There have been so many different, inventive ways that people have proposed to their partner. One Youtube search can show you countless proposals. But it's not just about the act of asking someone to marry them- it's also the events that lead up to that unforgettable moment.
ashleyhellsan asked: Happily married couples of reddit, what was the moment you realized this is the woman/man you were going to marry?
That's so sweet.
"It was when my husband clicked with my family. He wasn't afraid to spend time with them, and would actually suggest it. He greeted my grandfather with "hello there young man!" And then help him out of the car or walk from a restaurant. He never got frustrated with a slow pace or the crazy that is my family.
Plus my family loved him. They would call to talk with him or pull pranks on him. My parents even invited him to a cousins graduation in Wisconsin and paid for his airfare. It was his first flight and my dad and mom pranked him so hard about his "duties" on a flight. He took all of that with grace and smiles. He loved my family back.
It made me aware that this crazy we had going on could work long term."
So wholesome.
Giphy"We had decided we were going to take a crack at homemade pizza. We found a recipe online. We made a grocery list. We were standing over the case in the deli that had the pepperoni. The recipe didn't list how much pepperoni to get.
I said, "How many packages?"
He said, "Two? One for us to put on the pizza and one for us to eat while we make it?"
It's stupid and silly but that's when I knew both because I realized that he knew that I (and him, but mostly me. I love pepperoni and he apparently knew it.) would graze the pepperoni as we cooked. And the mental image of the two of us together in the kitchen eating pepperoni and making pizza filled me with such warmth."
Amazing.
"I've posted this before but we were about 3 months into dating and I hadn't really told her what my parents did for work. Her parents own a successful business, I immigrated here and my dad was a cashier at a convenient store.
When she asked me, I hesitated to answer, and she immediately picked up on it and said "you should never be ashamed of your parents, they've worked so hard to get you where you are; I'm so proud of them" and honestly, I cried. I realized right then that I was going to marry this girl. No regrets at all. She makes me a better person every day."
Romance takes many forms.
"I was in bed with a bad flu and listening to his radio show when I heard him casually mention his "life partner" for the first time.
Confused, sick me was like "wait... what? Was that a reference to me? Actually, yeah, come to think of it, that does sound about right... I guess I am!"
Over 18 years later I can still remember that moment - me alone in bed with a stuffy nose, and my heart leaping. But hey sometimes romance isn't all that romantic by movie standards."
What an icebreaker.
Giphy"We'd fallen out of touch, living in different cities, hadn't spoken in over 6 months. Not for any reason other than we just had other things happening.
I was bored at a friend's party and my phone buzzed. She'd sent me a text.
"If I were a bison, that would be neat".
I decided at that point I was going to make things work and move much closer to this bison.
We've been married 6 years."
Museum dates are the BEST.
"I was in love with my best friend for a long time and could tell he had feelings for me too. We had been on one outing that could have been considered a date and we spent long hours with just each other, talking in his car, but I was afraid to admit that the nature of our relationship was a romantic one by explicitly confessing feelings.
Finally, I realized that some things are worth taking a risk for and I asked him out with the oh-so-smooth phrase "Hey, uhh, would you uhh, maybe like to go to a museum sometime? Like, as a date?"
We held hands in the museum, went on a hike to a tower, and spent the end of the date wrapped in each other's arms watching The Fellowship of the Ring. While we were cuddled up, we both had a moment where we saw our reflection in his skylight and thought "yeah, this is the person I'm going to marry." I'm typing this with him cuddled up next to me."
She seems like a really strong person.
"I crashed a motorbike/scooter thing I had rented in Vietnam with her on the back. It messed up her foot for about a week, and was sore for longer.
She took it in stride, didn't get angry or let it ruin the trip at all. I know so many people who would have let that ruin it.
Instead we did some of the truly spectacular ruins in Cambodia with a combination of crutches and piggyback rides.
It really made me realize how special she is and always brings a smile to my face when I think of it."
What a mess.
Giphy'Our first date went so wrong to what he had planned. I could tell he was trying so, so hard, and everything went bad.
He put his arm around me during the movie 5 minutes before it ended. The place he tried to take me to for dinner closed the kitchen before we got there. We went to Burger King instead and I had to pay because they wouldn't take his hundred dollar bill. He was the first guy to buy me flowers, and he had brought them at the start of that date, but I didn't have a vase.
So after Burger King, we went to Wal-Mart to buy a vase and as we are standing on the vase aisle he says, "Pick any vase you want, I don't care the cost." I grabbed one that was only about $20, and when we got to pay, he had left the hundred in the car. So I paid for the vase too. It was just comical by that point.
We have been married over 10 years now and have 3 beautiful children."
Double win.
"We had talked marriage, but I had bad credit and didn't want it to mess up his finances so he couldn't buy a house. One day he called me from work and he had a mortgage broker on the phone with us who explained that our separate finances would stay that way, and in fact my husband's good credit would help mine get better. At the end of the call my husband says, "so now will you marry me?!"
Well be married 20 years come October and our credit scores are both over 800 now."
So thoughtful.
"I met my husband at work when I was a single mum to a young baby. We were friends first for a few months before we really started dating because, you know, you have to be sure when you have a baby...
I was having a really difficult time, suffering a little with PND impacted by the fact my ex-partner was on a pretty severe stalking campaign against me. If it had been the other way around, I'm not sure I could have dealt with the drama so early on in a relationship. But he managed, because he's literally the best man alive. He let me decide the pace we went at, when he met my son, etc.
A few months into dating, things got really bad with the stalking and I was struggling to sleep at night etc etc. One evening he arrived to my flat and let me know that he had just bought a house a few miles away with us in mind. Before we met he'd been saving for his own place in a famous building in our town, but he'd realised that a city centre flat didn't suit the life he wanted to live now he had the two of us.
He was driving to work one day and saw the development selling houses, and he just knew that was "the one" and put in the offer. I thought before that he could be The One, but I knew then and there that this was forever. It was just a logical step in his mind to make us a new home that we felt safe in; he just factored us right into his life plans like it was nothing.
He proposed a few days later, we put my flat up for rent, and all moved in together into the new house. That was five years ago, we got married in 2017, and he's just adopted our son. Count my blessings every single day."
Taking care of each other.
Giphy"I was really sick, going on day number four of high fevers and a bunch of other fun. She was taking care of me the entire time, running to the store to get whatever was needed and taking care of our dogs so I could rest.
I woke up just craving a sandwich and asked if she could make me one. Without hesitation she made us both sandwiches and brought and came up stairs to the bedroom, put on a movie and laid next to me while we ate a sandwich, then she fell asleep on me. We had already been together a few years, but this was the moment I knew I'd be a damn fool if I didn't marry her.
A few months later I took her to the ocean for the first time (we were living in Wisconsin where she lived all her life), and proposed. That was three years ago and we finally got married this past May at Mount Rainier in Washington. She's actually sick now laying next to me in bed, it's 3:26am and I'm going to run to the store shortly to get more soup and medicine. We've had a lot of great memories, but these moments matter most."
That's a strong bond.
"My sister's funeral.
He was just so amazing during the whole awful process. I knew one day one of us would bury the other.
An awful but amazing realization."
Never be ashamed.
"I've posted this before but we were about 3 months into dating and I hadn't really told her what my parents did for work. Her parents own a successful business, I immigrated here and my dad was a cashier at a convenient store.
When she asked me, I hesitated to answer, and she immediately picked up on it and said "you should never be ashamed of your parents, they've worked so hard to get you where you are; I'm so proud of them" and honestly, I cried. I realized right then that I was going to marry this girl. No regrets at all. She makes me a better person every day."
That saved the trip.
Giphy"I crashed a motorbike/scooter thing I had rented in Vietnam with her on the back. It messed up her foot for about a week, and was sore for longer.
She took it in stride, didn't get angry or let it ruin the trip at all. I know so many people who would have let that ruin it.
Instead we did some of the truly spectacular ruins in Cambodia with a combination of crutches and piggyback rides.
It really made me realize how special she is and always brings a smile to my face when I think of it."
Aww how thoughtful.
"He had been working all day, and was on his way home for some much deserved sleep. But then I drunkenly texted him asking him to pick me up McDonald's. He not only turned around and bought my food, but he texted and asked if the friends I was with wanted anything while he was there.
Unsurprisingly they all did want something. Because you cannot ask a drunk, basic, b*tch if she wants fries and not expect her to say anything other than of course she wants fries. He then drove it to the bar we were at and made sure they all had Ubers or DD's before taking me home.
I told him I loved him on the way home and never looked back."
"What’s the most amazing thing about the universe?"
Our Brains Are Like The Milky Way
"A single human brain has as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy."
"Around 100 billion."
"Source: a neuroscientist filled with useless facts about the brain."- Afferent_Input
Where Our Deep Uncertainty Comes From
"This is one I thought about recently."
"I believe that Carl Sagan said that we, sentient entities, are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
"With this in mind, when we think about the end of our universe, whether it be through a big shrink, big cooling, or what have you, we get apprehensive."
"We probably will never see this end, many of us will be dead."
"Yet, we still get a cold fear in our hearts."
"We are also a way for the cosmos to fear it's demise."- TheClassyEngineer
A Little Perspective
"If you were on a planet 65 million light years away from Earth and had a really good telescope, you could see the dinosaurs."- Swimmergent
lisa simpson space GIFGiphyWhat Got Us Where We Are
"That every single random event since the dawn of creation."
"The birth and death of stars, planets and galaxies, the very genesis of life has led to you being here right now to ask this question."- Jesus_marley
There's Another World Out There...
"Imagine being transported to a parallel universe that was almost identical to our own."
"Somewhere out in the vastness of that universe, there is a tiny planet."
"This much is true in both universes."
"On this planet, there is a beach, and on that beach, there is a small stone."
"Once again, both universes are alike in this regard."
"Beneath that stone, however, there are several million grains of sand, and while they are all are in precisely the same location in each universe, one of them, a tiny speck of particularly clear quartz, hewn from a larger whole millions of years before, has a single atom that is positioned a fraction of a femtometer differently than its twin in the mirror dimension."
"You may think that such an insignificant difference would label these two universes as being functionally identical, and you would be right."
"In fact, they are so similar that the multiverse has long since combined them into one reality."
"That single atom in that tiny speck of sand on that lonesome beach on a distant planet merely occupies two spaces at once, seeming to an outside observer to vibrate back and forth at a predictable rate."
"That every atom in existence seems to do the same is probably a coincidence."- RamsesThePigeon
Loop Space GIF by xponentialdesignGiphySpeaks For Itself
"That it exists."- phillipsd001
The Age Old Question...
"It must be true that either it didn't exist, then it did."
"Or it has always existed."- realFraaErasmas
What Makes Our Brain Work...
"That somehow all the particles accumulated in a specific way and in specific quantities to give you conscious thought."- Sphyrwa
Stars Glow GIF by Erica AndersonGiphyThe Inevitable End...
That whatever our problems are, big or small, it won’t matter in 1,000,000 years (worst being a nuclear war or something). - Reddit
There are countless things about the universe no one will ever know.
But mysterious and, sometimes, unsettling as it may be, there's something oddly wonderful about the unending exploration and study to learn what is out there.
And all the discoveries we have yet to make.
"What fictional character's death still hits you hard no matter how many times you watch it?"
Dear, Noble Artax
"I have to say the death of Artax, the boy's horse, in 'The Neverending Story'."
"Watching him sink into that swamp was pretty awful."- powderkegpitbull
Bubba of Forest Gump
"'Bubba was my best good friend'."
"'And even I know that ain't something you can find just around the corner'."
"'Bubba was going to be a shrimping boat captain, but instead, he died right there by that river in Vietnam'."- FlyingVI
Stoick The Vast
"Stoick the Vast, chief of Berk, Hiccup's father, from 'How to Train Your Dragon'."- Waldo_007
how to train your dragon animation GIF by Universal KidsGiphyThe Iron Giant
"The Iron Giant."- roo719
Noble Canine Companion
"Fry’s dog from Futurama."
"Another testimony to the fact that animators can be true storytellers, who don’t always need words to get their point across."
"The changing of seasons as the dog sits and waits in front of the pizza shop."
"Waits and waits for Fry, who never returns."
"No dialogue."
"Just the absence of the dog, eventually."
"Ugh."
"Gut wrenching."- iwokwuplikwthis
Animated GIFGiphySweet Ofelia
"The little girl from Pan's Labyrinth."
"In fact I just started crying even thinking about it"- choppcy088
Beloved Dr. Greene
"Mark Greene on ER."
"20 years later and I've never watched that episode without bawling like a baby."- LadyGreyIcedTea
A Hero's Death
"Wally West in 'Young Justice'."
"It’s been about a decade and I’m still mad about it."- Remarkable-Duck-2306
Video Game Laughing GIF by DCGiphyA Heartbreaking Escape
"When Brooks hangs himself in 'The Shawshank Redemption'."- Horror-School-6713
As the saying goes, those we love never truly leave us.
In the case of fictional characters in film and television, however, they are literally preserved for eternity.
Paving the way for new generations to be devastated and traumatized by their deaths.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/