Husbands Are Revealing Their "Yup, I'm Asking This Girl To Marry Me" Moments, And All I Can Say Is...Must Be Nice
Because so many couples have had to push back their wedding dates due to the panini (er, pandemic), it's predicted that 2.5 million couples will get married this year — that's 15% higher than average. Of course, COVID-19 isn't really romantic, but the moment someone realized that they found the person they want to marry can be.
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So, u/omg1223 decided to ask married men, "What moment with your future wife made you think, 'Yup, I'm asking this girl to marry me?'" And in response, many husbands came forward to share a mix of honest, heartfelt, and hilarious stories:
1."The day she took off work to help me go through a dumpster. I had accidentally thrown my keys in the trash while cleaning out my car.
"We found them two hours later."
2."Things were going really well, and I was saying to myself, 'If this keeps up, I think next summer I'll pop the question.' Then, my mother had a stroke. We were all sitting in the waiting area outside of the ICU, as only two people were allowed in at a time. It was my now-wife's birthday — a Wednesday, that year — and she didn't hesitate to take the day off to sit with me and my family. I went to visit my father at home, and she came with me. Her Italian instincts kicked it, and she brought a load of groceries and a lasagna with her. My father was a mess at the hospital, and it fell on me and my siblings to speak with the doctors and make plans. I would get home and pour myself some bourbon. She made me dinner and would sit with me while I silently sobbed. It wasn't about how great we were when things were good, it was about how perfect she was when things were bad.
"I bought the ring two months later.
"I'll also add: This all happened just before Christmas. Since my mother was still in the hospital on Christmas Eve, I got a last-minute reservation to my father's favorite restaurant. My girlfriend was with her family, but we got to the table to find a note saying that she had called ahead to buy us two bottles of wine."
3."When she said, 'You know, if you asked me to marry you, I'd say yes.'"
4."When she was meeting my parents, she put together an outfit and asked, 'What do you think? Does this say, Hey, parents, look at me, I'm awesome or I slept with your son on the first date?'"
5."When I first told my father that I was dating someone new, he jokingly asked, 'What's her name? What does she do? What's her bra size?' I told her about it, hoping to prepare her for his sense of humor, and she thought it was hilarious. The first time they met, she introduced herself by saying, 'Hi, I'm Stephanie! I'm in college, and I'm a B-cup.' My father was horrified, my mother was laughing hysterically, and I was in love."
6."I was 18 and had just gotten my wisdom teeth taken out. I was drooling, with stains of blood all over my shirt, and it was the summertime. My girlfriend was 16 at the time. She took what little money she had from her allowance, bought me a box of ice cream, and biked 25 minutes just to deliver that box of ice cream and see how I was doing. With blood stains all over, she still gave me that look of love and planted a kiss on me. That was almost 20 years ago.
"I still can't imagine having a happier life without her in it."
7."During my first week as licensed as a paramedic, I had a 2-year-old die on me. When I got off work, I drove to my girlfriend's place and told her about my day. I was pretty numb at the time, trying to process this kid's death in spite of all my efforts. I laid down on her couch, and she just wrapped her arms around me. She laid with me for three to four hours as I tried to process. She didn't push or ask lots of questions, just laid their quietly and held me. I slowly was able to talk my way through it, and then the tears started. She cried with me. I felt the whole world was so dark and ugly, but she was my island of light. I started saving up for a ring that week and asked her to marry me six months later.
"In September, we celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary. I'm still a paramedic, and she's still my island."
8."It was our first date and the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break. She was supposed to drive home after class. It was a coffee date that stretched out for several hours. It was just comfortable; conversation flowed. I wasn't worried about saying anything dumb or silly. We were completely ourselves. It culminated in a shy kiss in her car before she left to drive home. Her mom knew why she was late, just by her mood. I went back to my apartment and talked to my roommate. I told him there was something special about this girl.
"We'll be celebrating our 10-year anniversary this summer."
9."This may be a bit unusual, but the way she could toss an insult around. I tend to tease playfully, and she could always toss banter right back. We ended up insulting each other so much that my friend had to assure his girlfriend that we were only kidding and didn't hate each other. It was great."
10."On or about our second date, my future spouse was on call for her medical job. Her beeper went off, and we rushed to the hospital where I got to watch her handle a trauma case. I saw confidence, expertise, calmness under pressure, kindness, and caring, and a few other desired traits shine forth. With that added to her package, I knew she was someone I could respect for the rest of my life.
"We celebrate our 24th anniversary this fall."
11."She opened her fridge, and I saw that she had organized her jelly by the visible light spectrum. After we got married, she confessed that she did that on accident and had no idea what I had been talking about. She just rolled with it because she could tell she scored points.
"I kept her anyway."
12."We were young. I was moving across the country to be with her at the time, and she got our apartment all ready before I got there. Our bathroom was really, really small. She had purchased this blue bathroom rug for the floor. Because the rug was too large, she carefully cut out these notches for the sink and front of the toilet bowl so the carpet would fit perfectly flat. She cut the bathroom rug perfectly, and I knew she had to be mine."
13."She came over two weeks into us dating with a Batman costume for my cat. She put my cat in the costume and then chased the cat around the apartment singing, 'DA-NUH-NUH-NUH, BATCAT!' There was never a doubt in my mind after that.
"We're getting married next month."
14."She insisted on cooking me steak on one of our first few dates. It was the best steak I'd ever had. I ended up drunkenly confessing my love soon afterward. For the steaks, of course."
15."We were three days into a month-long backpacking trip in southeast Asia. We're staying in a seedy hotel in Bangkok, and she gets a bad case of food poisoning. It's coming out of both ends for 24 hours. I, of course, am now her designated nurse. I'm refilling her water bottle, getting her soup from the restaurant outside, keeping her company, and, most importantly, emptying the trash bin she keeps puking into. After a trip to empty her vomit bucket, I come back into the room, and she's asleep. I looked at her and thought to myself, 'I'm not even bothered by this. I'd do anything for her. This is the woman I'm going to marry.' She's a disgusting barf fairy, but she's my disgusting barf fairy. Zero regrets.
"We've been married just over a week now."
16."When I was a young lad, I had bought a pair of swords. Now, for some reason, I still had them. When my now-wife agreed to come over my place, I decided to hide them in a storage closet because why would any grown man have these. A while down the line, she was looking for something in said closet, and I heard, 'What the hell? You have swords? WHY ARE YOU HIDING THESE?!' I was prepared to be mocked mercilessly. Instead, she handed me one and then started swinging. It was about that time that I realized I was going to marry her."
17."My dad says that he first proposed to my mom over a plate of lasagna. She had made it from scratch — like, hand-crafted the noodles from dough and everything. He proposed to her over pasta, and she just rolled her eyes and said, 'Ask me again when you're serious.'
"After dinner, he asked again, and she said yes."
18."My parents met 39 years ago last Friday, in a line for a movie. My mom's friend knew my dad from another friend and introduced them. My dad was known as a 'wild guy,' and my mom was seriously considering becoming a nun. Naturally, they started dating. A couple months later, my mom found a lump in her breast. My dad's aunt died of breast cancer very young, so it freaked him out. My mother had the lump removed. It turned out to be benign, but my dad had already rushed out and bought an engagement ring. He always claims that he knew from the moment he saw her — but after a couple of glasses of wine, he'll tell you that he saw what life could be like without her, and it wasn't worth living.
"They never fight, they always work together, and my mom's heart still skips a beat when he comes home from work."
19."I left my favorite CD in her car, Dream Theater's Scenes from a Memory. She wasn't a huge fan but put up with it whenever I listened. One day, I was on the phone with her while she was driving. When we said good-bye, she forgot to hang up. I waited a few seconds, and I heard her singing along."
20."She and I had been casually dating for eight months when we went to a festival together with our friends. While she was off looking for our friends, I accidentally stepped on a girl's foot. I turned and apologized sincerely, and the girl accepted my apology. However, her drunk friend decided to start screaming at me. She then threatened to assault me, saying, 'I'm a girl. You can't hit back.' When she shoved me, my future wife came out of nowhere and punched her so hard that her shoe came off. I said, 'Yup, I'm marrying this woman.'"
21."My dad told me that he knew he wanted to marry my mom when McDonald's opened in Moscow after the USSR crumbled, and she ate six Big Macs in a row."
22."I don't even care how cliché it is; I knew the first moment I saw her. It was this super weird feeling of intuition that I'd never felt before and that never went away. It was like, 'Yep, you're going to marry her someday. In the meantime, you should figure yourself out because you're kind of a giant tool right now.' We didn't even date until five years later. Up until then, we had dated other people and had our own lives. During that time, she was this little seed waiting patiently in the back of my subconsciousness.
"Marriage has been at times euphoric and at times agonizing. Right now, it's better than ever. Our second baby will be born next week."
23."It actually happened without much fanfare. We were in bed one night before going to sleep, talking about our relationship and our future. We had already bought a house together and had a dog, and we had talked about marriage in the past, but it wasn't a huge priority for either of us. That night, we were talking about how cool it would be to have our wedding be like a reunion with a lot of old friends. It made it seem really appealing, and we knew that we'd be staying together for the rest of our lives. She ended up just saying it in the end: 'So, do you want to?' I said, 'Yeah, I guess I do! It makes sense!' Everything happened from there.
"It was completely and wholly unromantic! Yay for us! We're now coming up on eight years of marriage with two kids."
24."I actually have a picture I took of her the moment I realized it. Nothing in particular happened. We had been dating for a while and went on vacation together to Mallorca. When we arrived at the resort, we were sitting on the veranda, having a drink, and it just hit me: 'This is the girl I am going to marry.' I immediately took her picture. The look on her face is sort of like, 'Why are you looking at me like that?'
"She was wearing my sweatshirt because it was a little chilly in the late afternoon. (It wasn't, but she gets cold when it isn't at least 75° F.) She was looking at the guidebook and map.
"Now that I look at the picture after all these years, the late-afternoon golden light — in retrospect — might have been conspiring to influence me. Something about her at that very moment made it clear that she was the girl I was going to spend the rest of my life with. It's been 10 wonderful years. I just love that girl so much."
25."For the most part, it was the fact that the very day we started dating, she started staying at my house — not quite living there, just hanging out forever 'til that turned into living with me. I never thought too much about it until a year later and realized that we had never spent a day away from each other.
"We married September 2006, and we're still going strong."
26."We were having a conversation, and she kept making me laugh. Her sense of humor is incredible. It also helped when I was taking her out on an early date, and she said, 'You're spending too much money on me.' She knew money was very tight for me (we were in college).
"Our 34th anniversary is this Saturday."
27."My wife and I were good friends before we became romantically involved. She was 'one of the guys,' and it wasn't unusual to roughhouse a little. (This sounds sexual in retrospect, but it really wasn't at the time.) You know that thing you used to do to your sister when you were maybe 12, where you'd pin her down and threaten to spit on her by letting the spit hang out of your mouth, then sucking it back up at the last minute? (Dear God, I hope I'm not the only one who did this.) Well, I did that to my friend-now-wife, except I waited too long and accidentally spit directly in her eye. Instead of being furious like a normal person, she busted out laughing.
"We've been married 12 years."
28."On our fourth date, we got a cheap pizza and went to a park up north in October. We fell asleep and woke up freezing at two in the morning. Instead of getting up and leaving, we just held each other and went back asleep for another two hours.
"I knew from that moment I was going to marry this girl!"
29."We had a long distance relationship and lived three to four hours away from each other. We had met at a concert and traded emails and MSN info. We emailed and chatted every day, sometimes for hours. We poured our hearts out about our fears and dreams. I'd go visit her every other weekend, and she'd come my way once in a while. About three or four months into doing this, I'm at home chilling, playing some game in my room. My dad calls up the stairs that I got a package in the mail. Confused, I come walking down the stairs, and there she was. She came up to visit as a surprise. Without thinking, I instinctively ran to her, hugged her, lifted her, and spun her a bit. I felt, in my heart, a wholeness, like holding her filled in something I was missing. I knew then that I never would let her go (metaphorically speaking).
"We've been married for more than nine years, and I still get that feeling when I hug and kiss her."
30."I got mad and yelled at her for some stupid shit because I had been in a toxic relationship prior to meeting her, and I thought that's what couples did (scream and argue). I expected her to yell back at me, but she just stared at me for a moment and asked if I was done. I said I was, and she proceeded to explain to me that people who love one another do not treat each other that way. We can disagree with one another, but there's no reason to be mean. 'If we're going to be together, please don't be mean to me again.'
"That was 26 years ago. We've been married 25 years."
31."On our fourth date, we were at her house, and the episode of The Simpsons where they're hiding the town's trash everywhere was on. Without any prompting or even talking about the show, we both simultaneously said, 'STASH OUR TRASH! BEAUTIFY BLUFFINGTON!' It's an absolutely inconsequential line in a mediocre show that neither of us had seen in over a decade.
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"We boned."
32."She told me on several occasions that she would murder me if I dumped her after she turned 40. So, I proposed on her 40th birthday."
33."One night, after a party, I was play-wrestling with my then-girlfriend while we were both drunk, and all of our friends were cheering us on. I ended up picking her up and dropping her — gently, I'm not a monster — on my dining room table. The table was a piece of crap that we'd found by the dumpster, so when she landed, it literally snapped down the middle and crashed to the ground. Everyone got really quiet as she slowly got up, turned, looked me in the eye, and said, 'Is that all you got, pussy?' At that moment, I knew she was the one.
"We have been together for a decade, married for six years, and now have two kids. Good-humor-while-play-wrestling qualifies as a green flag for marriage material."
34."When my son called her 'mama.'
"My ex left us high and dry when my son was 4 months old."
35."I got food poisoning on a business trip. I was vomiting and drifting in and out of consciousness. My then-girlfriend called me 20-30 times before I answered. All I could say was, 'Hi, baby. I'm really sick,' then I blacked out. After what seemed like five minutes (it was actually 12-13 hours), I heard banging on my hotel door and her voice yelling, 'It's me! Let me in!" I screamed as loud as I could, 'Get in here!' and blacked out again. A day later, I woke up in the hospital. Turns out, when I didn't answer the door, she ran downstairs, got a key, came up, and called an ambulance. They said they'd be there in 30 minutes. She said, 'That's not soon enough,' put me on a rolling chair, pushed me to the elevator and out to her car, threw me in, and drove me to the hospital. I found out later that if she'd waited, I wouldn't have made it.
"The food poisoning had brought on DKA (basically, your blood gets poisoned, and your body tries to futilely fight it off). When all was said and done, my body had a blood sugar level of 1,400 (my normal range is 110–140), and my white blood cell count was around 3,000 (I'm not 100% about this number, but I know it was high).
"She sat with me for six days in the hospital, sleeping in the chair next to me. She left to eat but came right back. She didn't leave my side. I should also mention that this was only four months after we'd started dating, though we'd been friends for a few years before this.
"She sacrificed her time and risked getting fired and failing classes to drive 13 hours from Michigan to Delaware to take care of me. Once it all hit me as to what she had done, I was completely speechless. I realized that if this girl is willing to do something like this for me, I must be pretty special to her.
"I made it a priority once I recovered to ask her mother and father for their blessing, which they both gave me. I married her in May 2016. One of the scariest things to ever happen to me ended up showing me my girlfriend's devotion and love for me. We just hit our one-year anniversary, and although we're a young couple, we are still kicking ass and going strong."
36."My husband tells me that he knew when on our second date, when he casually asked me, 'What time is it?' and I correctly answered, 'It's Howdy Doody time.'"
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"We'll be married 24 years in August."
37."It wasn't like a 'thunderbolt' thing, but it was right after we first banged. She got up and walked naked across the room to the bathroom, and I'll always remember how good it felt laying there and thinking about how she was definitely the hottest women who had ever walked naked across my room. I thought then, 'I could marry this girl.' Of course, it wasn't just the hotness; it doesn't hurt that she's a financial genius, has two degrees, a great-paying job, and is the most patient person I know.
"What the fuck she's doing wasting her life with me, I'll never know, but I'm grateful."
38."Our first date lasted 12 hours because we just couldn't stop talking. Our second date was supposed to be just dinner, and it lasted almost two days. She drove away after the second date, and I couldn't imagine my life without her in it. I was ecstatic to find out she felt the same."
39."I saw this hot redhead on St. Patrick's day drinking Guinness out of a pitcher. That's the girl for me! I introduced myself and spent the rest of the day with her. Then, I stumbled to a buddy's place nearby and told him I'd met the girl I was going to marry.
"It's been over 20 years now."
40."The moment I knew I was going to ask her to marry me was the moment I accepted that I could live without her, I just didn't want to. It was that moment that I recognized being with her was a mutual choice, not a dependency. I had the self-awareness to know I could lead a happy life, but, shit, this woman made everything happier. I'm one of the most genuinely lucky people. I am not the wealthiest, best looking, or most popular, but I deeply, deeply love my wife. She is the center of my universe. It's not because she's given me this fairy tale of what marriage is 'supposed to be like.' It's because she's given me something that's real, tangible, and I can fight for. Through ups and downs, arguments and laughter, sickness and health, I realize that I may not always like her, but I deeply love her — and that love is not based on ONE but all things. Every day, I'd ask her to marry me, and every day, I'd marry her again.
"It's amazing when you see the woman you love day after day, year after year, and you keep seeing the same person you first met. I shit you not, every single day, I have THIS revelation, no matter how amazing or frustrating of a day I have."
41."We got really high, got in bed, and pretended we were pieces of Chipotle chicken in a blanket quesadilla.
"We're getting married in January."
42."I lived in a half-decent apartment in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. The place had a tub that was massively stained when I moved in. Every woman I 'dated' tried to get that stain out. This was in the '90s, when I was young and single in NYC, so that means plenty of women took a shot at it. My future wife came out of the bathroom one day and nonchalantly said, 'Cleaned the tub.' I ran into the bathroom and couldn't believe my eyes. 'That was my sword in the stone! How did you do it?' I asked her. She replied, 'Meh, I don't give up.'
"I've now asked her how she did it. She claims it was nothing more than Ajax and bleach. It was orange, so we're thinking it was an iron stain. Sorry, there isn't a more magical answer, but I guess the truth is her resolve dissolves all else."
