Our scene begins, as so many TikTok trends do, in the front seat of a car. A woman in her thirties is doing the digital equivalent of screaming into the void, asking why she’s had a string of multi-year relationships with men but never a proposal of marriage, something she’s wanted all her life.
“This is probably one of the most humiliating videos I’m ever going to make,” the wildly popular London-based Canadian content creator Estée Lalonde says to camera. “Genuinely, how do all you girls getting engaged get engaged? I have tried to convince pretty much every partner I’ve been with — and yes, I’m saying convinced because it doesn’t seem to come naturally — and no one is proposing to me.”
She’s very aware, she adds, that it’s “just a ring, just a piece of paper,” and she knows she’s “a catch.” But, “these guys want to be with me, they just don’t want to put a ring on it.”
The void answered Lalonde back, most compellingly in the form of a comment that got over 1,400 likes: “Almost every girl I know who got proposed to [did] because they gave an ultimatum to their partner.” More than 70 replies mostly ran the gamut of agreement: “Truth,” “I told him to propose or I was moving on, he picked propose.”
Lalonde responded. “Ultimatums are a thing, and I don’t think we’re talking about this enough, because all of us want that, ‘Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting this … it came totally out of the blue!’ I’m here to tell you that 85, if not higher, percentage of proposals are because of ultimatums.”
In fact, she went on, these faux-shocked proposal announcements are “damaging,” and a lie. “Literally every single person I know has given their partner an ultimatum, yet we’re trying to pretend we’re not giving ultimatums.”
It’s a simmering conversation that is addressed head on in the Netflix reality show “The Ultimatum,” which bills itself as a “social experiment” to see how couples where one partner wants to tie the knot but the other is unsure fare when presented with the ultimatum: Marry or move on. Drama ensues, stoked by dating other people and “trial marriages,” but several couples who’ve been on the show have actually gone on to get married, and a few have had babies, including the now semi-celebrity couple Madlyn Ballatori and Colby Kissinger, who welcomed their second child in September.
So are most proposals the result of some kind of ultimatum? When this reporter took the question to the group chats and DMs of the real world, the reaction was mixed.
“Hard agree! I know a few exceptions to the rule but many of my married girlfriends had to put the pressure on,” said one woman, citing a range of approaches from subtle nudges to flat-out asking when their boyfriend was going to propose. “I think a lot of the pressure they applied had to do with timelines, like ‘We’ve been dating for three years already,’ or ‘We’re about to turn 30 and should be married by now.’”
A cautionary footnote: “I’ve since heard from one of those friends that she wishes she didn’t get married so young, but felt societal pressure to reach those timelines.”
There was also agreement from the male perspective: a man in his thirties said that his now-wife gave him a very clear “hurry up!” to propose. “Sometimes guys, by design, forget to think about the timeline because it doesn’t matter to us,” he said. “We get comfortable in our routines and then forget to keep things moving.”
It’s a mixture of cluelessness and complacency, it seems, mixed with a soupcon of fear of the unknown. “Once we eventually [propose,] we realize it’s all fine and we should have just done it in the first place because it’s not a big deal.”
There were some in the anti-ultimatum camp. “Disagree! My fiancé made a point to propose before we reached year three so that I wouldn’t have even started suspecting,” said one woman. “He wanted it to be a true surprise. Of course, he was pretty confident I’d say yes!”
Another recently engaged woman said she didn’t give any kind of ultimatum, but nor was she surprised when it happened. She does, however, have a name for the phenomenon: “I call it the ‘step up or break up.’”
Back on TikTok, amateur relationship adviser Kisha Peart (@yourdatingtipbestie) felt compelled to stitch a response to Lalonde’s initial video asking how to get men to pop the question.
Her advice: “It’s a version of an ultimatum, but it’s more of a direct, ‘This is where I’m going in my life, and if you do not align with that, then we should not continue moving,’” said Peart, reached by phone in New York City, where she also works as an actor.
Peart speaks from experience: She’s recently engaged herself, but back when she was dating — nine years “in the trenches,” she jokes — she did so “with intent.”
“I made it clear that I was looking for a husband. I’m in my thirties. I do not have five, six, seven years to date someone before I get a ring,” said Peart. She does think that anyone under the age of 25 should definitely date for several years. “You’re still figuring yourself out, but when you’re 27, 28, 29, into your thirties and up, you’re much more clear on what you want.”
In fact, she thinks that three years is the “top end” of how long you should be waiting for a proposal. “If the man is truly into you, he’s not going to make you wait more than two years for a ring,” said Peart. “Men know. Trust me! My fiancé says he knew by, like, the fourth date, but he didn’t want to scare me off.”
When it comes to proposals, Peart’s philosophy is that you shouldn’t be surprised that you’re being proposed to, only about how it actually happens. Her fiancé proposed on their two-year anniversary. “I thought we were just spending the day together,” she says. “It was not in my brain whatsoever, because it would be such an obvious choice.” But they’d been discussing an engagement for the previous six months. “If you are completely blindsided that he proposed to you, you are not having the right conversations.”
Another concept currently circulating on DatingTok is the idea of “don’t let your boyfriend be your husband,” and this is related, Peart said. “I truly believe that there are men out there that fully know you’re not their forever person, but if they know you’re content not moving along, they will sit in that relationship with you, and make you do all the things, but you’re just the placeholder,’ said Peart. She believes there are signals to look out for of this, like a lack of future-oriented discussions. “There should absolutely be active conversations about planning a future, rings, what your life would look like together.”
“If it’s not moving anywhere, it’s not doing a service to either one of you,” said Peart. “I always say, ‘Don’t let you boyfriend keep you from your husband,’ because there are men out there who know they’re looking for their wife, and if you make it clear you’re dating with intent and looking for your husband, they will absolutely snatch you up — and they will not make you wait.”
There is a (feminist) option C here, of course. What’s stopping women from taking the lead? “Why don’t y’all do the proposing?” asked one person in a reply video to Lalonde. That perspective, fascinatingly, was quite rare.
More common was option D, as articulated by several commenters: “I just can’t relate to this. Why do we care about getting married?” and “Strongly recommend a greater discussion around marriage and why someone wants to be married. One can live happily with a common-law partner.”
Related: The people who shared that they had, in fact, given an ultimatum — and are now no longer with that person. “I did this … he agreed and we got married but [he] never really wanted it with me. Broke my heart.”
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen with Estée Lalonde and her new fiancé. Because, yes, a few months after she posted that video in June, she’s now engaged. As she said in a happy, teary TikTok video where she shared the news, “It’s done, baby! Thank God.”
