How Not to Propose

You've basically got one shot at asking your beloved to marry you. Hopefully, you'll get a "yes" answer. But if you want your sweetie to say "no," just follow the tips below:

Propose while drunk. Yeah, nothing says "I want to spend the rest of my life with you" better than falling down in hysterical inebriated giggles right after you ask him or her to marry you. Or better yet, throwing up! It's normal to be nervous, and a glass of wine or a small shot of something to calm you down is fine. But a marriage proposal is a bit like a tattoo - you're basically stuck with it for the rest of your life. Tattoo artists won't ink people who are visibly drunk; there should be a similar policy for proposing. Oh, and asking someone to marry you while stoned or high is equally bad.

Propose immediately after sex. Don't get me wrong, sex is a very nice benefit of marriage or any other long-term relationship, but it's definitely not all there is to it - or at least it shouldn't be! Think of marriage (or any good, committed relationship) as a banana split, and sex as the whipped cream on top - it's a nice part of the whole, but not the main ingredient. If you ask someone to marry you right after the two of you have had sex, it sends a message to him or her that sex is the most important part of the relationship to you. If sex is the most important part of the relationship to you, don't propose marriage. If it isn't, you can wait for a less hormonally-driven moment.

Propose while doing something else. This happened to me with my first husband, David. We'd been sent on an errand by my mother (I was still living at home) to drive to the grocery store to buy cat food. My mother had been pressuring me all afternoon about college and her plans to leave the state after I established my own in-state residency (makes tuition much cheaper) so she could go live with my father, who had recently taken a job four states away. David and I vaguely knew we were getting married within seven months, but hadn't made it official yet. I knew that our wedding would make my college residency plans unnecessary. So after relating my afternoon to David, whom I'd been dating for three and a half years, he asked me to marry him. In the car. On the way to the grocery store to buy cat food. Without stopping the car, or even slowing down! Oh, yeah, the proposal was memorable (this was twenty-seven years ago, at the time of this writing), but not in a good way!

Propose immediately after a fight. Again, bad timing. And he or she would be perfectly justified to assume you're proposing solely for the purpose of making up, and would also be perfectly justified in decking you one, at least verbally, for trying such a thing! At a moment when anger, hurt, fear, and frustration are all running high, don't ask the question that will change both your lives forever. You might not like the answer you get. And he or she might not give you an honest answer, because of all the negative emotions still in the air. Wait a day or two. While you wait, think of this: if the two of you survived the fight with your relationship intact, you can probably survive anything marriage will throw at you.

If you want a "yes" to the question "Will you marry me?" it helps to find, or create, the right moment. The above scenarios just don't qualify - and you'll get a "no" on your first and only shot at happily-ever-after with this person.

Don't blow it!