Is it mostly the woman who initiates marriage? (wives, women, love)

[Trimac20]

Men may still mostly propose, but is it still mostly the woman who initiates marriage? E.g. suggests it, pressures him.etc. I'm not suggesting most or just after his money or something, but is it mostly the women who want to jump in quicker? Of course it depends on the person and I'm generalizing, but I mean marriage, especially these days, is popular as ever and it still seems conventional for the man to propose...my guess is that most of the case it's not 'out of the blue' and it's something the couple has been talking about it for awhile. What annoys me is when women complain 'why won't he just ask me already?' Like she's pressuring him to propose so they can have the fairytale wedding and fairytale marriage.

[Rhenzanite]

Oddly, in my group of friends it's been mostly the men who have practically begged their wives to marry them.

It took 3 years of begging (quite literally..I lived with them for a while) before my best friend finally said yes to her now husband. She wanted to finish her degree and get settled before getting married and he was the one who wanted the big wedding.

[TempusFugitive]

I think marriage has to be initiated by both parties. My wife definitely talked about it. We went shopping for rings so I could find out what she liked - She didn't like solitaire rings, loved classic yellow gold and wanted 3 stones with the central stone being bigger. I paid attention even though she never made a large deal out of it.

Then, I secretly learned to play the Ukulele so that I could send her away to the spa for the day and show up, play "I can't help falling in love with you." and then propose in front of everyone.

I think, as much as men say they don't, we put a lot of thought in to how we want to propose and what we want a marriage to be.

If both people don't want to get married, what's the point?

[Checkered24]

I am not sure I would say marriage is as popular as ever. The percentage of people getting married is dropping.

As for who initiates marriage, I would suspect that it is more of an equal decision more often than not, with both parties working together to come to that decision. Sure, sometimes women like to drop hints, etc. Sometimes, men like to propose without having actually discussed it to surprise their SO. Ultimately, however, it is a joint decision and I suspect a lot of couples discuss the possibility and come to their conclusions together.

[Baldrick]

I proposed to my wife out of the middle of nowhere, she'd never mentioned it or even alluded to it before then.

She was a wee bit surprised and it took a minute or two to convince her it wasn't a joke.

[FromTN2A2]

I never have, it has always been the men to initiate the convo with me. I do think we need to be on the same page and would prefer a man bring it up before the proposal because I would hate to have to say no. One guy asked me out of nowhere and I told him I needed to think about it. Bad sign of course, after about a month I told him no.

[findly185]

I'm a women who has been proposed to twice (and said no twice), so no, its not always the women. Actually I repeatedly told both men I wanted nothing to do with marriage...men aren't the best listeners.

[Ascension2012]

lol....seems that many women want to GET married but not actualy BE married. Odd creatures, but couldnt live without them for a day.

[Dewdroplet76]

No. In two of my relationships - the man brought it up first. In on of them, I did. My father asked my mother to marry him after 3 months. She laughed and told him she knew he was joking. But he wasn't. He knew right away he wanted to marry her. They were married about a year and a half after they met. My husband told me within the first few months of our relationship that he had never thought about settling down and getting married to anyone before he met me. There are lots of guys out there that want to get married.

[srjth]

I think some men are marriage-minded and some are not.