Had to tell someone

[phoenixgirl]

My boyfriend of five + years just asked nonchalantly to have my grandmother''s dinner ring with a 1.1 carat diamond in it.

Throughout college we talked about "when we get married" all the time, but after we graduated in ''02 (he''s two years older but took the 5 1/2 year route), he suddenly freaked out and wouldn''t talk about it at all. He even wanted us to "date casually" (???). I took it all in stride, and then on January 1st of this year, he suddenly woke up saying "Shouldn''t we buy a house?" and talking about our future children.

A few weeks ago he said, "What kind of setting for a diamond ring did you like again?" I gave him a print-out of all the pictures I''ve collected of the x-prong setting, which is what I want. You know he''s really serious if he didn''t run screaming from my apartment when I had a ready-made print-out.

Anyway, this is fun! We''re going to Paris and London the first week of April, so I''m thinking it could be then (or before). It''s exciting, but also a little hard to believe. I mean, it''s been sooooo long, I''ve gotten used to us being in our constant state of limbo.

 

[sumi]

Ooooooooh! I think it's coming! Well, at the very least you know those are some good signs. This is so exciting! I wouldn't start snooping around TOO much, you do want some element of surprise, right?

 

[Nicrez]

PG, this is soooooe xciting for you! YAY!

My friend actually JUST got engaged and she waited for her guy 10 years since dating in college for 4 years, and then the steady fawcet (on-off) relationship in the meanwhile...




How great is it to know he finally came around and is doing things at his pace, which means he's REALLY ready! Wow...house, kids...YIKES!

Paris and London are both fabulous places to get engaged...Good luck and you better keep us posted!!!

*edge of seat*

 

[valeria101]

Good Lord! Been there done that... and it was not easy

Can you / would you

breack the suspense ?

Paris is great though... so are big diamond rings

 

[phoenixgirl]

Thanks for the replies!

I just talked to my sister who is moving back to DC (I'm in Richmond) from Connecticut, so it is a happy day!

I guess my boyfriend could have chosen to surprise me completely, but I like that we're both pretending the other one doesn't know that we know (or whatever, did that make any sense?). I just said, "Sure, just keep it safe!"

Hmmm, the suspense is whether he'll pick the platinum or yellow gold x-prong. I like yellow gold (I never saw platinum rings until I was older, so I associate wedding rings with yellow gold), and the diamond is a "J" so it might look better in yellow gold, but he likes platinum. He's also on a tight budget, so I don't know if he would pay almost twice as much for platinum when he knows I would be happy with yellow gold.

OK, not that I should be thinking about this, but it would probably happen in Paris because he was a French major and studied there. We're going to London more as a side trip for two nights since he's never been. Plus he has friends in Paris who could help him plan stuff.

Must stop speculating, must stop speculating . . .

 

[valeria101]

----------------
On 3/2/2004 5:52:34 PM phoenixgirl wrote:



Must stop speculating, must stop speculating . . .----------------

Oh by allll means...

Just, please post one word on the happy ending

for Pricescope's sake

 

[angela]

PG - that is sooooooo exciting! I'm (kind of) in the same boat. My guy and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary on February 7, in Mexico, and I was so hoping he would ask me then, but to no avail. However, since then, he's purchased the diamond (the 1.0 I SI1 you saw on WF) and I drew up some designs for a local goldsmith who is working on a wax.

However, I think I'm going to be in Nicrez's boat when it's done because I think he's going to torture me by waiting as long as possible to "hand over the goods" - if you will. I don't mind not being surprised, but I'm going to hate the waiting part after all of this hard work since I'm the one who searched and searched for the stone as well.

I think a proposal in France would be tres romantique! My sweetie and I were in France about 4 1/2 years ago, and that's the first place I said the "L" word to him.... something about France - magic in the air!

 

[phoenixgirl]

Hmmm, well he's really not being sly at all.

He keeps joking that he is selling my grandmother's ring on eBay as we speak. And then today he copied me an email that he sent my dad telling him he would just happen to be in Philadelphia (to go to a concert and visit a friend) at the end of the month, so could they get together for golf? He says he'll probably grab lunch with my parents, ya know, just cause he'll be up there anyway.

Sweetie! You could try to be a little sneaky! He had mentioned before that he might steal my grandmother's ring, and if he had, I don't think I would have asked him about it. He could have left a little note in its hiding place if I had looked for it or something. That way he wouldn't know if I knew.

The opposite happened with my sister and her husband. He drove from DC to Philadelphia and back in one night to ask my parents' blessing. He concocted some story about going out with a friend, but it was obviously untrue, and she called me and asked me pointblank if he had been up to see our parents. I tried to lie, really I did, but I was so taken aback that she would ask and not leave the tiny sliver of doubt just for fun that I was busted.

See, I like that sliver of doubt. I don't want to talk about it. What am I supposed to do when he jokes about eBay? Silly man. I do love him though.

Over Christmas I told him that I could leave the ring in my mom's possession so that I wouldn't know if he had it or not, but that was when he hadn't talked about the future in a year and a half, and before he could respond I decided that I didn't want to be 250 miles away from my ring for some guy who hadn't indicated he was ready to get married any time soon. He said that was fine though, and that was when he mentioned he'd always just planned to steal it. It was right after that that the serious talk began. I kind of like knowing though. I wouldn't want to be totally taken by surprise. It's like having a baby . . . some people decide to leave the baby's sex as a surprise, and that's fine, but I've always thought that having an otherwise nonexistent person grow inside you and come on out into the world was excitement enough with the surprise factor. It won't be any less exciting, but if he keeps dropping hints, I might have to yell at him.

The same thing happened over Christmas. He dropped a few cute hints about wanting an iPod, and I bought him one in November, and then by December 15th he had dropped so many hints that I had to tell him he might not get one if he didn't stop mentioning it. I don't want to have to say that I know what he's up to, but if he jokes about it too much, I don't know what I'll do.

Oh yeah, for our five year anniversary on Dec. 12, he also gave away my surprise message by dropping hints. Oh dear.

I did wonder if he would take me back to this nice chateau in the Loire valley where we stayed when I visited him in college, but if that's the plan, then he shouldn't have let me prepay for our hotel rooms!

 

[angela]

Why are guys so crazy? Don't they know that most women dream of romantic surprises and/or proposals? (Well, I know SOME get it, just not the ones I've dated!) Tee hee...

I wonder if he's dropping all of the hints to get your reaction just to be positive that you won't say "no."

I think that some guys just go a little whacko when they're making the decision to get engaged because they're afraid. That, or you will have a life time full of him being too darned excited to keep secrets and surprise you. I can identify with him, I get the same way and have difficulty keeping secrets, but I've been working on it!

Since you'll likely be getting married someday, you can start training him now and in a few years he can surprise you every once in awhile. LOL

Either way, it's still exciting, right?? (But you're probably going nuts wondering when, if, where, and all of the other important things - I know I would be!) One more month til the trip - can you hold out that long?

 

[Nicrez]

Ok my take on surprises...Some men just don't get it...




If you are going to surprise a woman there are four ways to do it:




1) No hints, not clue, comes out of nowhere...quick and swift , like a packed bag (as he packed it of course) at the door when she comes home and tickets to some warm destination sitting on top.




2) Little hints and a long sort of surprise...which can drive a girl nuts if she stats getting TOO curious or deseprate (see all most posts for the example)




3) A long drawn out suprise that you barely hint at, but the general knowledge that soemthing is up...like talking about eventually getting married within the next few ___ and a ring coming as a suprise, though you anticipated it SOMETIME soon...




4) no surprise at all. (which we of course really don't like, do we ladies?)

So men, if you can't keep from hinting because you are all excited about it (and she may be your best friend), there is a fine line between little hints and torture (again see my posts). But if you cme out of nowhere, like a girl always thought the guy wanted to wait a few YEARS...that's a shocker. Especially if she says...NO. So I say go with 3 for an engagement. And frankly, I pray that you (Pheonix girl) get #3 and NOT #2!!!!

 

[phoenixgirl]

He just lacks the art of sublety.

The moment he said, "Don't you think we should buy a house?" when he hadn't talked about the future for a year and a half, I knew what that meant. And my brain instantly jumped ahead to our trip to Paris in three months. I wish he had left it at that . . . then I would have kept wondering if maybe I reading too much into it. At this point I feel like it's spelled out in plain English. Now the surprise would be if he didn't propose.

I just bought a suitcase for our trip. I want to start packing already, but we don't leave for four weeks from yesterday.

 

[phoenixgirl]

OK, now my boyfriend is walking a very strange line between making it obvious that he's going to propose but not talking about it. He's emailed me to say he's going to visit my parents in two weeks and to ask what ring size I wear, but when I tried to bring up my ring size in person, he hardly answered at all, so I changed the subject, and when I emailed him back with my ring size and said that SuperbCert carried quarter sizes, he pretended not to know what I was talking about! He said he was just curious about my ring size, that's all. So then I had to yell at him on the phone, which made him giggle like a school girl.

I don't know if I'd want things totally hush-hush, but he can't keep bringing it up and then reacting so strangely when I respond.

 

[ClownFishFunk]

----------------
On 3/12/2004 5:01:57 PM phoenixgirl wrote:

OK, now my boyfriend is walking a very strange line between making it obvious that he's going to propose but not talking about it. He's emailed me to say he's going to visit my parents in two weeks and to ask what ring size I wear, but when I tried to bring up my ring size in person, he hardly answered at all, so I changed the subject, and when I emailed him back with my ring size and said that SuperbCert carried quarter sizes, he pretended not to know what I was talking about! He said he was just curious about my ring size, that's all. So then I had to yell at him on the phone, which made him giggle like a school girl.


I don't know if I'd want things totally hush-hush, but he can't keep bringing it up and then reacting so strangely when I respond.----------------

LOL that is too funny. Boys will be boys as they say... I guess I'd just let him believe that he's got me totally fooled.