16 Of The Cringiest Times People's Marriage Proposals Were Rejected
Everyone knows the FIRST key to a successful marriage is... getting the person to say "yes." As Reddit user u/stimilon shared, "The jeweler who set the engagement ring for my fiancé had a great line: 'If you'd like the proposal to be a surprise, that's fine, but the idea of the proposal shouldn't be a surprise. It's one of the few times you need to ask a question, but you better absolutely know the answer before you ask it.'" Touché. Here are 16 proposal rejection stories shared on Reddit:
1."Oh man I feel awkward just recounting this story. It wasn't me but I was dating my high school boyfriend and spent Easter with his family. His cousin (I'd say he was about 24) decided to stash a ring for his girlfriend in an Easter egg and send her on an Easter egg hunt. He spent all morning planning it out and putting people in charge of snapping pictures, popping champagne, etc. The girlfriend gets to the house, and the boyfriend tells her she has an Easter egg hunt to go on. She gets pissy, says she's tired, and doesn't want to. He finally breaks down and says, 'There's a really special thing in the egg that I know you'll be excited to find.' She said, 'If it's a fucking engagement ring, the answer is no.'"
"But now he's dating a Miss America contestant, and I recently saw that ex-girlfriend working at Claire's lol. She told me all about her boyfriend who sells phone cases at the stand in the mall. So I guess it all works out in the end!"
2."My story is pretty brutal. I was walking down the beach with my then-girlfriend, and an airplane flew by with a banner that said, 'Tiffany, will you marry me? —Tom.' My name is Tom, and her name is Tiffany, but that was not my proposal. She starts screaming 'yes' and hugs me. I am in shock, staring at the sky, not even realizing she has her arms around me. After I was silent for a while, she figured it out. It was the quietest, longest, most painful walk home of my life. What a fucked up coincidence."
3."I had been with the lady in question for two years. We were in our own little world, doing our own thing together. We had ups and downs but nothing too dramatic, and I at least was happy. I saved for a while to buy the ring and had a day planned out. I did the one kneed bit, and she flat-out laughed but said yes. I was overjoyed and euphoric, so I put the laugh down to nerves or shock perhaps; who cares, I was getting married! The next day I got up first, took the dog out and got home to find her just getting off the phone with someone. I asked if she was telling someone about our engagement but she didn't answer me. I joked that it was her lover and she was having an affair. Her face dropped, my heart sank to my ankles, and she then told me, quite plainly and calmly, that yes, I had guessed right and that she was off to pack a bag."
"...And then she did. Three days later it was almost like she was never there. She tore my soul out and wiped her arse with it. I would love to wrap up with some kind of revenge or twist to it, but she married him. Hurt more than a bit, caused some depression and a bit of drinking. It seemed totally out of the blue at the time, but I was always a poor judge of character when it came to women."
4."I come from a traditional Indian home. My parents thought sending me to a marriage convention would be a good idea, so I decided to go so I wouldn't have to deal with unnecessary drama. When I got there, I went to the first girl I saw and asked her to marry me. She said, 'no.'"
5."I saw it happen at a ball game once — the whole jumbotron thing with the text and then the closeup of the couple. The girl actually laughed, and then you could see the guy's dejected face. He started to lump back into his seat and looked like he was going to cry before the jumbotron cut off. The place started to boo the girl, and people started throwing shit at her. Security had to help her get out."
—Anonymous
6."I got turned down for buying the 'wrong ring.'"
7."My boyfriend had flown out to my hometown with me, and one night, on a walk, he started being romantic. He then asked me if I was happy in our relationship. My best friend just had this serious talk with me the night before, lamenting all of the things she could see wrong with how serious he and I were. She was even trying to convince me to date one of her friends. So, I said that I wished we could work on a few things. He looked devastated. I said we needed more time for fun and a few other things. He said he'd work on it. Then, as we hugged, I could feel him shaking. He then got down on one knee, and I cried. Not the overjoyed, jumping up and down crying, either. I will never get the slump-shouldered look of dejection on his face out of my head. I confessed that the idea of marriage terrified me. I felt I was too young and all around me, all I saw were failed marriages. His dad left his mom for his 18-year-old secretary, for crying out loud!"
"Later on, though, I told him that I absolutely loved him and couldn't imagine being with anyone else. Then I asked if I could try the ring on. I ended up showing my mom and we gradually just said we 'were' engaged. He is the best husband I could ever ask for...and I ruined what should have been one of the biggest moments of our lives."
8."I work in an airport in international arrivals, so I see joyous reunions that are so filled with love it makes me want to puke. (Can you tell I've been working there for a long time?) One day, I was sitting in my store, minding my own business, when I heard a trombone. The song started going, and I recognized the tune... The Imperial March from Star Wars. I was confused and trying to find out where it was coming from. As I scanned the crowd, I saw this girl whose face was beet red. I'm assuming she had something to do with whatever is happening, so I kept my eyes on her. She ends up walking to the guy who is playing the trombone. He finishes up the song and gets down on one knee. The girl is about 25 feet away from me, so if words were exchanged, I did not hear them. But, what I did see was the guy smiling, then suddenly looking dejected. He stood up and walked away from the girl while she stood there — her face still red like a tomato. It was hard to watch."
9."I used to work at a fine-dining restaurant and saw a few proposal rejections. The incident that stands out the most is when a guy did the whole having the ring brought out with the dessert and proposed. The woman seems shocked and pretty annoyed at the situation. She turned him down. One of the servers overheard her say, 'You're not even my fourth or fifth choice.'"
10."I had someone propose to me, then take it back an hour later. In one day, I had a boyfriend, a fiancé, an ex-fiancé, and an ex-boyfriend. To elaborate, we went for a walk one day, and he was visibly nervous. He finally stopped and said very hesitantly, 'I've been thinking of the long-term benefits of marriage.' Then he said he'd left the ring in the car but would pretend his wallet was the ring box. He got down on one knee and asked officially. I said yes. We walked home, and he told me not to tell anyone yet. This was the first inkling I had of something being wrong (the aforementioned awkwardness and scatterbrained-ness were characteristic of him). We got back to our apartment and ate dinner as usual. He was quieter than normal. After, when we were sitting on the couch, he put his head between his knees and said, 'I've made a huge mistake.' We ended the engagement and broke up."
"I took a very long drive and came back three hours later. We talked and agreed to keep dating. Four months after that, he told me he wanted to break up for good. When I asked him why, he hemmed and hawed for a while before responding, 'We went to Target way too much. Also, I didn't love you.' We still haven't talked. We dated for nearly four years before the 'proposal,' and he almost immediately vanished without a trace when we broke up."
11."I was nervous about proposing, so I stayed home for three days, didn't call her, thought about it constantly, and kept drinking. When I went to her house, slightly tipsy, she thought I was coming over to break up but I asked her to marry me. She was shocked and said she had to think about it. Two weeks later, we went on what I thought was our last date. She asked me to ask her again and I did. She said yes. 41 years later, we have three kids, six grandkids, and we are working together in a business we've had for 20 years. She is my winning lottery ticket. I'm glad she said, 'Ask me again.'"
12."I got proposed to on my 18th birthday in front of my family and friends. He was my boyfriend at the time and such a gentle, kind soul. When he got on one knee, the whole room went silent, and it was really scary for me (and him too). The silence wasn't of excitement but fear and pity because he popped the question impulsively and far too soon. I had to say no. This really hurt our relationship and made it extremely awkward for the next year, but I think he grew to understand we were too young. We moved in two years after that and struggled a lot with money and school. When I was 25, he proposed again and I said yes. We were together for 16 years, married for six, and had a gorgeous girl. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident. Ours is the only relationship I know of that didn't fall apart after an untimely proposal."
13."My parent's engagement story is the least romantic one I've ever heard. They'd only been dating for five weeks at the time, and my dad, without giving her a ring, asked very casually in his truck if my mom would marry him. There was no kneeling or ring, and obviously, little thought was put into it. For some reason, she said yes. He then called her the next day to say that he'd been thinking about it, and he wanted to take back his proposal. A few days later, he changed his mind again and proposed a second time. And even then, she still said yes. I don't know how a couple with such a horrible engagement story has now lasted 26 years and is still what everybody calls 'the cutest couple,' but their relationship is super strong."
14."I took my girlfriend to an island in Boston Harbor to propose with a view of the entire city spread before us. She said yes, and we had a beautiful day. Then, we returned to our warm, bright, shared apartment. My head began to fill with dreams of a shared house, children, and a future. Three months later she told me she had fallen in love with her soul mate — a married man she met at her internship. For three months I tried to make her see my love for her, waking up early every morning to make her breakfast, took her on date nights every weekend, but in the end she still chose him."
15."I never got the chance to actually propose because she basically found out I was planning on it and broke up with me. We are still friends, she just wanted to get her professional life sorted before her personal life, which is a reasonable thing to do honestly. No hard feelings, just sad that it happened. As I said, we are still very close, and things might work out in the future, or they might not."
—Anonymous
16.And, finally: "My mom and dad were in a car crash. When my mom went in for X-Rays, they ran tests and found out she was pregnant with me. When my dad found out, he proposed to her on the spot, neck brace and all. She said no, explaining that she didn't want to get married just because she was pregnant. My dad started to cry, explaining that he had plans to propose on Valentine's Day and already had a ring. A week later, she accepted, and they've been married for 22 years."
NOTE: Some submissions have been editing for length and/or clarity.
