The Women Who Said Yes to a Proposal but Meant No

Women file for divorce more often and end most engagements. In interviews with 34 straight women with broken marriage engagements, about 20% said they accepted proposals because saying no did not seem like an option. Some women did not know what to do after saying yes, feeling unprepared to become unengaged. Others lacked relationship experience and came from environments where young marriage was expected, leading them to believe that accepting a proposal was the default response. Recognizing that being alone is possible and that strength exists to end a committed relationship is presented as important before starting a new love.

"That is how Lucy described her marriage proposal to me during an hour-long interview about her broken engagement. She elaborated: "Every older person in my family married their high school sweetheart, and so I thought this is what is supposed to happen. The whole time he was talking I didn't want to say yes. I wanted to say no, but I didn't know how. It was like, okay, I'll just say yes and figure it out later. Or maybe it will get better ... like maybe being engaged will make it different. Stupid kid stuff. It did not - spoiler alert - get better.""

"Of the 34 straight women with a broken marriage engagement whom I interviewed for my PhD dissertation, seven of them (approximately 20%), told me that they said "yes" to the proposal because saying "no" did not seem like an option. Some women just did not know what to do after saying yes, like Elle, who told me: "We had no business ever being engaged. But I also didn't know how to be unengaged.""

"Victoria, who did not have a lot of relationship experience and came from an extremely religious family in which people married young, admitted that she did not even know that she had the option to say no: "I was still like 18 or 19 I think, and so I was just kind of under the impression at that young age, that if someone asks you, you say yes.""

Read at Psychology Today