A woman has been praised online for refusing her partner’s proposal even as she worried it “ruined” their vacation.
In a situation that one expert described to Newsweek as her doing “absolutely the right thing,” the woman had been on vacation with her boyfriend and their children from previous relationships when he suddenly proposed.
“I didn’t know whether to cry or scream,” the woman wrote on Reddit‘s AITAH (Am I The A******) sub on August 7. “I said no and went back to the room.”
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The 42-year-old mother, writing on her account u/Extension-Past-2334, said that she had had the marriage conversation with her partner multiple times, and repeatedly told him she did not ever want to get married again.
She had been married previously, which ended in divorce, and she had decided “I never want to be bound to anyone [in] that way, it’s easier to just break up than divorce.”
Her partner, 43, was not happy and continued to push the subject of marriage until they almost split up over his refusal to take no for an answer, and her frustration, but “my daughter and his kids were mad at me because I wanted to break up but he didn’t.”
She decided to stay in the relationship and thought the conversation about marriage was over after she had said no a “million times”.
But soon after arriving on a vacation in Greece, “for some reason he asked me to marry him” in a public place, in front of their kids.
Healthy relationship and sex coach Sam Morris, of thesammorris.com, told Newsweek the woman’s partner had tried to “put pressure on her by proposing in public and in front of her children,” but she had “explained her boundaries multiple times and he had chosen to ignore them.”
“Boundaries are there for a reason. If she had allowed this, the next time she said no in the relationship, he would think he could just put pressure and then she would do what he wanted,” Morris said. “And that isn’t what a healthy relationship looks like.”
Although the woman made the post asking if she was in the wrong for saying no, walking away, and taking her daughter home from Greece just two days into the trip, she said she feels “not marrying him was a good choice because even though I said no multiple times before he thought that if he pressured me, on vacation, at public place and in front of the kids, that I would feel obligated to say yes.”
Her daughter is angry with her, but she doesn’t want to continue the relationship “because I feel disrespected and disgusted.” The woman added that her ex has since contacted her multiple times accusing her of cheating on him.
Morris suggested the daughter could be upset “because of her own emotions,” as she may like or even love her mother’s partner, and could see her refusal as “ruining the family,” particularly as she has been through a divorce before.
The coach said the mother “needs to have a conversation with her daughter around boundaries,” by explaining to her what happened in a way she understands.
If her daughter is a young child, the expert said, the mother could say: “If I asked you to eat a cookie and you said, ‘I don’t want the cookie’, and then I continue to ask and ask, and then eventually, I take you round to your grandparents and ask you to eat the cookie and then your grandparents call you ungrateful. Would that be fair?
“No, because you already told me no.”
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As for the opinions from Redditors, they did not hold back, many assuring her she was completely in the right for what she did.
“You were honest about marriage from the beginning and he chose to ignore everything you told him,” one user wrote. Another said: “Doing it in front of the children to guilt and pressure her so that they would all hate her if she said no is just a special form of evil.”
A third user urged her to explain to her daughter why she refused the proposal and left and to tell her it “is not a healthy relationship where people aren’t listening or respecting each other. This could be an important lesson on what is a healthy relationship for her.”
A fourth user agreed: “Apologize to your daughter for cutting the trip short, but it had to be done. Then use this to lead into the conversation described above.”
Newsweek has contacted u/Extension-Past-2334 on Reddit for comment. We could not independently verify the details of this case.
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