A man proposed to his girlfriend and then promptly told her that he wanted to wait for another five years to actually get married.
In a recent anonymous post on Reddit, the 21-year-old man wrote to the TIFU (or “Today I F—– Up”) page explaining that he “ended up hurting [his fiancée’s] feelings” when he proposed.
He began by writing that he and his 20-year-old fiancée have been in a six-year relationship since they were teenagers. But as they’ve gotten older, he’s noticed some women feel it’s “frustrating … to be a girlfriend for a long time,” he wrote.
“I understand how bad that can be, and I wanted my girlfriend to know I take our relationship seriously,” he wrote, adding, “At the same time I’m far from being financially stable enough to get married.”
His solution was to propose now — and then they could “get married in about five years,” he wrote.
“That way, we could tell people we’re engaged, and she wouldn’t have to be a girlfriend for 11 years before becoming a fiancée,” he wrote.
According to his post, he had just proposed to her one day earlier, while on vacation. Once they returned to their hotel, his new fiancée asked what he wanted for their wedding and he confessed to her, “I don’t think it’s worth planning the wedding now since we’re only getting married in about five years.”
He wrote that she “instantly got sad” and wasn’t talking to him despite his apologies.
“After some time she said she wanted to talk about it on Friday, that it was okay, and she wanted to enjoy the rest of our vacation,” he wrote.
“I think I tried to fix a problem that didn’t exist and ended up hurting her,” he admitted, also noting that he was “respecting her space” so they hadn’t yet talked about why he viewed things like he did.
“Looking back she never complained about being a girlfriend for six years, I don’t know why I thought this was necessary,” he wrote.
Later, he provided an update, writing: “It was really just a communication problem.” He’d also showed his fiancée the post, he wrote.
“She said she wouldn’t mind being my girlfriend for 10 years because we are still young and it didn’t matter to her,” he wrote. “She mentioned that I could have explained my idea to her before proposing, but in the end it was fine.”
Since the proposal and initial post, he’s “apologized a million times,” he wrote, and they decided together that in a few years he’ll propose again and “the wedding will happen a year after the proposal.”
She’ll continue to wear the ring — “and if someone asks us about our relationship, we’ll say that we’re getting married soon.”
