
It's about consent.
I hate so much of these marriage proposals because so much of them are clearly about making sure the potential partner is too overwhelmed with emotion to say no. I'm sorry, but to me, it's like wanting to fuck someone but being too afraid of rejection, so instead of facing it, you wait for them to be a bit drunk to ask them! You know? Something, something, "consent", something, something, "rape culture"?
It's ok to wait for the right time to ask. But, there is waiting for the optimal time to ask, like if you're going to be asking life changing question, yeah, it's better to have your morning coffee in... and there is putting on a whole show to make sure the other person can't say anything else but no.
Like, please, be healthy about it. Communication, you know? That thing that all couple talk about but so few actually do? Well, do that. Make sure your partner is ok with public proposal and if not, well, keep it a private thing.
I admit, I take some sick pleasure into seeing super elaborate marriage proposals fail. It often looks and feels like the person being proposed to refuses to let themselves being roped in to something that is often very manipulative.
Here's my genuine take:
If you want to ask your partner to marry you, you should do it in some shitty run down Pizzeria where your pepperoni tastes like cardboard. It's not a bad time to ask, it's really average, it's really "mid", almost mediocre. Like, do it at the table, without making a big thing of it, like casually. It's the best time to do it. That's some quality relationship endurance testing, right there.