👏👏👏👏👏(50 claps + tip)
Aditi, I agree with you entirely! But I should mention my two marriage proposals were not standard.
My best friend and I had talked about marriage several times before we actually decided to. But when we did, it was because *she* asked *me*. (Basically because we had a narrow time window, since I was transferring between military duty stations and she would not even be in the same hemisphere as I for almost a year. Plus she had the whole honeymoon thing mapped out, with the option to making it "just two friends going on a trip to Palau to snorkel and hang out" if I said no. Very smart and resourceful, my first wife.) But my reaction was not "OMG she asked me to marry her!", it was more "She asked me to marry her in the middle of a department store?" We had an interesting relationship. 😁
My second wife, Deb (also my best friend) knew about me proposing because we'd talked about it beforehand. Actually, we had REHEARSED it beforehand — it was a compromise for our young niece, who wanted me to get my ass in gear and propose RIGHT NOW to her favorite aunt, so we did a rehearsal to satisfy her. (And she had some suggestions that I incorporated, so that worked out. For a ten year old, she was pretty sharp.) The reason that I wanted to hold off on the actual proposal was so that Deb could meet my family first, so it couldn't happen until we'd flown out to meet my parents and my sister & her husband. But I hadn't told Deb I would propose the same day everybody got there, so it was a surprise to her. So much so that, despite having had a rehearsal, she ad libbed — the proposal (revised with suggestions by our niece) was multi-part, and Deb kept saying "YES!" to each part, rather than waiting until the end. 🙄 But that was over 21 years ago, and things have gone well since.
Anyway, I don't understand why millennials, rather than avoiding the mistakes of the older folks, seem more likely to want the Grand Proposal. And almost always by the guy. Yes, it's nice and romantic, but romance doesn't last forever. Not in the real world. Nerdy practicality, OTOH, lasts for decades. (Although cards and flowers help too! 😉)
