Carolyn Hax: He may not be bended-knee type

Dear Carolyn: My long-term boyfriend and I are very happy, and marriage has been discussed but never with a time frame. Recently I’ve been feeling more inclined to marriage, ready for the commitment and ready to celebrate with this wonderful man. I could talk to him about this but I don’t and here’s why: I can’t shake my romantic notion of a surprise engagement. I’ve got this idea of his buying the ring and picking a special location and my crying with joy and surprise. I feel like a boob. Discussing marriage and agreeing to get engaged seem less exciting. I know this is stupid because the point is spending the rest of my life with a fantastic man, not having a great engagement story to tell at parties. Please smack me! – Va.

I’m sorry, I don’t have it in me to smack someone who already feels like a boob.

There, now we both have our soft underbellies exposed.

I also don’t think your distress is entirely boobular. Yes, what matters is the rest of your life and not the Big Proposal Scene. But given the way we’re (currently) socialized, men grow up expecting to propose, and women grow up expecting to be proposed to – a honking generalization, obviously, but stay with me – and so when a man doesn’t buy a ring and pick a location and propose, a woman does sometimes start to wonder if he’s paying attention to what makes her happy, or even wants her that badly.

And neither of these doubts should be dismissed just because they’re mixed in with the uber-silliness of diamond rings and knee-bends.

Since this is about wanting to be together, the obvious answer is for you just to propose. But since it’s also about your ability to make each other happy, I don’t think the obvious applies. Instead, figure out whether your romantic hopes are realistic with this guy. Is he even the bended-knee type? Or is he going about this exactly as you should expect, knowing him as you do?

If it’s the former, has he given you other reasons to suspect he’s hesitating? And if it’s the latter, is his non-bended-knee-ness something that you, in day-to-day life, really love about him – or has it been a source of gnawing disappointment that gets tougher to shrug off each time?

If this were a sitcom, right now we’d cut to your boyfriend, and he’d be talking about baseball.

But ask yourself these questions anyway, preferably in the privacy of your own mind, and see if what you’re upset about isn’t actually a lot bigger than pulling a carat out of a hat.

And if it isn’t, cheez. Get a hold of yourself.