Should I Propose to My Boyfriend?

Should I propose to my boyfriend? NO! You need to leave the big decisions up to him.

Proposing To Your Boyfriend is A Bad Idea

Hear me out! I’m not saying you’re not capable of making your own decisions. You are.

I’m just saying that it will work in your favour if you let your boyfriend initiate the big things. The big milestones like asking you out the first time, being exclusive, moving in together and eventually proposing.

He needs to do this stuff on his own and you will benefit if you don’t make the first move on any of those important life decisions. 

Buy why shouldn’t I let him know that I think we should move in together? I’m just as much in this relationship as he is.

Girl. You are right. 

But society hasn’t caught up to us yet. 

Society has told him that he should be the one making the first move and he knows this is his role. It’s a stereotype, yes but he knows that if he doesn’t ask you out on that first date, he may never get asked. He knows that if he doesn’t ask you to be exclusive, you may never ask. 

So if he’s not asking- there must be a reason.

Maybe he’s not ready for a relationship yet.

Maybe he’s married.

Maybe he’s just shy? No. If you guys are getting along well and you are giving him positive signals like answering his texts, saying yes to hanging out etc.

He will know that you are likely interested.

If you really think he’s just shy you can turn up the hints by saying stuff like “I really like hanging out with you”, “we get along so well” etc.

If he still doesn’t take the hint, there’s something holding him back.

“Well I asked him to move in with me and it worked“

Congratulations! I’m really happy for you- this could be the start of an everlasting romance. If you asked him to move in with you and he said yes, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – that’s awesome.

But what if he just agreed to do it because it’s convenient or because he didn’t want to be rude?

The awesome thing about waiting until he asks is that you know he came up with this idea himself. You know that he spent months thinking “hmm, I want to take this to the next level, maybe we should move in together”.

Isn’t it nice to know that you’re moving in with your boyfriend because he wanted it?

Men tend to hold off on making these big life decisions until they know they are ready.

Women tend to want to settle down as soon as they find someone they feel safe with.

This gender difference can work in our favour. 

We all wish we could do a love test and find out if the other person is as serious about us as we are about them.

If only we could just ask him: “Hey I think you’re the bees knees, do you see yourself marrying me one day and having kids together?”

Because as soon as we feel safe and comfortable around a guy, we already start picturing the white picket fence and he’s the man of the house.

Well since we can’t really ask these blunt questions and since we can’t really do a love test, why not just wait until he takes the relationship to the next level? Then we can decide, hmm do I want to move in with him? Hmm.. do I want to get married?

And then the power is back in our hands because we know for sure that he wants us and we can just decide whether or not we want him.

We can make decisions without making the decisions

I am so against playing games. In a relationship, you need to be honest and transparent.

But.

There is a time and a place for total openness and honesty. If you’ve been on 2 dates with a guy you know you want him to be your boyfriend, you shouldn’t just blurt that out right away. It comes across as needy – even if he were to ask you, it would probably still feel a bit forced.

But hinting is your best friend.

We can make decisions without actually making decisions.

We can say “You’re really great, I love hanging out with you” if you want to hint at being exclusive. Or if you’ve been living together for a while, you can say “hey I’m really happy with our relationship, where do you see this going in the next couple years?” if you want to hint at getting married.

You can express your needs and your wants but just let him pull the trigger.

For example, my boyfriend once brought it up to me that he’d be ok with just being common-law for the rest of our lives. I personally really want to get married and so I was having none of this.

I flat out told him that I’d like to be married one day and that I wouldn’t make any big life decisions (ie. moving away or having kids) if I wasn’t married to my partner.

The seed has been planted. He knows my wants and my needs so if he doesn’t ask me to get married – I know something is up.

Maybe he doesn’t want to be married ever? Maybe he doesn’t see us together long-term? Whatever the reason is, I know for a fact that when he decides to pull that trigger (whether it’s marriage or a break up) that he wanted this. It was his decision.

It’s filtering out the bad guys

Women these days are stronger than ever. We make our own money, we have our own support networks and we make our own life decisions. We do.

If you ask that guy you’re seeing to be exclusive. That’s fine. If you ask your BF to move into your place. All the power to you.

But waiting for him to do it just ensures that he’s really into us for us. He didn’t say yes to a date because he thought he might get laid. He asked you because he was really interested.

It’s not that we can’t make these life changing decisions, it’s just a really great way to use society’s stereotypes in our favour. It’s a way to make sure our guys really want to take it to the next level and to know that we aren’t pressuring them into doing it.

If you find yourself convincing your boyfriend to move in with you or to have a kid, maybe you don’t want to do that with that person. Maybe you want to wait for a guy to say “hey honey, I love your more than I love myself, would you like to get married?”

And then you can secretly say, yes.

I’ve been hinting at this for months.

Why haven’t you followed me on Pinterest? Thank you. You are nice 🙂