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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2024-06-22 04:00:02+00:00.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Imtoosubmissive

My [23F] friend [30 M] proposed to me on April Fools Day. Thought it was a joke, turned out he was serious.

I’m too submissive and don’t know if it’s good or bad.  March 25, 2016

Not in the sexual sense, but more in the personality department. I’m not married, but I literally can imagine being the type of woman who’d want to spoil her husband rotten. I wouldn’t mind being the submissive wife archetype who would treat my husband like a king, with back massages, dinner prepared, tying his tie every morning and making him lunch every day. I’d let him have the last say if possible so long as it out of love, and probably be the wife who’d be at his beck and call if possible. I’d do all these things even if I loved him more than he’d loved me. So long as he isn’t physically or emotionally abusive or cheating on me, I can’t imagine myself minding much doing whatever he asked.

Problem is, a lot of people, including some of my friends, hate that. The fact that I’m that kind of woman makes it easy for me to be taken advantage of, and I admit I’m fully aware. They think that because I’m this way, that I believe that men are superior to women, which I don’t; I just want to please my future husband. I don’t know if that is freakishly traditional or just me.

To be honest, I’ve almost always been pretty submissive and passive, and used to be painfully shy growing up too. And while I have been growing out of my timidity, I am still pretty soft and go through lengths to avoid confrontation, which is a good thing and bad thing. While I acknowledge I need to work on that, I still wouldn’t mind being nearly subservient to my future husband so long as he’s the type of person I could absolutely adore.

Are my friends right? Am I too submissive for my own good? Would it even be possible to be in a proper relationship with that kind of personality?

RELEVANT COMMENTS

bobmarley

You sound like a wonderful woman. You are the kind of woman a man dreams that he could be married too. Your friends have their own opinions on matters but I feel as though they should not bother you at all. Being submissive in the manner you described is not wrong at all, it sounds really sweet and lovely. You sound like a very lovely woman you shouldn’t change anything at all about yourself.

OOP

Thank you. I’ve heard that from many of my guy friends that I’m  “Ultimate wife-material” and while it does make me happy to hear, it makes me ponder if I’m really a willing pushover, from what I’ve been told by my girl friends.

Original Post  Apr 2, 2016

So…that happened…

Well, let me start off with something.

So, a little over a week ago. I was talking with my friends about relationship dynamics. I told them that I actually view myself in a submissive wife role and would have no problem with it (I go on a huge spiel about it in my r/confessions post). I spoke with my girl friends and a few of my guy friends about it mainly, and one of them went to tell either one of some of my other guy friends about it.

So, come April Fools Day, one of my guy friends, let’s call him B, (who I suspect is either somewhat Bipolar, has ADD and ADHD or something that makes him rather impulsive) calls me over to meet with him that evening after work. My first thought is: he’s going to do an April Fools joke. I’m thinking, I’m ready to see what he has in store since he did a funny one in college (literally having some of his friends chase me in funny costumes all around the dorm’s lot).

So, anyway, he turns around and kneels onto one knee, pulls out a case and proposes. Now, keep in mind, we’re only friends. I’ve never dated him or considered it because I can’t see each other as anything beyond good friends. Also, knowing him, he would be the type of guy who would pull off this kind of thing as a joke. So, thinking it’s another April Fools joke, I laugh and tell him nice try, because I truly think it’s an April Fools joke. He raises the case more, and I keep giggling asking if he’s serious a couple times before he just says “Yep, April Fools!”

We both laugh, and told him that he couldn’t get me that easily since I knew what day it was, and we see each other off.

Later on, I find out from a friend that he’s been in a funk since and was mopey. At first, I thought something had happened until a friend of mine came to me to talk to me before I could say hi to him in the morning.

Apparently, he was legitimately proposing to me. And he was down that I thought it was a prank. Apparently, somewhere in that conversation my friend had with him, he thought I’d accept his proposal.

I’m baffled and trying to wrap my head around it. Until now, I never knew he had feelings for me whatsoever. I mean, he never asked me out or anything like that, and I never had feelings for him like that either. I only see him as a friend, and don’t like him in that way. I honestly don’t know how to go about all this: the fact he liked me in that way, his proposal was real and that I honestly thought he was joking. He jokes around and pulls pranks so much, I never expected anything like this.

How do I proceed from here? This just made things extremely awkward and I have no idea what to do when I see him again.

tl;dr: Thought friend was just joshing me with a fake marriage proposal on April Fools, but found out the next day it wasn’t a joke. Now don’t know what to do with this information. Help?

EDIT: Wow, I didn’t expect this magnitude of responses! I haven’t responded to all of them, but I am reading each and every last one and taking them in consideration. Thank you all for taking the time to give me such wonderful advice! Just want to say that to you guys.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

littlestray

My alarm bells are going off.

You’re in your early twenties and he’s thirty. That’s a sizable experience and maturity gap.

That he’d propose without having dated you is frankly crazy. That he’d wrap up any sort of relationship step in a joke suggests he’s immature. Like, really, it’s the “my friend stole my phone” of romantic overtures, but he’s a grown man.

What’s your mutual friend think about this?

OOP

My mutual friend actually told me that at first, they thought he was joking too until they learned from him that he was being serious. She told me that it was weird and that none she or I saw it coming. Apparently, he only told her his plans and that she was weirded out by it and if he has always been a weird guy but still caught her off guard. I plan to talk to her more about it tomorrow.

He’s always acted younger than he truly is and, truth be told, he is immature and impulsive in many ways. It just never occurred to me he’d do something like this in all seriousness. I don’t think he knows that I know it wasn’t a joke now.

OOP Adds more info here

Thank you for the advice.

We’ve known each other for three years. Aside from hugs, high fives and the friendly playful poke and stuff I do with all my friends, I never thought it was out of the ordinary. At times, we would have deep conversations, but never anything too deeply romantic, let alone, anything implying any romantic feelings for each other, which I don’t have for him. As far as I’ve witnessed, he’s usually just as playful with his other friends as he is with me, which is why I truly never saw something like this coming. I saw no change in his behavior whatsoever. The last thing I was talking to him about before all this was if he wanted to watch the Walking Dead with us.

I think the relationship conversation one of my friends had with him definitely got misconstrued in the mix in some way. To be frank, I definitely need to ask her exactly how she told him and what happened during that conversation. I think he does have some mental health problems, mainly a low level bipolar disorder, that have been diagnosed since he tends to be moody before completely back to his energetic, playful self.

I never thought the conversation would spiral in that way. I never expected it for it to happen. I’m still wrapping my head around that and I’m beginning to reflect back on any ways he’s even shown remote interest in me.

I never meant to make him feel bad. I don’t love him in that way, but he is my friend. Had I known he was serious, I would have probably handled it better. I mean, he’s the type of guy with an over-the-top sense of humor, so I truly thought he was joking. I mean, it was April Fools and he has done crazy things in the past, just nothing like this.

I’ll try to talk to him when I get the chance. I really want to salvage our friendship. Despite everything, he’s a funny and nice guy whom I’m glad to have as a friend! I just never liked him in that way at all and he never even inferred he liked me in that way before now. I really hope that we can still be friends, but if we can’t, I can understand taking some distance between us.

…

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