Redditor the_wakeful asks: “I’m sick of all your girlfriends saying ‘yes’ to all your adorable proposals. Do any of you have a good ‘no’ story?”
There are some damn good stories. And some damn boring ones, so we’ll just compile the good ones.
ScrumYummy and her husband seem fun to hang around:
My boyfriend and I planned a marriage without ever proposing to each other. So every day for the six months leading up to the wedding, one of us would drop to our knees and propose, and the other would say “no.” In public, at restaurants, at home in front of friends, wherever.
We were married that july, and are on our tenth year together. Maybe for our anniversary, I’ll take him around town and we can shoot each other down, for old time’s sake.
phenomite1 redefines “stolen thunder”:
Oh god, yes. And guess where this douchebag proposed? Another couple’s wedding, rather at the Wedding Party. He got down on one knee, everybody sitting at his table (along with his then-GF) had a complete and utter look of don’t fucking do it on their faces when he proposed. She got up and walked away, face as red as a tomato and the guy chases after her screaming at the top of his lungs. “DON’T WE LOVE EACH OTHER? I GOT YOU A RING, BABE. FUCK THIS THEN. FUCK YOU BITCH” and then he comes back to the table. Most awkward wedding party of my life.
Carliiful has a story about really common names:
I totally have one about my dad: many years ago he (Steve) was at the beach with his girlfriend (Julie) of about 2 months, and one of those planes with a banner out the back flew past, with the message ‘Julie, will you marry me? -Steve’. Julie apparently freaked out and ran off, while my dad was trying to explain that it wasnt his doing, he had no idea. He thought it was his friends idea of a joke, when he walked down the beach and met a very happy couple, called Julie and Steve.
TL;DR: my dad got rejected for a proposal he didn’t make.
LOVES_TO_POOP met an alpha male:
I once saw a guy get shut down in a really fancy restaurant. She got up and left, he stayed and finished his steak. Anyone who stared at him for more than 2 seconds, he said “What the fuck are you staring at?”
Most awkward restaurant experience of my life.
lamesauce replies to the above with a crack:
If you can’t snag the beef curtains, settle for the beef cutlets.
And Divotus replies with a tale of opportunities chased:
Yep… I saw a guy get shot down at the beach… She left crying and he just collapsed and laid there in the sand until the tide almost washed him away…. He got up and started yelling, throwing the ring in the ocean… Me and my drinking buddy spent the rest of the afternoon looking for the ring with snorkels we bought from the gas station…
Everyone agrees that cuddlewithyourdemons‘s friend was classy, and that boyfriend was probably a dick:
Not my story, but a friend of mine once said ‘yes’ to her boyfriend, who had proposed to her at a carnival in front of a LOT of people. When they got into the car to drive home she told him she didn’t really want to marry him, she’d just wanted to spare him the embarrassment of getting turned down in front of all those people. He stopped the car and made her get out. She walked home alone and they never spoke again.
RightReverendJA has the opening to a decent CBS sitcom:
My father proposed to my mother on their first date.
From what I hear, it went roughly like this:
“Kaye, you’re fantastic. Marry me?”
“Nope.”
“Fair enough. How about dinner Thursday?”
“Sounds good.”
This went on for over a year. Every date. Without fail.
“Marriage?”
“No way.”
“I figured. Movie this weekend?”
“That’ll work.”
After something like a year and a half, she said yes. Dad was so used to the pattern, he’d actually suggested dinner at his place before he realized what she’d said.
Read this one by kaylenwiss just to prep for the reply later:
Not mine, but a friend.
He proposed, she said yes. A week later, she moved out – but she “still wanted to be with him.” A few months after that, she moved to another city, “for a job”, but never mysteriously started said job.
A few weeks after her move, she broke the engagement off over the phone, saying she just wasn’t ready.
They had been dating, living together, had pets together, for eight and a half years.
It’s not an immediate NO story, it’s a bit more drawn out, but…it’s still rough.
If you’re interested, the girl moved even further away and started dating someone almost immediately. They’re getting married in October.
Aaaaaand Pupenrhamen:
It’s weird someone would just kind of move in little increments like that.
Maybe she was a chess piece.
Game_of_Karma shows what happens to the kind of Gregory Grays who propose in Times Square:
I was at Times Square and I saw someone propose. Then the girl just started crying and said she wasn’t straight and didn’t want to hurt him. He ended up walking away crying. Must have sucked with quite a few people watching.
jaysinkpen met Joe Dirt:
So this is super classy.
I was at Wal-mart at 2 in the morning. I was in college and 2 AM always seems to be the best time to go. Hardly anyone there, no lines, the shelves are being restocked, and all the Crazies come out. I was just finishing my shopping and heading to the check out counter. I hear an employee get on the loud speaker. He sounded amused and a bit confused as he says “This is a message for (Woman’s name). (Man’s name) would like to ask if he can take your hand in marriage?” Or something along those lines.
As I’m checking out, I see a woman in tears running to the customer service section. I can vaguely hear the man shouting “So is that a yes Baby?” All hell breaks loose. There is so much screaming and yelling.
As the lady finishes checking me out, I see a few employees run to the service center. The shouts get louder and I hear crashing, like someone is just throwing whatever they can get their hands on. I pay and leave, quickly. When I get all my bags into the car and sit down, I see a security guard, 3 employees, a man and a woman. The man had a bloody nose.
Scumbag-Redditor has a more cinematic version:
I worked at Woolworths part time through high school and during one slow Sunday shift, a couple came in. I distinctly remember them because the girl was incredibly attractive whilst the guy wasn’t exactly Zeddie Little. We made a comment on how he managed to score a girl like that, and a mate and I kept an eye on them as they walked through the store, simply because the girl was wearing yoga pants.
Anyway, at one point the man stops and says “I have an announcement to make everyone!” really loudly. People start looking towards him and he gets down on one knee and says, “I know we haven’t known each other for long but I would be honoured if I could take your hand in marriage.” Those weren’t the exact words but it’s close enough. The girl looked mortified and just said “How embarrassing” in the sexiest British accent ever. She just walked off and he started crying. To top it off, a kid yelled out “haha” (in the same style of Nelson from the Simpsons). He was crying for a while, so we picked him up from the floor and took him to the back. We gave him some water and I asked how long they’ve been together. He said he’s been friends with her for a few months and they went on a date once.
TL;DR: Don’t propose to a girl in the produce section of a supermarket.
Twyll worked out a signal system:
See, this sort of thing is why my boyfriend and I have a plan: when i want him to propose, I’ll bring home a two-foot-diameter cookie cake. Then he’ll choose the time and method of proposing, knowing that I’ll say yes!
It’s foolproof! And it means we get to eat a shit-ton of cookie cake too.
pokemonmaster4 dated Dorothy Parker:
I asked a girl to marry me, she said no.
I said, “Is there someone else?”
She said, “There must be”.
wingfan191 is smooth like that leader kid in the show Recess:
When I was in 1st grade the girl who sat behind me (as in our backs were to each other separated by a narrow aisle) had the same last name as me. Being the non-confrontational gentleman that I am, I figured I’d ask her to marry me because she wouldn’t have to change her last name. It was the smoothest moment of my life as I leaned back in my chair, balancing it on the 2 back legs, so my head popped in from behind her right hand side and just flat out asked her to marry me. She of course said “no” and my 6 year old heart was broken… for about a second. I then flopped the chair back forward and continued on with my Phonics book.
ThaneOfYourMomsVag has not quite a proposal, but a childhood marriage story:
I “dated” a girl in third grade for a couple of weeks. Everything was great, we used to go in this big concrete pipe (like 4 foot diameter) and kiss at recess. Anyway, one day I overheard her telling her girlfriends that she had “sex” (hugging and rolling around) with Miles. Fucking Miles. As she came up to me at recess that day I pulled a ring pop out of my pocket, opened it and placed it on my own finger. I then licked the shit out of it, said, “It could have been yours you cheating whore.” (or you know, something far more third grader-like), kicked some mulch at her and ran away.
Penola tells a confusing story:
On a similar note, when I got engaged, I went to show my best guy friend, Keith, my ring. He did not say much. That night when I was at work, two of Keith’s buddies came in. One asked to see my ring. I showed him. He said “That’s not the ring Keith showed us.” Uh Oh :-/
If you didn’t get that (I didn’t), Thorston explains: Keith was gonna propose to Penola.
Cilarie has a nice escalation of the usual “a customer proposed out of nowhere” story:
So, I used to work at the Target snack bar, and while working there met some of the strangest people.
The weirdest by far happened one day when we were a little understaffed, and I was running around like a crazy person trying to keep the place running while my co-workers were all on break. I had just rung up a 30-something man and his elderly mother and was working on getting their food ready when he walked back up to the counter and proceeded to start up a rather awkward conversation with me. Well, a few minutes in, he winds up proposing. I, of course, politely declined, but he was insistent that we marry, or that I have a good reason why not. Although I was in a relationship, I knew that that by itself wouldn’t get him to leave me alone, so I told him that I was engaged. He looked disappointed, but seemed to accept this, and returned to his seat.
A few minutes later, his elderly mother comes up and starts chewing me out about how I must think I’m too good for her son and how there must be something wrong with me, among other things. The absurdity of it all combined with her very thick Indian accent made it so hard not to just crack up, but somehow I managed to get through without doing anything to make it worse, and after I apologized for whatever inconvenience my rejection of her son had caused, she seemed satisfied and also returned to their table.
Needless to say, it made things really awkward when I had to deliver their food a few minutes later! My co-workers never did let me live that one down..
tl;dr: Random customer proposes, I decline, his mother freaks out at me.
ololcopter does have the best one:
I got the best one: I knew a guy who couldn’t get over his ex (so bad that he didn’t even think of her as ‘his ex’). She had moved on and already had a new boyfriend and he wouldn’t leave her alone. Then one day at the food court of the local mall he approached her, in front of everybody, with a guitar and starting singing – but the song was just simple strumming and “will you marry me” over and over again as the lyrics. Plus he started this serenade like on the other side of the food court, so at first nobody knew what the hell was happening..
Anyway so he gets near her and she realizes that this retarded voice she keeps hearing is this dude, her needy ex boyfriend, but before she can get up or act embarrassed her new boyfriend, who was buying food, just drops his whole tray of shit and rushes at the guy with the guitar and suckerpunches him, then takes the guitar away from him and starts hitting him with it, all the while screaming “bro I’m sick of you you’re too fucking awkward” and stomping on his nuts in front of the play-pen/daycare center next to the hot-dog-on-the-stick restaurant. As a spectator I can say the experience was super surreal.
Oh and if you guys have been paying attention and are wondering: she did end up saying no.
Or maybe Roofiemartini does:
4000 comments in so this will get buried, but the story of J-bow needs to get out there.
Justin Bauer is a kid I used to go to high school with. He was a great skateboarder and was a fairly popular kid. When HS ended most of us proceeded to find jobs or go to school, whereas J-bow just fucked girls and continued skateboarding. His daily routine of hard partying and sleeping around really didn’t help his mental state, so after 3 excruciatingly long years he’s pretty close to hitting rock bottom. To rectify this, he decides to throw a giant party for his family, friends, and really, whoever wants to attend; this is where things go to shit.
J-bow indulges in some hard drugs now and then, and decided to do a little crack the night of the party. I’d say there were a good 150 people there and we all knew he was tweaking. He had sold his only car to buy 3 kegs and tons of booze, so everyone was good and drunk by the end of the night when he called us all around the back porch. Surrounded by his immediate family and his girlfriend, he made a very heartfelt speech about how true their love was and how she makes him a better man, all still while tweaking like a fucking psycho. So he gets down on one knee and pulls out the ring, when his mom starts screaming.
As it turns out, J-bow had just slept with his ex the night before. Did his current girlfriend know that? Hell no. What followed was the most ghetto shit show I have ever seen. His girlfriend slapped him in the face and ran off crying. J-bow got upset with his mom for embarrassing/outing him in front of everyone, so he gets in her face and starts swearing at her. His mom’s boyfriend takes offense to what J-bow is saying so he gets up, knocks him to the floor with one punch, and proceeds to whoop the shit out of him in a giant brawl. Needless to say, what started out as his engagement party and his big night, turned into his new worst memory.
He laid low for weeks, but when I saw him next was at a dive bar. He had apparently lost his mind, as he had taken the jewel from the ring he bought his girlfriend and superglued it to his front tooth… what a fucking mess. He tried to stab someone that night and got 86′d from his favorite spot. That was the last I ever saw him.
And that is the story of J-bow.
That’s all the best, but go read the thread for more.
Via: Cole Stryker
