Today I posted on a female magazine based forum on which I regularly write upon (call it yet another addiction) a discussion regarding women asking men for their hand in marriage. I was wondering why women feel it is not their role to ask, what stops them and if it still remains a man's position. Don't get me wrong I have no man to marry, but it got me thinking. I started this topic on the forum in response to the growing number of postings by women remarking their wonderment and their wait for their guy to pop those magical words of proposal. While badgering their partners for years, no sign of a ring was in the pipeline. Yet surely after knowing your partners views on the subject of marriage, engagement and the whole wider "lets spend our lives together" situation, (I don't believe proposals should come randomly out the blue - you do have to some extent know your partners wishes on this matter) a woman could feel enough within herself to ask him to marry her? Therefore limiting this wait for a ring to magically pop up and a guy to fall onto his knee.
As a sociologist, somewhat a femininst and as a twenty something, I'm wondering if i'm getting too feminist in my assumptions? Or am I merely so unromantic that I consider it ok for a women to ask a guy to marry her?
Sure I love my men to be proper men. I like a guy to take control, to buy me flowers, to shower me with love (dreamer!). And okay the idea of a guy going down on one knee asking me those words, would be romantic. However - if I knew he wanted to get married, that we had chatted about it, and I believed we were in the "right" place in our relationship then yes - I would feel okay about asking him to marry me.
I'd do this merely to save my mind from passively wondering when, or if he'd ever get around to asking. I don't want be waiting till he randomly has his light bulb moment and think "hmmm marriage ... now!" drops on one knee and there you go. I have the ability to make my own decisions and make my own choices and act by them. I don't need a man, even in this situation to wait to make up his mind.
A lot of replies to my post in the forum claimed ideas that for a woman to propose it would somehow threaten a man's masculinity and therefore their macho position when it comes to romance, of this one occasion when a man can be romantic. Thus for a women to ask for his hand in marriage would therefore take away the man's role.
Then remains this whole notion of tradition. To some extent I believe traditions are there to be broken. I know i'll be one of them women that will have children late (if at all) and that's my choice. I don't really fancy getting married until i'm in my 30s (again my choice). That's my view. But I don't agree in the assumed tradition that only a man can do the proposing.
Many claimed that it would lack romance - but surely as contemporary, worldly experienced women, we have the ability within us to be able to make a night special and romantic for us to ask a man for marriage. Not only men in this occasion can be romantic!
I really wonder what a man's view on this matter is. Do they really feel that it is their role to do the asking? Would they feel threatened and "hurt" if their girlfriend was to ask them? Or would they just think they were taking the piss? Or as I hope they would think, would they feel it romantic and sexy that their women, their partner loves them enough to ask them?
As a sociologist, somewhat a femininst and as a twenty something, I'm wondering if i'm getting too feminist in my assumptions? Or am I merely so unromantic that I consider it ok for a women to ask a guy to marry her?
Sure I love my men to be proper men. I like a guy to take control, to buy me flowers, to shower me with love (dreamer!). And okay the idea of a guy going down on one knee asking me those words, would be romantic. However - if I knew he wanted to get married, that we had chatted about it, and I believed we were in the "right" place in our relationship then yes - I would feel okay about asking him to marry me.
I'd do this merely to save my mind from passively wondering when, or if he'd ever get around to asking. I don't want be waiting till he randomly has his light bulb moment and think "hmmm marriage ... now!" drops on one knee and there you go. I have the ability to make my own decisions and make my own choices and act by them. I don't need a man, even in this situation to wait to make up his mind.
A lot of replies to my post in the forum claimed ideas that for a woman to propose it would somehow threaten a man's masculinity and therefore their macho position when it comes to romance, of this one occasion when a man can be romantic. Thus for a women to ask for his hand in marriage would therefore take away the man's role.
Then remains this whole notion of tradition. To some extent I believe traditions are there to be broken. I know i'll be one of them women that will have children late (if at all) and that's my choice. I don't really fancy getting married until i'm in my 30s (again my choice). That's my view. But I don't agree in the assumed tradition that only a man can do the proposing.
Many claimed that it would lack romance - but surely as contemporary, worldly experienced women, we have the ability within us to be able to make a night special and romantic for us to ask a man for marriage. Not only men in this occasion can be romantic!
I really wonder what a man's view on this matter is. Do they really feel that it is their role to do the asking? Would they feel threatened and "hurt" if their girlfriend was to ask them? Or would they just think they were taking the piss? Or as I hope they would think, would they feel it romantic and sexy that their women, their partner loves them enough to ask them?
No comments:
Post a Comment