Whether you are popping the question or being asked, getting proposed to is one of those monumental moments both people remember forever. However, some people should have probably thought twice before doing so. Here are 17 of the cringiest proposals we found on Reddit that are so bad, we couldn’t help but share:
1.
“Ex-boyfriend said to me, ‘You and I are having dinner with Will and Mary. How would we sit at the dinner table?’ I said, ‘Who’s Mary and Will?’ He told me it was hypothetical. Long story short, after too many failed attempts, I said ‘Will, you, Mary, and me? Are you asking me to marry you?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know, what do you think?’ Yeah, no. Our issue was that he could never speak to me straight about anything. I’m not committing to this damn Rubik’s Cube.”
2.
“I had a buddy who claims he ‘pretended to drown’ like 50 feet out into the ocean. He said he made his future ex-fiancé pull him all the way back and give him CPR. I think he proposed because he would never admit to having actually drowned.”
3.
“My ex proposed to me with a ring, which ended up needing to be resized, so when it was ready, he asked me to go pick it up and, as it turns out, pay for it. I was 27 at the time and just had a pit in my stomach like ‘this ain’t it.’ There has to be more to love than this. And there was.”
4.
“My friend told me how her first husband proposed: They were in his home country for Christmas, and first, he left her alone in his empty house with no food and electricity all day and most of the night. He was out partying with his friends, and she had just flown in. When she was upset the next day about being alone and hungry for hours, he told her that she could have gone to the neighbor’s house and asked for food… she didn’t speak the language and had never been to the country before. She was upset, so she called the airline to change her tickets to leave the next day. He threw an engagement ring at her and told her that she had ruined his Christmas and said, ‘Here is your fucking ring.’ They did marry but ended up divorcing a few years later.”
5.
“My boyfriend at the time said during mid sex, ‘Marry me?’ I didn’t respond. Afterwards, he said, ‘You never answered me?’ I said I thought he was joking, and that is not the way to propose. We broke up not long after.”
6.
“When my wife was in college, her parents were strongly encouraging her to marry this guy that they just loved for some reason. He was a few years older and in the Air Force, stationed across the country from where she lived. They helped him secretly arrange for the three of them to meet her at the airport as she deboarded a flight. She had been somewhere, don’t recall where, and he had gotten leave and arrived in town a couple of days earlier unbeknownst to her. As she comes down the jetway, there he is, dressed as a clown. Like a full-on circus clown, big shoes, face makeup, hat, everything, holding a balloon with a ring tied to it…”
7.
“My mate did it in front of all his mates, and accidentally called her by his ex’s name. It was so embarrassing that even I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.”
8.
“Less than an hour after giving birth, as we get to settle and bond with our baby, having been in a relationship roughly five years at this point, he says, ‘I’m taking paternity leave, but work wants a copy of our marriage license to approve it.’ I’m half-loopy and in that brand-new baby afterglow, so I laugh and tell him that we can get the license, but I still need a real proposal. Never got that real proposal… We’re still being pains in each other’s asses nine years on, so there’s that.”
9.
“One day he drives her to a surprise location for a date. He takes her to this random house in the suburbs with a dog tied up in the front lawn. He then proceeds to propose and explain how he bought the house of their dreams, dog included, and how they could raise their children there. The woman (my friend) was so flabbergasted that all she said was something like, ‘WTF, you bought a house and a dog without even telling me?’ He thought he was making this grand romantic gesture, but she was super annoyed that he had apparently arranged their whole lives without even asking for her input. Needless to say, she said no. Last I heard, he lived in the house for a bit and then sold it for a loss. No mention of the dog, but I’m hoping it wound up with a good family.”
10.
“A friend of a friend proposed to his fiancée immediately after her grandmother’s funeral. The logic was sweet, but deeply misguided: Her family lived across the country, so it was one of the very few times her family would all be in one place. She was initially pissed, embarrassed, and mortified, but said yes… it has been five years and no wedding in sight, so 🤷♂️.”
11.
“She had a horse that she adored and took wonderful care of. He told one of the barn workers to call her one evening and tell her the horse had a laceration on its foot, and to come right away! So she, crying and worried as hell, grabs bandage material and zooms over to the barn, where he was waiting to surprise her with the ring and a photographer. So her engagement photos are of her with red eyes, no makeup, no bra, and an old college t-shirt on, with bandage material in the background.”
12.
“My grandmother was proposed to sometime in the 40s. As she is sitting shotgun in the car with a guy she considered a friend, he says to her, out of nowhere, ‘Rita, what I’d really like to have with you is something along the lines of…a permanent franchise.’ His offer was declined.”
13.
“I ruined some guy’s marriage proposal by mistake when I tripped onto the couple just as he was going down on one knee. He almost dropped the ring and got pissed off at me.”
14.
“I was making fun of spur-of-the-moment proposals, saying how awful it would be for your partner to just roll over in bed and be like, ‘You wanna?’…until my friend said, ‘Well, that’s how MY husband did it…'”
15.
“My cousin’s marriage proposal was ruined because the person next to them at a restaurant booth told his girlfriend that he saw my cousin writing the marriage proposal underneath the tablecloth (she was supposed to lift it up and see it later on) when he was in the restroom.”
16.
“I had a dude propose to a girl at the bowling alley I worked at. He made me bring the ring with the shitty bowling alley food they ordered. It was a crowded, noisy, awful night. When I brought the ring over, he said, ‘Oh, what is that? I didn’t order that? Did you hun?’ Mind you, he was drunk, so his words were all slurred. She didn’t seem to want to be there from the beginning, and it was terrible to witness. She just looked at the box and said, ‘No.'”
17.
And, lastly: “My ex proposed to me while I was breaking up with him. He had apparently bought the ring and showed my dad months before, and my dad told him he was an idiot, and I would say no.”
Have you ever witnessed, or experienced, a terrible marriage proposal? Share it with us in the comments, and your story could be featured in a follow-up post!