Being “Engaged to Be Engaged” Is Its Own Special Type of Misery
“I think I’m about to get engaged.…”
It was the third time in a matter of weeks that I’d texted these exact words to my best friend, but this time, I knew it was happening. I had come home to a candlelit apartment, a freshly opened (expensive!) bottle of wine, and my boyfriend of three years cooking me a four-course dinner. I was grateful that I had thought to get my nails done the day before—although, let’s be honest, my nails have been ring-ready since June—and readied myself to answer the question I’d been waiting for since we decided in May that we were ready to take our relationship to the next level.
But just like on the beach in the Hamptons over Labor Day Weekend (the first time I sent that text to my bestie) and at a family gathering a few weeks before (the second time I was sure a proposal was happening), there was no ring—just some really good steak and a cute little date night at home. I was grateful for the thoughtful gesture, but I was also low-key crushed.
Over the past six months, I’ve found myself in a weird sort of relationship limbo that no one seems to talk about: I’ve been engaged to be engaged.
Before this all started, I was adamant about being involved in the engagement process. It always seemed strange to me that I was expected to be completely surprised when someone asked me a question that would change the entire course of my life, and I wanted to know what was coming so that I could mentally prepare. My partner and I decided together that we were ready to get married, talked through a timeline that felt right for both of us, and collaborated on the ring design (he did most of the work, but I provided plenty of inspo photos and input).
It feels unromantic—perhaps taboo even—to admit that I wasn’t down with the traditional shock of a proposal, but it turns out I’m in good company. According to a 2019 report from Professional Jeweler, more than one-third of women are involved in picking out their own engagement rings, pointing to the fact that we’ve come a long way from the 2013 psychological study that examined sexism in marriage traditions and was literally titled “Girls Don’t Propose: Ew!” But even so, the expectation of surprise remains.
“Why do engagements have to be a surprise? Who made that rule?” posits relationship expert Susan Winter. “The idea of ‘popping the question’ means that you’re unsuspecting, which is adorable if your only goal in life is to be married and you looked good every day you left the house like women did in the 1950s, but how do you do that nowadays? You’re lucky if you have time to wash your hair and get enough sleep.”
For me, being a part of the proposal process helped me feel like I had some semblance of control over this huge decision we were making—together!—and put a sort of modern spin on what I felt was a very outdated tradition. It also turned me into a complete monster.
Once I knew the ring had been picked out, the waiting became agonizing. I’m generally pretty ~*breezy*~, but the stress of knowing that this huge, pressure-cooked moment was coming—and not having any idea when—made me anything but. What started with me casually trying to sniff out where the surprise would fit into our calendar turned into fights with my partner and one less-than-ideal incident of me crying about our impending engagement in front of his entire family. It sounds ridiculous, but the tension was just too much. It felt like someone saying, “I have a surprise for you!” and then having to wait six months to find out what it is.
Anecdotally speaking, I know my engagement-induced anxiety isn’t unique to me. As a woman in her early 30s, there are plenty of people in my inner circle who have shared the exact same experience. When I mentioned my psychological warfare to a newly engaged friend, she told me she’d been booking weekly manicures for three months before her fiancé proposed. When I brought it up to a group of strangers at a work dinner (because, yes, I talk about this often and indiscriminately), the editor next to me actually yelled, “WAIT, SAME!” and we commiserated through dessert. Another friend told me that she knew her ring had been hidden in her boyfriend’s sock drawer for so long, she had seriously considered just wearing it, question-popping be damned. “This is the worst time in a relationship—the waiting and the no control,” yet another (happily married) friend texted me the other day. In other words, the girls who get it get it.
While the “when will it happen” spiral may have made me—and everyone else in the same boat—feel batshit bonkers, according to Winter, it’s not an entirely irrational line of thinking. “You both want this moment to be perfect, but you don’t know when that moment is happening, and that creates tension,” she explains, adding that this is what makes the waiting excruciating.
And think about it: Your partner could have the most romantic possible scenario planned out, but if you show up after a long, shitty day with chipped nails, greasy hair, and a miles-long to-do list in your head, “you’re not going to be in the right headspace for it to feel ‘perfect,’ and that lack of control is going to make any woman who wants to come with her A-game feel stressed,” says Winter.
But this idea of “perfect” is what’s screwing us all up. “The only proposals we ever see are in movies or magazines, and they’re always something extraordinary—but all the hype has taken the beauty out of it,” says Winter. Much of the pressure of perfection, she explains, also comes from social media. Gone are the days when a proposal was something private that’s just meant for you and your partner. In this, the age of Instagram, it didn’t happen if you didn’t recap the moment to our followers along with a slideshow of flawless professional photos.
With that in mind, it makes total sense to want the reality to feel as close to Instagram-worthy as possible, especially if you’ve *casually mentioned* (or in my case, not so casually) that you want a photographer around to capture your “she said yes!” face. And even if it's not about the Likes, chances are you’ll be looking at these pictures for the rest of your life—so the idea that you could show up to an impromptu photo shoot at any moment feeling less-than-your-best can be high-key stressful.
Considering an increasing number of women are involved in their own proposals—or at the very least have talked to their partners about the fact that they’re ready to get married—it might be time to flip the script on how these “perfect” moments are meant to happen…at least for those of us who have chosen to be involved in the process.
“We live in a new era—women aren’t just sitting around waiting to get married—so let’s take the element of ‘popping the question’ out,” says Winter. “The surprise shouldn’t be that you’re getting engaged, because you know that. Let’s have the surprise be the where and the how, but you need to be prepared for the when.”
This can mean different things to different people. Maybe it’s knowing the exact day, or maybe it’s having your partner give you a few different windows when it might happen so that you can show up as the best version of yourself. And if you want the full-blown surprise, that’s okay too! The most important thing is to communicate your needs around the engagement, and trust that your partner knows (and loves) you enough to meet them.
“Everybody wants the moment to be perfect, but there is no perfect,” says Winter. “The perfect is that they want to marry you.”
When my proposal finally did happen—less than a week ago—it was even better than I could have imagined. I was sufficiently shocked, we were surrounded by family, and (thanks to a tip from a friend that I should “get a manicure, do my hair, and wear white” all week) I was mentally prepared and felt beautiful. But honestly? None of it even mattered. To me, it was perfect, because it meant that I got to say “yes” to spending the rest of my life with my favorite person—and I now know it would have been just as special in sweatpants as it was with full glam.
The moment was absolutely worth the wait, but the stress? Not so much.
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