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This is not an anti-marriage post.
Does nobody believe in romance anymore? What happened to the breathtaking proposal, the widening eyes, the gaping mouth, the suddenly blank brain, the silent tears of happiness forming, the sheer heart-stopping element of being suddenly, totally unexpectedly proposed to?
When did it become customary to register for a flat before even getting engaged? To book hotel wedding packages before the ring was bought? To know when and where and how your boyfriend (or girlfriend, if you're progressive) would propose?
Where's the unexpected?
I've heard of many proposals over the last three years, and most of them wound up being predictable, or even asked for (!) My colleague (non-Christian) has ROMed and has been living with her husband in their flat for a year now, and is only now going to get her wedding photos taken, and the ceremony booked. Another colleague has registered for a flat with her boyfriend. No plans for their wedding yet. Another friend (sorry man) also told me that his girlfriend had demanded to know when he was proposing, if ever. (I will probably reverse my tone on this once I'm in a serious relationship, and go "Oooooooh, so that's how it's like. No wonder." You can tell me "I told you so!" then, okay?)
Perhaps we're all just getting more and more worried for our futures, and playing it safer. We'd like to "know where this relationship is going", and plan our lives 20 years in advance. I know a friend who is determined to spend the next 10 year of his life becoming a successful banker, and then find a girlfriend to settle down only at 33.
How safe is safe?
Matthew Chapter 6, verses: 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or
drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than
food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ? 28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
But who am I to talk? The last bastion of relationship advice? All the above, IMHO only.
[edited to add: Okay, yes, I totally agree that unexpected = more on the line as the proposee may freak out and run away from the sheer shock of being proposed to, and thus humiliate the proposer, so there's more at stake than just mundane business. But surely there has to be some balance between expecting the proposal, and knowing the exact timing of it, or simply skipping it altogether? Ignoring it (and going straight for the jugular HDB flat just seems so... wrong. Very Alice Through The Looking-Glass wrong.]
[This is not an anti-marriage post.]
Sngs Alumni @ 28.9.04 { 0 comments }
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