Relationship experts at The Gottman Institute say it’s not enough to share goals with your life partner. For a truly aligned relationship, you need to make sure you’ve got the same timeline in mind, too.
For instance, you might agree that you both want to get married ― but if one of you sees it as an “eh, sometime” thing, while the other would consider walking if it doesn’t happen in the next year, you’ve not asked all the right questions.
Still, we don’t think any line of questioning could have prepared Redditor u/ExtraSupermarket8858 for the scenario he described in r/AITAH (am I the *sshole here).
“My girlfriend turned [my birthday dinner] into a proposal for herself,” he explained.
His girlfriend planned the big day
The original poster (OP) explained that his girlfriend, “Sarah”, planned his 28th birthday for him ― stressing that she’d “make it special”.
She’d booked a lovely restaurant, inviting his close friends and family.
“Everything was going great until it was time for dessert,” OP continued.
“The waiter brought out a cake, but instead of my name, it said: ‘Will You Marry Me, Sarah?’”.
The author said he was “blindsided” by the act, and had barely had time to understand what was going on when he looked up to see his “teary-eyed” girlfriend.
When she saw his hesitation, Sarah explained that she couldn’t wait much longer so took “matters into her own hands”.
“At that moment, I stood up and said, ‘This is my birthday. If you wanted a proposal, you should’ve talked to me about it first.’ Then I grabbed my stuff and walked out.”
OP said that his girlfriend was “mortified,” and that her friends and family have been divided by his reaction ― half of them, he says, think he “ruined the night” and “humiliated” his partner.
Redditors were broadly on his side
Most of the commenters said the poster was not, in fact, “the a**hole here.”
u/Wakemeup3000 wrote: “The cake could have said will you marry me, YOUR NAME with her proposing to you which would have been cringeworthy as best. Instead, she decided to make it all about her and put you on the spot.”
“She was ‘trying to do something romantic’ ― but you weren’t the intended recipient, she was,” u/helenaflowers weighed in.
What do you think? Let us know!
