Proposing marriage in front of a crowd of people is a form of coercive control.
@anon_opin Yup. I’ve always been suspicious of those “grand romantic gestures”, because they seem to have very little to do with the recipient and their wants, and everything to do with the vanity of the one making the gesture.
@anon_opin I always assume that while the timing is a surprise, marriage has been discussed before a big proposal.
I'd say no unless we'd discussed it 
@Tattooed_mummy @anon_opin
there is discussing the possibility and there is actually going there. if it happened to me they'd get a slap in the face. of course no one's asking, just saying.
@kolya @anon_opin my actual proposal was the very basic sort where my other half just said shall we get married then?
@Tattooed_mummy @anon_opin 
might as well. my gut feling is that this sort of marriage lasts a lot longer than the ones build on such great gestures.
@kolya @anon_opin 30+years so far
This. In fact, I'd say that no matter how proposal comes, if it is a grand gesture that hasn't been discussed before, it is coercive.
@Tattooed_mummy @anon_opin We hadn’t *discussed* it so much when I asked my now wife, but the idea had been in the air somehow for, dunno, a few weeks.
We had moved in together half a year earlier, then after the main things of furnishing etc. were done distracting us, we had to come to terms with actually living together. That wasn’t totally easy at first, but we came out of it fine, so thinking about marriage was the next logical step. Anyway, she said yes!
@Tattooed_mummy @anon_opin But to get back to the original point, that was in the privacy of our home. Doing this in public is, if maybe not coercive, definitely a manipulative move. Maybe the thought isn’t more sinister than just wanting to impress them, but it is still manipulative. No consent given under such circumstances should be considered binding.
(Which it also isn’t under the best of circumstances, of course. Everyone is entitled to change their mind.)
@anon_opin yes, it really is isn't it in all but the most rare circumstances
@anon_opin Yes, obviously it is
@anon_opin i once saw a vid of someone doing this at a sports event and the guy arranged it so it would be on the big screen. She said no and people started booing. So yeah, its fucked up.
@anon_opin It’s always seemed that way to me. Creepy.
@anon_opin @Lottie You have a point there. It puts the partner in an unenviable position.
@anon_opin A gentleman friend who makes a hobby of asking me to marry him (he's the one with the castle; it's a long story) very wisely asked what I would prefer for the "official" proposal, and gave me a list of options plus the choice to indicate something not on the list.
This is an excellent way to handle the situation and I recommend it.
("Public proposal" was on the list. I explained I would rather be boiled in oil.)
@AdaraAstin @anon_opin there's so much going on here
@RomanceReviews @anon_opin Yes, there truly is.
@anon_opin Pretty much the only way out of it is to summon Beetlejuice