Woman wonders why her boyfriend still hasn’t proposed
Carolyn Hax is away. The following first appeared Aug. 5, 2007.
Dear Carolyn: I’ve been dating my boyfriend for three years (we’re both in our late 20s), and we’ve had a great relationship. I want us to get married, and I’ve known and been comfortable with this for a while. Even though I’ve never said so directly, my boyfriend knows how I feel. He is definitely committed to me, and we have a great relationship.
But we’re still not engaged, and I can feel myself starting to get resentful of waiting. I have thought about popping the question myself, but (a) he’s a bit of a traditionalist and I don’t think it would be well received, and (b) it feels like an ultimatum — I’m afraid it would force a decision he has a valid reason for postponing. Plus, in all honesty, I really want him to ask me (though I couldn’t care less about rings and all that other stuff, and I think he knows this too).
So how do I find out why I’m still waiting, without pressuring him? Or, alternatively, how do I stop feeling resentful for it?
— Waiting
This is your future, your heart, your “great relationship.” Asking to be included in decisions that affect these things is not pressure.
I realize you want him to want you — so urgently and surely that he drops to his knee tonight. Everyone wants that love.
As a traditionalist, your boyfriend is presumably marriage-minded as well — which suggests that, for whatever reason, his love isn’t so urgent or sure, or else he’d have proposed. Either you know why and are at this moment admitting it to yourself, or you need to ask him why.
In other words, you need to let go of the perfect proposal, even if you’ve both carried these visions with you from childhood. Again: This is your life, not a scene in a movie. Unless you envisioned three years of pining, you’re already off the script.
And, more important, movies celebrate courtship; they end at the wedding. Real life is roughly reversed. By gearing your actions toward preserving “tradition,” you’re concentrating on the briefest, least significant part of the story. The bulk of your life with someone is (theoretically) after the wedding, where the ability to communicate without fear of upsetting someone will serve you far better than who bended whose knee.