Valuable article form Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...107/6-reasons-marriage-proposals-get-rejected
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I don't usually feel like I'm much different from most guys, but reading that article gives me that feeling indeed.
I'm no stranger to marriage but I cannot imagine asking a woman for marriage like this... public proposal, making a big thing of it, doing it to try to save a relationship... never even thought about it back when I was bad with girls and all alone.
Even way back then my thoughts were always just "If I get a girl I really like and I want to have kids with her, well that's just gonna happen naturally as a product of sex. If she needs marriage for that after it or whatever then I guess sure okay I guess; doesn't really matter to me; that's a woman's thing."
It's interesting to go through the list of reasons that article gives for men pitching marriage proposals that don't work:
Basically #s 1-3 and 6 are guys doing manipulative (1 & 6) or clueless (2 & 3... also possibly 1) stuff to try to lock down a girl.
My guess is a lot of these guys who are doing public proposals know there will be social pressure there for the girl to accept, and are counting on that. Probably not all of them... probably some of them are solid relationships where both parties are exhibitionists and have some shared thing where it'll be really fun for them showing off their engagement to a bunch of strangers. Some of them might be clueless guys who saw it on TV and think a surprise public proposal is the way you've gotta go. But I suspect a lot of these are manipulation tactics.
Double the average dating length for acceptances vs. rejections makes sense... if she's hung around that long she's a lot more likely to be willing to say, "Eh, sure, why not," even if not thrilled about the guy. At two years she may still have some hope of a better prospect...
The sky-high rejection rates for the no-ring scenarios and not-down-on-one-knee scenarios are quite surprising to me though. That tells me most marriage proposals are still the man chasing the woman, and the woman deciding if the man's gifts and behaviors do a fair enough job displaying his commitment. The ring really is a commitment signal... it is "I gave up money for this gift I will give you that signifies our ongoing commitment." And going on one knee is what you do when pleading someone / submitting yourself to someone. It is what you do before a king or a queen -- it is a show of fealty.
The fact that most marriages (one must presume) revolve around these shows of sacrifice and fealty by the man toward the woman is rather striking... men asking for marriage who don't make those shows tending to be rejected at high rates...
I've had several marriages / engagements and typically it has always been the girl asking or else me offering that "Well if you need it, it's on the table, just FYI"... I have never bought any rings or gone on my knees either (though I have carried a few girls over thresholds... that is one tradition I think is kind of nice).
Clearly I am the outlier here, and most guys kneeling and sacrificing for marriage is the norm.
I guess this is why red pill guys are so anti-marriage... well, that and the asset forfeiture horror stories from bitter divorces... they probably imagine they have to kneel / sacrifice to get the girl, only to get reamed in the end... bend over going into it, get screwed coming out of it.
If that was how marriage was when I did it I'd never do it either!
I imagine excluded from this study are the guys who marry women the old-fashioned way... "barrel of a shotgun" style... "Knock her up and then if she wants to get married, cool." 40% of Puritan brides in the 17th Century were pregnant by the wedding day... a lot of marriages today still feature couples where the bride is already pregnant, or the couple already have a child when they wed. Check Hollywood weddings; probably half of them are this way. Many of the guys I know who are married now knocked up their chick before they talked about marriage (with both guy and girl obviously being down for that to happen). I wonder if our stats today aren't all that dissimilar from the Puritans 350 years ago.
I've had girls I've been rawdogging after only a few weeks of dating tell me in the heat of passion to make them pregnant. Not low quality girls either... we're talking very attractive women with great bodies and good educations / careers.
So maybe I am not that different from the average guy, and that in fact you have two kinds of typical guys when it comes to marriage... guys who are pursuing the woman for marriage, sacrificing wages to purchase a sign of their devotion to her, and making signs of obeisance to win her hand in marriage... versus guys who don't really care about the institution of marriage much, but if they have a girl they like and they want babies with her (babies of course being the whole point of marriage), then they are gonna have babies with her, and the marriage can just follow on that naturally.
Basically we might say there are two kinds of marriage, really:
The Psychology Today article is about the #1 types of marriages.
It'd be interesting to explore the differences in the relationships between the man and woman that lead to these very different classes of marriage.
I suspect it is more down to the man than anything else... it seems like there are some guys who are just always chasing marriage like this, chasing the girl, etc., and other guys who are always going to be marriage-ambivalent, but if they knock the girl up or she needs it or what have you and they dig her enough, they'll allow it. I have known girls who both had guys chasing them for marriage and who in turn ended up being the ones to push other guys for marriage, so I don't think it's the girls dictating this... I think it is the guys...
Chase
I'm no stranger to marriage but I cannot imagine asking a woman for marriage like this... public proposal, making a big thing of it, doing it to try to save a relationship... never even thought about it back when I was bad with girls and all alone.
Even way back then my thoughts were always just "If I get a girl I really like and I want to have kids with her, well that's just gonna happen naturally as a product of sex. If she needs marriage for that after it or whatever then I guess sure okay I guess; doesn't really matter to me; that's a woman's thing."
It's interesting to go through the list of reasons that article gives for men pitching marriage proposals that don't work:
- Guy made a public proposal (more likely to be rejected)
- Guy didn't discuss marriage with the girl before he proposed (more likely to be rejected)
- Guy hadn't ever even dated the girl before he proposed to her (more likely to be rejected)
- Rejected proposals: average dating length of 2.2 years; accepted proposals: average dating length of 4.2 years
- No ring = 8.5x higher rejection rate; not down on one knee = 4.7x higher rejection rate
- Guy was trying to save a failing relationship (more likely to be rejected)
Basically #s 1-3 and 6 are guys doing manipulative (1 & 6) or clueless (2 & 3... also possibly 1) stuff to try to lock down a girl.
My guess is a lot of these guys who are doing public proposals know there will be social pressure there for the girl to accept, and are counting on that. Probably not all of them... probably some of them are solid relationships where both parties are exhibitionists and have some shared thing where it'll be really fun for them showing off their engagement to a bunch of strangers. Some of them might be clueless guys who saw it on TV and think a surprise public proposal is the way you've gotta go. But I suspect a lot of these are manipulation tactics.
Double the average dating length for acceptances vs. rejections makes sense... if she's hung around that long she's a lot more likely to be willing to say, "Eh, sure, why not," even if not thrilled about the guy. At two years she may still have some hope of a better prospect...
The sky-high rejection rates for the no-ring scenarios and not-down-on-one-knee scenarios are quite surprising to me though. That tells me most marriage proposals are still the man chasing the woman, and the woman deciding if the man's gifts and behaviors do a fair enough job displaying his commitment. The ring really is a commitment signal... it is "I gave up money for this gift I will give you that signifies our ongoing commitment." And going on one knee is what you do when pleading someone / submitting yourself to someone. It is what you do before a king or a queen -- it is a show of fealty.
The fact that most marriages (one must presume) revolve around these shows of sacrifice and fealty by the man toward the woman is rather striking... men asking for marriage who don't make those shows tending to be rejected at high rates...
I've had several marriages / engagements and typically it has always been the girl asking or else me offering that "Well if you need it, it's on the table, just FYI"... I have never bought any rings or gone on my knees either (though I have carried a few girls over thresholds... that is one tradition I think is kind of nice).
Clearly I am the outlier here, and most guys kneeling and sacrificing for marriage is the norm.
I guess this is why red pill guys are so anti-marriage... well, that and the asset forfeiture horror stories from bitter divorces... they probably imagine they have to kneel / sacrifice to get the girl, only to get reamed in the end... bend over going into it, get screwed coming out of it.
If that was how marriage was when I did it I'd never do it either!
I imagine excluded from this study are the guys who marry women the old-fashioned way... "barrel of a shotgun" style... "Knock her up and then if she wants to get married, cool." 40% of Puritan brides in the 17th Century were pregnant by the wedding day... a lot of marriages today still feature couples where the bride is already pregnant, or the couple already have a child when they wed. Check Hollywood weddings; probably half of them are this way. Many of the guys I know who are married now knocked up their chick before they talked about marriage (with both guy and girl obviously being down for that to happen). I wonder if our stats today aren't all that dissimilar from the Puritans 350 years ago.
I've had girls I've been rawdogging after only a few weeks of dating tell me in the heat of passion to make them pregnant. Not low quality girls either... we're talking very attractive women with great bodies and good educations / careers.
So maybe I am not that different from the average guy, and that in fact you have two kinds of typical guys when it comes to marriage... guys who are pursuing the woman for marriage, sacrificing wages to purchase a sign of their devotion to her, and making signs of obeisance to win her hand in marriage... versus guys who don't really care about the institution of marriage much, but if they have a girl they like and they want babies with her (babies of course being the whole point of marriage), then they are gonna have babies with her, and the marriage can just follow on that naturally.
Basically we might say there are two kinds of marriage, really:
- Marriage the guy needs more than the girl, where he is buying rings, on his knees, having to wait a really long time (4.2 years) to get it
- Marriage the girl needs more than the guy, where she is pregnant, or has a kid with him, or really needs it for some other reason
The Psychology Today article is about the #1 types of marriages.
It'd be interesting to explore the differences in the relationships between the man and woman that lead to these very different classes of marriage.
I suspect it is more down to the man than anything else... it seems like there are some guys who are just always chasing marriage like this, chasing the girl, etc., and other guys who are always going to be marriage-ambivalent, but if they knock the girl up or she needs it or what have you and they dig her enough, they'll allow it. I have known girls who both had guys chasing them for marriage and who in turn ended up being the ones to push other guys for marriage, so I don't think it's the girls dictating this... I think it is the guys...
Chase
