On marriage proposals and the weird sexism within

[emmagrant01]

In the last month, two women I know got engaged to their long-time boyfriends. Both women are 35, have never been married before, had been in these relationships for at least five years, and had been living with their boyfriends for at least three years. In both cases, their boyfriends staged elaborate marriage proposals, and both of these women cried tears of happiness at the proposal.

And in both cases, the women themselves and their friends and family all said, "FINALLY. It's about time he popped the question."

In other words, they were sitting around and waiting for the man to decide it was time to get married.  And I don't get that; I really, truly don't.

Maybe I should tell a bit of my own story here. I've been married to my male partner for 18 years. Prior to getting married, we lived together for 5 years. A few years into our cohabitation, we started discussing the long term prospects of our relationship. I honestly don't know who brought the subject up first (this was 20 years ago), but I recall that we had lots of conversations over the course of a year about what we wanted out of life, where we saw ourselves in 10 years, what our career and family goals were, and so on. It became an implicit assumption that we would get married eventually.

When I was in my 5th (of 6, long story) year of university, I read or heard somewhere that it takes a year to plan and organize a wedding. I was a little over a year from graduating, and that seemed like as good a time as any to have a wedding. So at the next opportunity, I told my boyfriend, "We should get married the weekend I graduate. That way our families won't have to make the trip out twice." (We lived a long way from either of our families.) He shrugged and said, "Okay, cool." A few days later he said, "Should we buy you a ring or something?" I almost said no, but then thought, "Hell, why not?" That made it seem more official, somehow.

So we went out that weekend and bought a sensible little ring, nothing terribly fancy, and then decided we should probably tell our families and friends that we were engaged. And every one of them immediately wanted to know how he'd "popped the question," clearly expecting some over-the-top story of romance and happy tears. When I said, "He didn't, we just agreed to get married," they all seemed really uncomfortable, like we had somehow done this all wrong.

That was 20 years ago, and it still baffles me that, at least in the US, there is an expectation that the male partner in a heterosexual couple is the one who decides when it's time to get married. Apparently the woman is supposed to wait and hope that she will be fortunate enough to be chosen. And that just... I can't even wrap my brain around it.

Last time I checked, marriage is a partnership between equals. Why should half of that partnership get absolutely no say in how and when it becomes codified and recognized by the state and society? Marriage is not something to go into lightly. It requires hard work and commitment and maintenance, and both people should have a chance to think long and hard about whether or not this is something they want to do. The basic idea of a traditional heterosexual marriage proposal, when you think about it, is that the man has time to think about whether or not he wants to commit to this woman, and makes the decision to move forward.  He then purchases an expensive ring, apparently proof that he has enough financial resources to be a good provider, and stages a special ceremony to ask her to marry him. She is expected to respond immediately, with no time to think or reflect. The romance of the moment and the surprise nature of the proposal seem almost designed to catch her off-guard and encourage her to accept without thinking very hard about it.

Maybe it's just me, but I find that whole scenario a bit creepy, and more than a little sexist. Yes, I know of women who have similarly proposed to their male partners, but that scenario is rare.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion, and I recognize that many people will probably disagree with me on this. I don't mean to imply that couples who decide to marry in this traditional way have somehow done it wrong, or are doomed to divorce, or have betrayed feminism, or anything like that. I am also aware that this is not how marriage proposals go for everyone and that there are shades of gray between the two extremes I've outlined. YMMV, etc.

Crossposted to Tumblr here.

Comments

[coendou.livejournal.com]

I get you not getting it. I guess I can see doing the "waiting around" thing in certain circumstances - where you're really not that bothered about whether you get married or not or when, and you're happy just chilling until they make the first move. But if you're saying "It's about time!" then it doesn't sound like that applies.

In our case, I was applying to PhD programs and he was applying to postdocs. We had no idea if we'd get them in the same cities (we didn't), and if we didn't then there was a good chance I'd take a year off to live with him before starting my program. No way in hell was I putting off grad school for him after 4 years of dating without a solid commitment.

So if he hadn't said anything about it by the time we started getting offers, I was going to bring it up (and by bring it up, I basically mean an ultimatum - look, either you're ready to make this permanent or else it's over and I'm going to grad school). Which is sort of "waiting around", but with a very set timeline of just a few months mostly to feel things out and see if he was thinking about it enough to bring it up first, or more clueless than that. As it turned out, he brought it up well before that, we discussed it very happily, we spent a couple weeks looking at rings, and then he proposed (and still managed to make it a surprise, since I didn't know he'd actually bought one of the rings I liked) and we were married six months later. And yeah, it still involved him getting down on one knee and "popping the question," but that's more about being suckers for sweet traditions than anything else. We'd already discussed it pretty thoroughly and mutually by then.

[geneva2010.livejournal.com]

My husband's brother was living with a lovely woman, and he was perfectly happy with things as they were. She was (still is) a spitfire, though, and laid it on the line. After about a year or two she said, we are either getting married or this is going to be over. They got married and it's been a long and productive partnership.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do totally understand that there are lots of different ways this can play out, and most of them are probably not as creepy or unhealthy as the ones I'm describing. It's like that custom of how you're supposed to congratulate the man but not the woman on an engagement - because congratulating her is just reminding her of how close she came to being an old maid. 0_o

I love my husband, but I'm not sure he would have done a big proposal, ever. No matter which of us brought it up, I think it would have been a casual thing.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize you weren't supposed to congratulate the woman. Where the hell did that tradition come from? I always congratulate both of them.

[coendou.livejournal.com]

Huh, I've never heard of that tradition! That's kind of weird.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty fair, really. Sometimes you don't mind chilling and seeing how things go, and sometimes you need to be able to actually plan your life. Glad it worked out for you guys. :)