The pre-proposal...proposal

I, like many bloggers before me, must admit a little secret! I was very involved in this silly 'proposal' business. Well, some people would call it silly. But that person sure isn't me! And here's another one. That amazing proposal? Well...it wasn't the first.

We might as well be honest with each other. I mean, this is the internet, nothing is sacred anyway.

When Manatee and I first met, we'd both been through hell and back as far as relationships go, even at our young age (21 and 22). He'd just gotten out of a grueling, emotionally exhausting 3.5 year relationship that most people (especially his family) agree had very little good about it, even from the start. I'd been a serial long-term dater, with little success. After three year-long flames, none of which ending well, I was done with the dating game! I was not ready to launch myself full tilt into even one more emotional mess, and I was living the life! I'd been single about two months at the time, meeting people but never taking much interest in dating, and as you may have read in our intro, we were pretty much forced into meeting by our respective roommates despite my best arguments. I was determined not to like him! Although he swears up and down it was love at first date, I took a little convincing! Even still, within a week of our (mostly) blind date, we were exclusively dating. Everything went about a mile a minute after that, and I miraculously was able to push my fear-monster in hiding and enjoy myself. We were together pretty much 24/7.  The first "I love you" came at three weeks, he presented me with a beautiful little promise ring on the morning of two months, and at three months we found ourselves in San Antonio, one of my favorite places in the world. If you've never been to the Riverwalk around Christmas time (I believe they're up year round, now) it is absolutely magical.

Image via Go Travels

We're walking along, and he's giving me the creeps because his palms are all sweaty, and we keep pacing up and down this stretch and he's all jittery and weird and OH GOD OH GOD he's going to dump me. I'm about to lose my sh*t when all the sudden we're at this little island, with a huge tree, a little bench, and what do you know....about a thousand rose petals strewn on the ground. He sits me down on this bench and starts to pace around, and while my girl-eyes are popping out at all the pretty lights and general scenery, he starts to put auctioneers to shame as he recounts the events of our relationship and random compliments at record speed. I still havent figured out what is going on when I look around and see a tour boat cruising by, with a tour guide telling her group about a historic 'Marriage Island', where hundreds of proposals and an average of 80 weddings occur each year. To my shock and surprise, she turns to us and says.... 'And it appears one is happening RIGHT NOW!''....Wait a second, what?!

Image via StephScribe

I turn back to Mr. Manatee to see him on his knee, with the promise ring he'd given me a few weeks earlier, asking me to marry him.
Here was the moment I regret to this day, when my non-committal side I'd so carefully coaxed into hiding reared it's ugly head in the worst way. A million terrified thoughts ran through my head, and red lights and blaring sounds equivalent to nuclear melt-down took over. All I could think about was the crazed first-few-months of devotion shown by every ex in the book, and how much worse would it be if he left after this? Not to mention we had just had a conversation in the car on the way down about how we wanted to 'take things slow'.
In a terrible, scared little animal voice, I said the five last words a man wants to hear after laying his heart bare in front of a tour-boat full of people and the whole world (or what felt like it.) I shudder just typing this terrible, cowardly phrase. 'Can we talk about this?'
He took it like a champ. We got up, smiled and waved to the people on the boat, walked to the hotel and we talked. A lot.

To this day, I will never forgive myself for not throwing caution to the wind and saying yes, in that beautiful place, to the amazing man I'm absolutely crazy about. Little details like timelines, The Ring, and asking my parents (something that had always meant a lot to me) could have waited. To be honest, I think it took him a long time to fully 'let it go', since he didn't ask me again until almost a year later. And like many others, I spent more than a few nights in bed in near hysterics, devastated that another 'landmark' I had built up to be the perfect moment had passed, and I had ruined my one and only chance to wed the man I was now certain was my soul mate.

Thankfully, but also frustratingly, he is just like any other man in that he likes to do things his way, in his time, and everything worked out in the end. And he found a way to make even the second time perfect. He insists that he's glad I said no the first time, because it showed I wasn't going to be pressured before I was ready, and that waiting gave him time to show that his devotion wasn't just a symptom of the 'honeymoon stage'. Moreover, he had time to find the perfect ring (with only a LITTLE guidance, more on that later), ask my parents, and ask me in the intimacy of our home. Alls well that ends well!

Did you have any 'roadblocks' to happiness? Any regrets along the way?