Marriage proposals are stupid

I decided just this morning that marriage proposals are stupid. Think about it. The decision to get married is the biggest decision one could make apart from the decision to follow Christ. With that being the case, marriage is something a couple ought to talk about quite a lot before they decide to go through with it. If two people talk about whether or not to get married, and they eventually agree that they should get married, there's no reason for there to be a proposal. A proposal at that point is redundant. You'd just going through the motions.

Marriage proposals are especially stupid in cases where one of them is surprised. Whenever I see a video on YouTube where some guy proposed to a girl, and she said no, it makes me think there was something wrong with that relationship. How could he have not known what she was going to say? Did they just never talk about marriage up to that point?

Marriage proposals are sometimes surprises, though, and I think that's just as stupid. Even if a girl is surprised and over joyed when she gets a proposal, it seems to me that something has gone wrong. If they talked about marriage enough before then, she shouldn't have been surprised. They should've come to an agreement by talking it over, and once having come to an agreement, the proposal is just a formality.

I usually bring up marriage pretty early on in a relationship. I don't do it because I'm in a rush to get married, though. I do it because marriage is the inevitable outcome of a relationship that goes well. Unless you're one of those people who just don't have any interest in marriage, whenever you date somebody, one of two things are going to happen. Eventually, it's going to end, or you're going to end up married. So I think these things through. I take things to their logical conclusion. And why shouldn't I talk about it and speculate about it? How can you not think about things like that, especially if you hope to get married some day? I don't think people should be the least bit freaked out by talking about marriage early on in a relationship. You should get freaked out if the other person has already decided they want to marry you or they seem to be in too much of a rush, but if you're not talking about marriage, something is wrong. Either you're not thinking about it, which strikes me as being odd, or you're thinking about it plenty, but you're keeping your thoughts to yourself, which is also odd.

I think couples should talk openly about marriage, even early on. At the very least, you'd want to know whether the other person was open to marriage in the future, what their intentions are in dating you in the first place, and things like that. You don't want to invest a lot of time and emotion into somebody only to find out they're not the marrying sort or they don't even see you as having potential.

The older I get it seems like the more traditional things like marriage proposals seem absurd to me. Gift exchanging on holidays and birthdays also seem absurd to me, but I'm going to avoid going into a rant about that.

Sure, not having a proposal may seem anti-climactic, but so what? We'd never miss it if we never did it in the first place. Won't they be anti-climactic anyway if the couple has already discussed it and agreed that they ought to get married? The only surprise after that point is the exact timing of the proposal. I don't see how the proposal can be a special occasion, though, if they both saw it coming.

Don't a lot of couples go out and pick out an engagement ring together? If they're doing that, then surely they've already agreed to get married, in which case, an additional marriage proposal on top of the agreement to get married and the purchase of the engagement ring seems completely stupid and superfluous.

It seems to me there'd be plenty of joy in a situation where two people are so close as to be best friends, and so in synch with each other that they agreed through talking about it that they each wanted to be with the other for the rest of their lives. That would be far more meaningful to me than a situation where I buy a ring in secret and propose to her out of the blue, even if she was surprised and joyfully said, "Yes." A mutually agreed upon and well thought out agreement between two people strikes me as containing far more warmth, love, affection, and respect than a surprise proposal in which one of them has to decide on the spot whether to say "yes" or not.

A proposal kind of inherently makes it a one-sided thing. One person wants something and hopes the other person will oblige. That creates what George Costanza called "hand" in a relationship. The person being proposed to has the upper-hand. They know the poor guy wants to get married so bad he spent thousands of dollars on a ring and risked humiliation to ask her. She only has to decide if he's worthy or not. She doesn't risk as much. If she says yes, not only does she get the same thing he gets--marriage--but she gets a nice shiny ring, too, and the comfort of knowing he really wants to be with her and isn't simply caving to pressure. If she says no, she only has to feel bad for hurting the guy, but he's out a few thousand dollars, he's humiliated, and he's heart broken. I wonder how many relationships actually survive the rejection of a marriage proposal.

Engagement rings are stupid, too. I already thought they were kind of silly, but then Adam ruined everything else about them. Engagement rings now are just status symbols for women. For men, they're kind of like having your brand on somebody. But it's a status symbol for a guy, too, to get his girl a nice ring. I suppose it's a tradition that's not going away, though.

I don't think weddings are stupid. If weddings are stupid, then so is any party. I think extravagant weddings are stupid, even if you're wealthy. But having a big get together in which you pledge your loyalty and love before God and and your family and friends, followed by a party with food and drinks, is actually a good idea.