Man shares saga of his 'humiliating' proposal; 'Was her reaction a red flag?' UPDATED

When this man is upset with his GF, he shares with the internet:

I [25M] proposed to my girlfriend [24F] of 4 years but she said no because of a weird reason:

I'll start by saying I love my girlfriend a lot but she is definitely high maintenance. We've been talking about getting married for a couple of years now but I wanted to wait until I knew a wedding was something we could afford. I finally got a promotion and she found stable employment so I went out and bought a ring.

We went on a vacation last week. The whole trip was very romantic, and I proposed to her on the beach which I thought she would have wanted. Turns out she expected it all along because the trip was so romantic and she said no.

She wants me to try again but wants it to be a surprise this time. She also wants a photographer to be there to capture the moment. It was pretty fg embarrassing when a few people came up to us to congratulate us and she was explaining why she said no.

I'm not sure what to do. She wanted it to be a surprise but also wanted me to propose as soon as I felt ready to. We also talked about her ideal engagement and it's on a beach (yes seriously), in a forest or in a field. I can't imagine any possible scenario where I could "surprise" her at one of those locations, she is not the outdoorsy type so it'd be unlikely she would be in any of those locations anyways.

I explained my frustration to her and she just says "well if you want to get married you will find a way to make it work." It seems so bratty and immature and I'm not sure how to deal with her now, I'm still really pissed off about it. What should I do about this? Am I wrong to be pissed off?

tl;dr: proposed to girlfriend but she said no because it wasn't a surprise and there wasn't a photographer there to capture the moment. Only wants to get engaged if the proposal fits a very specific image she has.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

panic_bread

Your girlfriend doesn't sound nearly mature enough to get married. Take this as a sign of your life to come and get out.

OOP I think you're right. I had been trying to justify it for her but judging by the overwhelming response I should probably break it off.

DobbyChief Ask you good friends their truthfull opinion on her, and make sure to let them know that they won't get a backlash for saying something bad. They know better than us.

OOP My friends can't stand her

DRHdez Take the ring back to the jeweler. Does she wants an engagement or does she want a marriage?

I can totally see Bridezilla growing on her already. yikes.

OOP Yeah thats another thing. When we were talking about her dream proposal she was showing me her Pinterest for her dream wedding, and it's full of stuff we won't ever be able to afford. I told her it's unlikely our wedding would be like that but we could still make it nice and she said she'd rather wait till we can afford her dream wedding

mm172 And by "rather wait," I suspect she means "nag you about either getting a better job or taking out a loan to pay for what she wants." Don't do this to yourself, man.

OOP Yeah she told me I could start selling some of the furniture I make, which is something I do as a hobby that she wants me to turn into a second job

Before we give you OP's major update, let's read some other top responses:

agreth writes:

Dude, if this is usual behaviour for her, yeah, run away. Expecting unrealistic fantasy stuff in real life just isn't reasonable.

I married a level headed woman. Best choice ever. She still loves to be romanced and surprised, but she doesn't demand it or have unreasonable expectations for life to be the way people seem to have it on TV shows.

Is this ordinary for her? Are you able to communicate well with her? Will she listen to reason on this? Once you've calmed down (you said you're still pissed off) try talking to her. Tell her that she embarrassed you, tell her she angered you. Explain how she has set impossible standards for a proposal.

Getting married isn't about the photos and pomp and ceremony and tra-la-la. It's about partnering up with someone to spend your lives together. Is this the person you want to do that with?

If this is out of the ordinary for her, maybe she's just having a tough time committing to you for the rest of her life, maybe you're not right for her, maybe she still feels like she's growing/changing as a person, maybe she just needs more time. Either way, talk about it. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

fecklessg writes:

This is a fantastic example and, IMO, as much of an indication you shouldn't marry her as the proposal thing. It's just so many red flags wrapped up together!

1) she straight up lied to you in order to actually get you to come out to the dealership. Who wants to marry a liar?

2) not only did she lie to you but she did it with with the specific intention of putting you in a difficult position, hoping you would cave on something she had to know you would decline otherwise - that's manipulative as fuck. Grade A manipulation! Who wants to marry a manipulator?

3) she doesn't have sufficient credit to finance a car. You say in another comment that she's bad with money and would go into debt to buy useless stuff. You have to realize that marriage is, amongst other things, a legal financial commitment where you are now partly responsible for her finances - debt included.

The fact that she can't get a car financed (car loans are some of the easiest financial products to be approved for!) indicates so many bad things about her financial awareness and situation... and the fact that getting turned down didn't cause any sort of realization for her, is scary as hell!

To her, it didn't mean she had to shape up and fix her credit - it meant she had to find someone else to take on the loan, because her instant satisfaction is more important than... anything, it seems. Who wants to marry a financial wreck with zero impulse control??

Personally, I'd have seriously reconsidered the relationship right at that dealership incident.

I'm sure if you dig you can find many more examples of massive red flag events where she either completely disregarded your feelings, tried to manipulate you into doing something she wanted or showed a total lack of financial awareness. All of these for me are total dealbreakers - you don't want to end up broke and in debt at 50 years old because your wife is a compulsive spender. Trust me on this.

Update 1:

Here's a link to my last post but it got deleted. To summarize, I proposed to my gf on a nice vacation and she rejected it because she knew it was coming and there wasn't a photographer. Thank you all for your comments and messages, sorry I couldn't respond to most but I read them all.

I decided to try and talk about it with her one last time before throwing in the towel, I wasn't really expecting much but I just wanted to see if she'd see my side. She lives with me so I wanted to end things on a good note.

She didn't understand at all, she was still saying I needed to work for it and she wasn't taking me seriously so I broke up with her. Then she told me she accepts my proposal and we're just going through a rough patch but we will work it out, she was really trying to get me to change my mind and was promising me she would be better to me.

She completely ignored me every time I told her we're breaking up and was always yelling over me about how we were going to work things out now that we're engaged and eventually I just got tired and went to sleep, thinking it was perfectly clear that it was over.

I woke up Saturday to a whole bunch of messages, she found the ring and took a pic with it on announcing our engagement and tagged me in it on Facebook. We got into another huge fight and eventually I just called her parents and told them to come pick up all her shit or its going to the dump as soon as she leaves.

They were surprisingly understanding, her dad seemed really embarrassed by her but they were a huge help. I know it's illegal to do that and I was supposed to actually evict her but she got seriously violent and I didn't want her in my house anymore.

She smashed my ipad and knocked my playstation off the tv stand and both are completely broken, so I didn't want to wait around and see what else she would do. She wouldn't even give me the ring back, her dad had to guilt her into it. It was pretty pathetic.

So that's the end of us. Really sucks I wasted the last four years with her but I guess it was better to get out now. It's nice that I can hang out with all my friends again. A girl I'm friends with asked me out on a date so that's what I'm doing tomorrow, I'm actually pretty nervous. I know it's way too early but even if it doesn't work out it should be fun to start dating again.

tl;dr: broke up with gf and she decided that meant we were engaged, then she threw a fit and broke my iPad and playstation.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

pretendedtobehappy

"A girl I'm friends with asked me out on a date so that's what I'm doing tomorrow"

Too soon bro

OOP She knows the entire situation, it's not serious. She told me years ago she had a crush on me but we're good friends now. Who knows what will happen.

catjuggler Hmmmmmmm perhaps this is why your crazy ex did not like your girl friends...

OOP Yeah that's what started it. I don't blame my girlfriend for that. I shut my friend down then and told my girlfriend about it because I didn't want to keep things from her. I don't think I did anything wrong in that situation, but after that she didn't want me talking to any women