/karen/

What’s your story?

Thursday, 16 June, 2005

Last week in our Chaplaincy group, one of the girls was sharing about how her husband proposed to her. It was a lovely story—she had no idea, he had picked her up after work, taken her to the beach to have a little picnic, then they had walked to this café where they had had their first date and he had planned it with the staff so that no one was allowed in for 15 mins while he sang a song he wrote for her to ask her to marry him.

I enjoyed the story—I especially enjoyed her telling the story because I could see her reliving the feeling of being surprised and the joy she felt when he popped the question. It also made me start thinking about the proposal story and how it's become such a significant thing in our culture.

It seems to put enormous pressure on guys to make the occasion memorable or special in some way. Care is taken to make sure that the event is unexpected—that she won't suspect a thing. I have friends who, when they got engaged, the guy hired a helicopter and took his fiancée out over the harbour and proposed to her on an island on New Year's Eve. Yes, she didn't have a clue it was going to happen!

It also raises expectations about other people's proposal stories so, when you're sitting in a group sharing proposal stories, you feel a bit of pressure to make yours just as spectacular and special as the last. And people enjoy listening to you and you enjoy the attention.

Let me tell you my proposal story.

It was January of 1999 and Ben and I had been hanging out for about six months or so. We refused to tell people were going out because were young and idealistic; we didn't want to be “going out” because so many people we knew had started going out, broken up and then the friendship was never the same. It had happened to us in previous relationships and we were determined not to have it happen to us. However, we were still interested in whether or not we could marry each other and we talked about it on several occasions.

Ben, at this stage, was 19. I was 20. By everyone's standards, except our own, we were far too young to be even thinking about marriage. At this time in December, even Ben was thinking he was too young—too young to accept the responsibility, too young to stop being a boy, too young to leave behind his friends and enter matrimony. We had been talking about this just before this particular day when Ben and I decided to take a walk around Carss Park.

On the our way back around the bay, we stopped at one of the stone seats and sat there talking for a while. And then at the end of the conversation, Ben said, “Will you marry me?” And I said, “Yes,” thinking he meant when he was ready or older or whatever it was he needed to be before he could get married. I didn't take him seriously But that wasn't what he was thinking.

Later that day when he found out what I had been thinking, he called me a “loser” and other derogatory names and threw dead leaves at me as a joke.

And then some time later (it wasn't long), the night before ECU first year enrolments, we had stayed up all night talking and he proposed again and, of course, taking him seriously this time, I said yes. I was sort of laughing and crying because I was so happy. Ben took a picture of me which I think we still have somewhere. He didn't have a ring. He hadn't booked a fancy restaurant or a helicopter ride. He didn't sing me a song. But it was still special and wonderful and I remember being so happy.

I know it's not a very scintillating tale and certainly the “loser” bit doesn't go down well when I tell it but anyway that's how it happened.

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