An American writer, Alicia Bittle, has advised ladies to walk away if their men refuses to kneel to propose to them.
‘Ladies, if a man refuses to get on one knee to propose, walk away. You deserve better,’ she said on X.
While the visual of a proposer on bended knee hearkens back to medieval knights bowing before noblewomen, this common gesture accompanied by the question ‘Will you marry me?’ seems to be a somewhat recent phenomenon.
Proposals used to look a lot more like the process of buying a house: ‘Have your realtor call my realtor. Tell her to throw in the couch, and we’ll have a deal.’
Amy Shack Egan, a wedding planner at Modern Rebel, says women grow up learning that a wedding will be the best day of their lives, and when combined with the norm that only men propose, it can translate to, ‘You know that big change in your life that we’ve told you is the most important thing? You have no agency over when and if that happens.’
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Egan says this dynamic is incredibly frustrating for many people and she has had ‘girlfriends complain that they feel desperate or crazy wondering if/when it’s going to happen.’
What was the moment like for the person proposing on bended knee?
Others love the stop, drop, and gawk moment a bended-knee proposal creates.
How many moments in life give us the opportunity to point and say, ‘awww’? Not enough. Erika Swift, the owner of Erika Swift Events, says, ‘It’s so romantic. I love it.
‘It’s always funny to watch the face of the person getting proposed to because they don’t fully get it yet, and then when they do…be still my heart.’
