" He need me to get hitched with him at his parent ’ vow renewal . I retrieve it was really inappropriate , so I turned him down . "

We asked the members of theBuzzFeed Communityto tell us why theyturned down their S.O.’s marriage proposal. Here are their most interesting (and shocking) stories:

1.“I briefly dated a guy at 19, then we remained good friends after breaking up. Several years later, he jokingly (I thought) proposed at his mom’s birthday party. While I was laughing along with the ‘joke,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘I’m not kidding. I love you.’ I was mortified, but trapped in front of all these people, so I said yes. A week later, I finally got the courage to break it off. He didn’t speak to me for years, but eventually, we became friends again, and he apologized for putting me in that awful position. He’s a fantastic single dad now, and I’ve been happily married for 18 years.”

— beccawoodwardt

2.“I never want to get married. He knew but thought I would say yes if it was a very public proposal.”

— Anonymous

3.“My partner of 8 years proposed to me at our daughter’s birthday party (an event I planned). His entire family was there, but mine was absent. By then, we had been together so long and had two kids, and it was crystal clear at that moment he was only doing it out of obligation. It was like having the entire illusion of his commitment to me shattered in an instant. He’s a very involved dad, but we’re no longer together. I needed someone in my life who would choose me every day, and it turns out that person was me.”

4.“My ex and I met in nursing school. We were both entering the same year of the RN program. It was good at first; he was just what I needed as I had walked away from a hard relationship just prior, so at that time, he felt like he was ‘Mr. Right.’ That honeymoon phase ended when I continued to move on in the program, but he was failing—and eventually exceeded his attempts. He hated me when I begged him to switch to a different nursing program. I could tell it made him feel inferior next to me. I graduated as an RN with honors, and he was still ‘figuring it out.’ One night, we were eating pizza at his parents’ craphole of a place, and he ‘asked’ me to marry him. I lost it on him because he had nothing to his name—it was straight-up manipulation.”

" He continue to pick fights with me , gaslight me , and guilt feelings - trip me . Once he calibrate , he ask mybest friendif he should purpose , and I ’m beyond thankful that she talked him out of it . We then went on our final trip together and broke up the twenty-four hours after returning . I regret staying so long with him and being force to find like I was the trouble and that something was wrong with me . He is now married , got everything he want , and acts like he did it all himself . I detest him . "

5.“I saved myself from the proposal. We had been together for 3.5 years and living together for two. I tried hard to ignore the red flags (he was very manipulative and lied about everything) because he was a nice guy and did love me very much. For a few months around my birthday, he would (in front of me) show my friends, ‘Look what I’m getting her soon,’ and of course, all my friends told me it was an engagement ring that he was showing them. During one of our fights, where I caught him in another lie, I brought up the fact that I knew he was getting me an engagement ring. He admitted he’d been making payments on a ring for me and was just about to pay it off. I exploded and said, ‘How could you think I’d accept a ring from a man who would rather make payments on a ring to put on my finger than help me with rent, the bills, or even buying groceries?'”

" He was on and off unemployment and had monolithic debt that he hid from me , which conduct to me being the solitary supplier for both of us . He answer with , ' It ’s my choice what I spend my money on . ' Definitely not husband stuff , and we break up shortly after . Because we broke up — and he was broke with no money to get a new place or compensate at ours — my landlord kindly evicted him from our place after he stayed there for a month post - breakup . "

6.“We were dating just about six months, and he asked me to marry him at his parents’ vow renewal. I thought it was really inappropriate, so I turned him down. He was really upset about it, and we still dated for two more years…but looking back, it was the right decision. I was 19, and he was 26, and I just wasn’t ready. Like, at ALL!”

7.“An ex-boyfriend I hadn’t seen in over two years—and hadn’t dated for 18 months before that—showed up at my college apartment. He asked me to take a walk with him. He explained that he felt it was time to settle down and get married. He asked me to marry him because he ‘was as fond of me as he’d ever be of anyone.’ I said no. I later found out he left my apartment and went to visit another old girlfriend. He told her I had turned him down, so he’d come to ask her to marry him. She was his backup plan.”

8.“We had been dating for two years—very long-distance. (He lived in London; I was on the West Coast of the United States). We would take turns every other month flying to see each other. On one of his trips to see me, he handed me a packet and said nothing. I looked at it, and it was an application for a marriage visa. I looked at him and asked why he handed it to me, and he said it was so I could fill out my part. I broke up with him right then. The rest of his visit was pretty tense, so I picked up extra shifts at work. He never even officially asked me—just handed me paperwork.”

9.“We had only been dating for a month. It was my birthday and he got me aTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtleT-shirt (which I never remember expressing interest in). He pulled out a MOOD RING with dolphins on it. Thankfully, he didn’t get down on one knee in the restaurant. I said no. He said he would ask me again in December (my birthday is in July). But he would wear a ring on his left hand so ‘all the girls know he is taken.’ I hung on to that crazy for two more weeks before dumping him.”

10.“A guy I was seeing for a while proposed out of the blue. I had no idea that’s where his head was at. The relationship certainly wasn’t at that stage. We were just starting to really get to know each other. I had to say no. The guy was turning out to be a dumpster fire. He was an alcoholic, smoked, had anger issues, and had no self-control or willpower. Thankfully, he ended the relationship soon after that, saving me the trouble”.

11.“The idiot lived with his mother at 43 and was so anxious to escape her clutches after a bad marriage of 13 and a half years (where the wife cheated prior to and during). He asked for permission to marry me from my kids, but we had only reconnected for three or four months. He apparently wasn’t working but somehow got money for a $3,000 ring and during my lunch break thought it was the time to ask me. I covered his mouth and said ‘Don’t…‘Cause really? In my office is the best you can do?’ I proceeded to get rid of him and found out he stole my Christmas gift money probably to get the ring as well as watched him have a mental breakdown.”

12.“We were in Vegas for a long weekend trip. He was acting odd, needing to go off on his own for an hour or so. I should have known. We went out to eat and afterward, we stopped to watch the big fountains in front of The Bellagio. He got down on one knee and opened an empty box. He had always been very frugal, but damn…I was mortified and all of the fellow tourists were mortified for me.”

13.“It was on our one-year anniversary. I had been wanting to propose to him that day but knew I shouldn’t as we were both 20 and financially unstable and still working through a lot of differences in our relationship. We went out to dinner and on our drive home, I opened up about how I planned this whole big thing in my head and it was going to be this huge thing but we were gonna be alone so it would be intimate. I explained why I decided against it and he just goes, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get married.’ I was very taken aback as he was very adamant that we don’t get engaged until the three–four-year mark in our relationship. We went back and forth for a while and then the conversation went silent for the last 15 minutes of the drive home.”

" As we pulled into our apartment coordination compound , I looked at him and order , ' I love you so so much , but we can not get engaged . ' Six months later , we are still together , but we have been having so many stress - related kinship effect and I just know that the tot up stress of a wedding would ’ve caused us to split and I bonk him too much to risk that . I made the right decision and now we ’re in therapy to work through our issues and I ’m secretly saving to get him a mob so I can project next class . "

14.“I’ve been proposed to three separate times. The first boyfriend proposed because he knew I was catching on to all his lies and I was getting ready to leave him. I said no and he threw himself on top of my car to stay with him. The second guy was an abusive piece of shit and he proposed because he wanted to trap me. I had to escape that relationship. And my third proposal comes from my now husband and he is truly an angel. I’m so glad I waited for the right one and never jumped into a marriage.”

— i4790ac856

15.“I lived alone in Texas and my family was all in California. We had been dating for a short period of time, but things were going well. When I was scheduled to have a small surgery (but nonetheless I needed someone to drive me to and from the hospital and look after me for at least 24 hours), he didn’t ask for time off to be with me for the surgery. He took 10 days to come see me afterward. And when I tried to break up with him…he text me a picture of a jewelry order for an expensive ring. But it only made it easier to break up with him. I was not going to commit to living a life with someone who would not be there for me and then use money to repair the situation.”

16.“I was 20 and he was 25. He took me to a really nice restaurant and after dinner, he presented me with his grandmother’s ring. It turns out he’d already spoken to my dad and my entire family knew. I said yes in the moment but knew I would break it off. I liked him very much. He was a nice guy but not what I wanted in a husband. We didn’t have the same values or morals. When I returned the ring about a month later, he threw it into a river, moved clear across the country, got married, and moved back to town several years later.”

" I run into him every once in a while . Due to his real lack of ambition , his wife financially supports him and he ’s cheated on her at least once . Meanwhile , I ’ve been merrily married for 24 years . Sometimes I think about the whole ' What if I ’d hook up with him ? ' scenario and not once have I been able-bodied to close it would ’ve solve for us . Or at least , I do n’t ever think I would ’ve been felicitous . "

— fancysalt21

17.“My college boyfriend technically asked me when we were at a party once. He got insanely drunk and proposed while I was trying to get him into a cab. It wasn’t a get-down-on-one-knee proposal — it was more of a ‘Let’s do something crazy; let’s get married.’ I told him no, but I would reconsider if he still remembered asking me the next morning. He didn’t remember, and he ended up dumping me like two weeks later.”

— nycgirl2014

18.And finally, “My friend turned down a marriage proposal because the guy asked her dad for permission to marry her, which, as a radical feminist, she didn’t appreciate AT ALL. Her dad told him no, and she was already planning on ending things, so she gave him the boot. She’s pretty sure he tried to propose to get her to stay with him, which checks out because he was very manipulative.”

— wickednicki12

Submissions have been edit for duration and/or clarity .

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