What to Say Next Time You’re Asked “When Are You Getting Engaged?”
I’ve been dating my boyfriend for three and a half years. I am 30 years old; he is 32. We feature significantly on each other’s Instagrams—I’ve even made the occasional appearance on his mother’s feed—and we are well-matched height-wise.
As you can imagine, this feels to a lot of people—friends, family, random passersby on the street—like the perfect time to trot out their concept of a respectable timeline apropos our personal life choices. Just this weekend, I found myself sitting at dinner being asked a question I’ve been asked by many misguided inquisitors before: “When is he going to propose?!” If I had to guess, I’ve been asked some version of this question—“When are you guys getting engaged?!” “When are you going to get married?!”—roughly 140 times in 2017. I’ve even had the privilege of opening this message in my LinkedIn inbox.
If you are reading this, I’m willing to venture that you identify. In my anecdotal, wholly unscientific research, I’ve found that 100 percent of peers I asked in long-term monogamous (if that) relationships have suffered this same uncomfortable scenario, often at the hands of “loved ones.” It is a statistic matched only by the number of married heterosexual couples who have been asked “When are you going to have kids?!” despite the fact that this is virtually as insensitive as asking “When will your collective uterine health, sperm count, bank account balances, and marital enjoyment align adequately for me to have something cute to play with?” (NB: These queries almost always take the form of a ?!—double punctuation seems to be required.)
“When are you going to get married?” is not an evil question. In fact, like most audaciously personal queries, it’s often a well-meaning conversation partner’s attempt to fill an awkward pause, or to ask “What’s up?” in a slightly less trite formulation. To be fair, it sometimes serves a purpose: that is, moving a topic of conversation forward that either party was too shy to broach, or revealing information that was not apparent in private. In fact, there is the occasional person who appreciates the extra level of pressure this might place on their slower-to-the-punch partner.
But there are any number of reasons one may not want to answer that question, ranging from an attempt to maintain a romantic element of surprise to looming reservations or concerns that simply don’t make for polite conversation. And there are just as many reasons that, as a woman, I feel a bit like a prize pig at the country fair (and not in a good way) when I am presented with this specific phrasing: “When is he going to propose?”
Luckily for me, to return to this most recent occasion when I was asked, I found myself in a restaurant that had mercifully employed a magician to entertain dinner guests, so I was able to shout, “Look! A magician!” at the exact moment when a response was expected.
For those of you who feel a bit panicky at the enormity of such a question being floated casually, but don’t have a magic diversion to fall back on, try reaching for one of these creative, if slightly cheeky, responses to the question “When are you getting engaged?!”
“Between September 9 and the 23rd.” (Fill your own preferred entirely arbitrary, utterly specific, disturbingly small window.)
“Do we think marriage is really still cool? I feel like it’s kind of having an off year, and I wouldn’t want to be off trend.”
“I told him not to bother until he could afford the ring I wanted. It could take awhile!”
“You know, I don’t concern myself much with details—I’m more of the big picture, ideas person in this relationship.”
“Engaged in what?”
