Woman’s boyfriend of 5 years was asked why he still hadn’t proposed — his response humiliated her, then he said something even harsher in private
Being with someone for years can make you believe you know exactly where your relationship stands. But for one woman that changed during a casual conversation at a local Blues Festival when someone asked her boyfriend why he hadn't married her yet. The person behind the Reddit post from Sep 13, 2026, known as u/UnBanRainZ, shared what happened with fellow users seeking relationship advice. As if their partner's blunt answer in front of everyone wasn't embarrassing enough, he said something even more painful when she confronted him privately.
The 41-year-old was sitting with her mother, stepdad, boyfriend of five years, and a family friend, Jim, when the conversation came up. Jim joked that her boyfriend should “sh** or get off the pot,” said he was lucky to have her, and that she deserved better. Her boyfriend was in the bathroom, so she jokingly told Jim to repeat it all when he returned. When her boyfriend came back, Jim told him he should know how lucky he was to have her and should have married her by now. But instead of laughing along with the lighthearted conversation, her boyfriend immediately replied, "Nope. That’s a hard no, 100%." Embarrassed, she pulled him aside and told him, "You really just ruined a lot of what we have." he looked at her and asked, "What did we have?"
The couple had been together for five years, and she said she couldn't get past either comment. She also pointed out that he had never told her "I love you" during their relationship, though she said he had shown love in other ways. In an update, she explained that the conversation wasn't an attempt to pressure him into proposing. The couple had talked about marriage before, but neither of them had been in a rush to get married. What upset her was that he couldn't even pretend to be happy about their relationship when someone brought it up.
She also clarified that they lived across the street from each other rather than together, partly because they both have children and his house wasn't big enough for everyone. She said she was now pretty sure he had commitment issues. Reddit users had plenty to say about the exchange. u/untempered_fate wrote, "That's not your boyfriend. That's just a man you know." u/SupportMoist added, "Why would you get over it? He doesn’t love you, doesn’t want to marry you, and told everyone that. You deserve better. Believe him." And u/atomicspacekitty suggested her to take a stand for herself and wrote, "Girl, STAND UP. You’re 41."
Relationships can sometimes look very different when one person isn't being fully honest about what they want. Previously, a woman had dated a man for more than two years and even moved in with him because she thought their relationship was going somewhere. She believed he worked night shifts from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., but one morning, when he was running late, a message on his phone revealed that he had another woman in his life who was his fiancée. Similar to the 41-year-old woman, what she thought was a committed relationship turned out to be very different from what she had believed.