Lined red roses rimmed the edge of the neutral-toned walkway brick as I desperately debated pretending to die.
“Oh no!” my mind deduced while being led to a ridiculously cliché gazebo. Years of forced Hallmark movie consumption taught me that nothing good ever happened to a commitment-evasive individual under a gazebo.
He turned around, “We’ve been together for a long ti–”
No. Please no.
After what feels like an eternity with a gentle, impromptu rejection lining my agape lips, he finally gets down on one knee.
Before I give him probably the worst news possible besides “It’ll be about an hour wait” at the Sunday Cracker Barrel scene, I look down at the little black box slightly vibrating due to his shaky hands.
The fact that the ring wasn’t cubic zirconia and purchased at a Kohl’s kiosk almost swayed me to consider eternity with him, but the Asbury alum was still down for the count.
“Will you marry me?”
I debated saying yes because it would be the biggest amount of charity work that I have ever done. Religious legalists would be paralyzed with envy.
“No.” The scene cuts.
This scenario didn’t actually happen but is a recurring nightmare that flashes before my eyes as any man gives me the subtlest attention at Asbury.
“Ring by spring” is an unexplained, possibly paranormal phenomenon. In New Jersey, it was “Ring by 37” if you were lucky no one shot you in your sleep.
It’s truly insane to me. Everyone linked up here so quickly that when I transferred sophomore year, I missed all the qualified, eligible bachelors. All I got were the guys who believed they would spontaneously combust if they made eye contact with a female and a ginger baseball player who would show up at my window at 2 a.m. until I finally shooed him away.
I was also still wracking my brain to figure out what the acronym “FAFSA” meant and avidly google searched “Is Canada a country?” more times than once. Do we really want to encourage that type of stupidity in selecting and committing to a life-long partner?
Annually, I date someone as soon as the autumn leaves start falling and I think that the men formed a coalition for the relationship’s expiration date to be only days before Christmas. I am just trying to keep up with the holiday tradition.
I guess this piece is also a weird way to say I commend the dedication, love, and constant side hugs that it takes to marry someone after merely months. I’m somewhat jealous of you.
The fact that you have found someone that is genuinely interested in you is laudable. Congrats, I still haven’t convinced a guy to do that sort of thing.
Ring by spring, to me, is akin to an arranged marriage. It scares me how many people genuinely think it is a priority in college to find their soulmate. Such an “accomplishment” doesn’t go hand in hand with a degree.
Don’t you want your last name on a university degree that you worked on for four years? There is absolutely no way that I will allow a man to have his last name printed on a degree for which I wrote incessantly, while he was running through his hall with a nerf gun and asking the guys what “emotional availability” meant.
So, a little advice from a completely inexperienced individual. Don’t rush into a relationship. If you’re dating someone and the eventual breakup would shatter your well-being and your future, you probably shouldn’t be in a relationship. A significant other should be an add-on to your happiness, not the structure of it.
