Man Asks If He's Wrong For Leaving His Relationship After His Girlfriend Rejected His Proposal— Twice
At what point is it time to call it?
Habeshaw via Unsplash / images.etc via Shutterstock / sparklestroke via Canva A 29-year-old man wrote to the r/AITAH subreddit with a story of heartache, wondering if he’d made the right decision to leave his relationship.
He explained that last year, he proposed to his girlfriend of four years on the beach where they had their first date, only for her to say no.
“She looked at me and said, ‘I want to marry you, but not right now,” he explained. “She said she wasn’t in the right space personally to get engaged and to give her some time.”
The man wanted to know if he was wrong for leaving his girlfriend after she rejected his marriage proposal — twice.
The man gave some context for his initial proposal, explaining that he wanted to marry her two years into dating, but decided to wait until he was in a better financial position to do so. When he proposed and she said no, he was hurt but ultimately okay with waiting, noting, “It’s only fair I give her the chance” to figure it all out.
A year passed, and the man asked his friends to help organize dinner for the two of them, after which he planned to propose again, at a fountain in the botanical gardens.
“She saw the roses and everything and then I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me,” he said. “She teared up and told me, ‘not just yet.’”
After the second time his proposal was rejected, the man ended his relationship.
He asked what would make her sure about marriage; she responded by saying, “I just want to make sure that this will work.” Yet when he told her he no longer wanted to waste his “time and love,” she begged him to stay, exclaiming, “Fine, I’ll marry you, just please don’t go.”
But that proclamation hurt, and he decided to leave. He reported that some of their friends, along with his ex’s family, are claiming he overreacted and shouldn’t throw away their past four years solely because she’s still not ready for marriage.
“How much more time am I supposed to give her?” The man asked.
His emotional predicament garnered sympathy and support from the Reddit community, who believed he made the correct decision. One person noted that his ex declined to establish reasons beyond generally “not being ready,” which wasn’t fair to him. Others thought that his ex didn’t want to marry him, but was scared to be alone.
“It sounds like you’re ready to settle down and she’s not,” explained one person. “It’s painful but you guys can love each other and not be in love.”
Marriage is a decision two people make together.
According to Abigail Makepeace, a marriage and family therapist, proposal rejections aren't all that uncommon. Typically, she explained to HuffPost, they're a result of "unresolved or never-before-discussed issues within a relationship.”
In this case, the man's ex's reasoning for turning down the first proposal sounded more like unresolved personal issues rather than issues with the relationship, which Makepeace said can still allow the couple time to work things out and progress. If the man's ex "wasn’t in the right space personally to get engaged," if she did truly envision herself marrying him at some point, this would've been time for her to seek therapy to help her get to a place where she could say yes to a proposal — or, if she found that's not what she wanted, to end things with him.
Marriage is something to enter into, to work on. Love isn’t enough to make a marriage function. This man’s story shows that he was ready to make a commitment that his ex wasn’t ready to make, and even though breaking up is painful, he deserves to spend his life with someone whose goals for the future align with his own.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers relationships, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.