London – Far from fearing we will never receive a marriage proposal, it seems many of us get more offers than we want.
It was recently revealed that a quarter of women have turned down the bended knee and diamond ring. Here, four writers recall the heart-stopping moment men asked for their hand – and the devastating moment they refused...
I stil can’t forgive myself for saying no
Tessa Cunningham, 56, is divorced and lives with her daughters in Winchester.
Turning down a marriage proposal was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. If I could rewind the clock, slip the ring on my finger and promise eternal love, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
It’s not that I regret not getting engaged – I was right that marriage was a terrible idea – but I bitterly regret the way I handled the proposal. The damage was catastrophic.
I met Ben (not his real name) at Oxford University at a Pimm’s party in the summer of 1978. I was 20 and in my first year of an English degree. Ben was 21 and in the second year of a history degree.
With floppy blond hair, razor-sharp cheekbones and the skeletal look of a starved artist, he was my dream man. When he slouched over and asked if I had a light, I almost spilled the entire contents of my bag in my eagerness.
He invited me to see him play guitar in his band that night and, while I’m tone deaf, I cheered him to the rafters and afterwards we started dating.
He wasn’t just good-looking, but insanely bright, too. He’d lived all over the world with his diplomat parents and spoke five languages fluently. I was bowled over.
We were inseparable for the next year but gradually, although I couldn’t bear to admit it to myself, cracks began to develop. Ben wanted to spend every spare minute with me and I felt stifled. Little things I’d once found charming began to irritate me, like the way he teased me if I mispronounced a complicated French word.
I realised we were too different to be together – he was from a posh background and public school while I was educated at a comprehensive, and my parents were teachers.
I started wondering how I could end things, and as we had only weeks of university left together I thought we’d just go our separate ways.
But then Ben landed a job – a fantastic position with a top management consultancy in London – provided he got the first-class degree predicted for him.
His final exams were in three weeks. To celebrate, Ben took me out to dinner – during which he produced a tiny diamond ring from his trouser pocket.
I was so shocked I said the first thing that came into my head: ‘I don’t want to get married. I want to break up.’
He turned white. Even now I can’t believe I was so cruel and stupid; I should have let him down gently or strung him along until after his exams.
But there was no going back. Ben was angry and humiliated, and we walked home in silence. I should have rung him the next day to apologise but I didn’t and, selfishly, part of me was relieved things had come to a head.
While I felt a niggling guilt, it was only two months later that I understood the full impact of what I had done.
Instead of the first-class degree Ben had worked so hard for, he had ended up with a lower second. He lost his dream job, too.
The friend who told me the news said Ben had been too upset to revise. Although I believe that Ben eventually landed a good job in the City, I still feel guilty for changing the course of his life. Saying Yes would have cost me so little; saying No destroyed so much.
I’d said yes too many times
Linda Kelsey, 62, has been divorced twice and now lives with her partner Ron in London.
Not until my late 50s did I find myself in the position of turning down a marriage proposal – and since then I’ve turned down several.
Though it would have been better if I’d turned down the first proposal I received, too, back when I was 19.
He was dashing, nine years my senior, had a quick wit and I’d known him just a few months.
When he popped the question one evening after a nice dinner that he’d paid for, it seemed impolite to say No. The marriage was impulsive, ill-advised and lasted six years before I walked out.
When it came to my second marriage, we had been living together for 15 years and our son was 11 when we decided to tie the knot.
It seemed a way of consolidating our relationship and celebrating our survival as a couple – but sadly that marriage ended seven years later.
So when I was proposed to by my current boyfriend, Ron, four years ago, I didn’t hesitate in saying what I should have said twice before: No.
We had been together a couple of years at that point, and were living together, but when he casually asked while we were out for a walk one day whether I’d marry him, I actually winced, I was so taken aback.
‘Thank you for asking,’ I said politely, ‘but I’d rather not . . .’ I couldn’t have been happier with Ron, but I didn’t want to upset the status quo.
He took it quietly, with just a crestfallen expression, and we didn’t discuss it further.
But he kept on asking. The second time, a few months later, I laughed and brushed it off.
Then he tried again and again – once when we were in bed, once as we walked along a moonlit beach in Spain. Still my answer was No.
By the time it got to proposal number five – as we unpacked the supermarket shop – I concluded he was only asking to make me nervous. Marrying for a third time strikes me not so much as lucky as tempting fate.
And I no longer see the point of marriage – cynical, perhaps, but it’s hard to believe in it when you’ve already twice promised enduring love ‘until death do us part’.
Plus, the statistics show third marriages break down at a faster rate than either first or second ones.
I love Ron deeply and expect to do so for ever. Shouldn’t that be enough? I can’t see the sense of a public affirmation of our private allegiance, and it’s not as though we’re going to bring more babies into the world.
In fact it’s rather fun being a pensioner girlfriend rather than a conventional wife.
Somehow it keeps the romance alive.
And I certainly wouldn’t relish wedding photos as a wrinkly old bride.
But Ron will probably ask again. He’s told me he is set on being my husband, and me being his wife. He said: ‘I just want to know absolutely who we are to each other.’
Which struck me as rather romantic. It’s certainly sweet and flattering that he wants to marry me so much.
One day one of us will have to compromise. I just don’t yet know who that will be.
He proposed, but I chose another
Tanith Carey, 47, lives with her husband of 16 years, Anthony, and daughters Lily, 13, and Clio, ten, in London.
Growing up, I had always imagined my suitor would drop down on one knee and produce a sparkler as I squealed ‘Yes!’ to a backdrop of cascading fireworks.
So when I received my first proposal I was struck by how different the reality was. I was 30 and stomping up a muddy hillside of my local Alexandra Park in North London one Sunday afternoon, when my boyfriend of nine years mumbled: ‘Will you marry me?’
Not that I didn’t think his proposal heartfelt. Of course, the more florid a man makes it, the greater humiliation if the answer is no, but I could sense how hard it was for my boyfriend to have said these four words.
So I couldn’t turn him down. My response instead was to giggle nervously – though we were both all too aware that I hadn’t responded with the appropriate excitement and affirmative answer. And there, in uneasy suspension, the question was left.
There is nothing quite like a proposal to concentrate your mind on where your relationship is going – or, as I now realised, not going. I definitely loved my boyfriend. We had met at university and been together through almost a decade of ups and downs.
But this proposal felt like a last bid to hold together a relationship rapidly falling apart. And while there weren’t any fireworks it did cause explosions in my head – I remember thinking: ‘Uh-oh, you’re 30. This is the rest of your life calling – marriage, mortgage, babies. Time to make some decisions.’
I left him three months later, in which time I managed to avoid discussing the subject again. I realised we both needed to move on so we could find the people we would be spending the rest of our lives with.
So it was really that failed proposal that led to me accepting another proposal just a year later, when my next boyfriend, Anthony, a work colleague, asked me the same question after we’d been together just eight months.
That was a different scenario altogether. The poor man had hardly uttered the words ‘Will you marry me?’ – at a swish restaurant on a trip to New York – than I’d accepted and was marching him round to Tiffany for a ring.
This time it was a definite yes.
We never saw each other again
Clare Campbell, 60, lives with her husband of 36 years, Christy, in London.
When I first met Ryan, a young American student, at an art school dance in London in 1973, I was smitten. This 6ft 3in young man with piercing green eyes and fair hair strolled over and announced that he was from Houston in Texas and would I do him the favour of a dance.
His voice was unforgettable, a husky slow drawl that seemed to come from deep down in his chest, and I didn’t hesitate to agree.
We were 18 and had our first date a week later. We went to see Live And Let Die, and then to a party. He looked as lovely as I remembered.
But later that same evening, he introduced me to his family, who lived in a five-storey wedding cake of a house behind Harrods.
It was clear then that our differences ran further than simply being from different sides of the Atlantic. His father was an executive for a large U.S. oil company while his mother worked in real estate. They owned this huge house in Knightsbridge, and had previously been neighbours of Mick Jagger.
By contrast, my father was a South London GP, so I had never seen wealth like this.
Ryan and his older brother had a floor of the house to themselves. Meals were cooked and served by a Portuguese couple who lived in the basement. On one level it was fascinating to observe. But on another I, too, came to feel like a possession.
Ryan insisted on coming with me to my interviews for university and I began to feel like a prisoner.
Shortly afterwards, my family and I were invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Ryan’s house. When we got home my father said that during the evening Ryan’s father had mentioned that his son was buying me an engagement ring for Christmas. I was horrified; I had no intention of marrying anyone.
When we’d been dating for four months, Ryan took me to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. At my house afterwards, he suddenly turned to me and said: ‘I want you to marry me, Clare – as soon as possible.’
I felt I was being told, rather than asked, and replied: ‘No, Ryan.’
For the first time Ryan got really angry, smashing the wooden windowsill in my room with his fist. I was scared, but knew it was out of character so stayed calm.
He said he ‘knew’ we were right for one another, as if I didn’t have a say in the matter.
But that only made me more certain of my feelings and I said we should stop seeing one another. He cried, and I felt guilty as I realised I wasn’t in love with him.
I never saw Ryan again.
Daily Mail