Some guys figure a ring will secure a long-distance relationship girlfriend.
I was chatting with someone I know from church yesterday, who is graduating from high school next week, and she is already engaged. Engaged? Yes indeedy. Her steady boyfriend of six months decided to pop the question.
I thought she had planned to go to college. She still is. Was he going to the same school? No. Did they set a date? No.
“I see,” I replied. “So he’s marking his territory.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
When my sister Shannon graduated from high school, back in 1990, she was headed for Solano College and her then-boyfriend was joining the Marines. So he proposed. That way, other guys would see the ring and not hit on his woman, while he went far, far away and tried to hang on to the relationship from there.
Guys pull this sort of crap all the time. The guys don’t want to deal with the possibility that the relationship is over—that it was just a high school thing, or a college thing—so they make a last desperate grab with a proposal. I know three Bethany students with off-campus fiancรฉs and no wedding dates. They’ve been marked, and will stay marked until they or their fiancรฉs face reality. (In one case, I’m pretty sure she did the marking. He calls once a month. Does that sound like commitment to you?)
If you love somebody, set them free!
Anyway, she was offended by this description, as any person in denial would be. I told her she could prove me wrong if she could get her fiancรฉ to set a date—I wasn’t picky; he could pick an indefinite time like “summer 2009” if he wanted—but he should have plans. (But now that I think of it, a four-year engagement doesn’t sound appropriate either. What business does anyone have demanding that another person wait years for them? Get married already.)
Amusingly enough, she said she will get him to pick a date. How nice… she feels she has to prove something to me, an acquaintance she knows casually. Ah, denial.
In other catching-up-with-people news, I had an email conversation with an old friend who wants to be more than friends. I suppose I can say this without it getting back to her: Hell no. (I was much more polite in saying this in the email.)
She reminds me of a conversation I had once with Mom when I was watching my sister Kerry’s rental of Friends. (I forget which season it was.) I had watched six episodes in a row and Mom, out of curiosity, asked me which one of the Friends I might like to be friends with if I actually knew them.
“None of them,” I said.
“None?” she said, surprised.
“I would rather watch them on TV and laugh at them,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to actually know such people. They would only annoy me.”
Well, it seems I do actually know such people… and while she doesn’t really annoy me now, dating her would certainly drive me in that direction. So, nothing’s gonna happen. Thankfully.
But now that Mom has another child married off, and a third child seriously dating, she’s starting to apply the thumbscrews to me just a little bit more.