At the same time, being very happy in your relationship does not automatically mean you’re ready to get engaged. It’s important to consider what a proposal really means and whether your relationship is really ready to take that step. To help you think through the decision and timing, we spoke with marriage therapists to get their insights into how soon is too soon to propose, how to know when you’re ready to get engaged, and more. Couples who date for one to two years before getting engaged are 20% less likely to get divorced than those who get engaged in less than a year, according to the study, and couples who’ve been together for three or more years before getting engaged are 39% less likely to get divorced. In general, Earnshaw recommends at least waiting until the so-called honeymoon stage is over before you propose. That’s because our brain chemistry in this early phase of a relationship can cloud our ability to make rational decisions. “During this stage, couples are often highly influenced by lots of love hormones,” she explains. “These hormones make us more likely to magnify the good and minimize the bad.” The honeymoon phase tends to last anywhere from about three months to a year, she notes, and is typically marked by feelings of infatuation, passion, and intense emotions. “I always suggest couples move out of the honeymoon phase before getting engaged so they are going in with eyes wide-open.” That lines up with the estimates of licensed marriage therapist Beverley Andre, LMFT, who says it’s common for millennial couples to wait about five to six years before getting engaged. But that number “can vary depending on cultural backgrounds, age group, and where people are currently in life,” she adds. Earnshaw offers a shorter time frame—she says people typically date for about two years on average before getting engaged—but she emphasizes that every relationship is different. “I have worked with couples who have gotten engaged within six months and those that have waited much, much longer.” In general, both Andre and Earnshaw note that people today are generally waiting longer to get engaged, in part because many couples move in together prior to marriage these days and feel less pressure to get married as quickly as possible. A couple that’s truly ready for a proposal has already had conversations where they’ve both expressed the desire to marry each other and to do so in the near future. There is no ambiguity about what you both want. Even when you think of your individual dreams for the future, you envision your partner there with you as part of the full picture. You use terms like “our home,” “our kids,” and other indicators that you are planning for a joint future, Andre notes. Your partner might be extremely loving and considerate to you right now, but how do they treat the other people in their life? A few years from now, when the highs of early romance have worn off and you’re deep into the simultaneously stressful and dull minutiae of everyday life, the way they treat you will likely look pretty similar to the way they treat most people in their social orbits. If you know for a fact that the two of you generally approach disagreements well, and you have had many experiences of the two of you negotiating peacefully, that’s a good sign that your relationship has a strong foundation for marriage. You’re ready to propose when you know with confidence that you can both navigate those moments in consistently healthy ways, based on the way your previous conflicts have gone. Your arguments rarely turn nasty, and if they have in the past, you have taken ample time to learn how to minimize those harmful behaviors. “Find out before you propose if your partner would be willing to set your relationship up for success with premarital counseling,” Earnshaw recommends. This conversation can also itself be illuminating, as it can reveal how you both think about the idea of personal growth and spending intentional time on your relationship—necessary ingredients for a successful marriage. That’s because a few months of knowing each other often doesn’t give a couple enough time to experience the full breadth of life events together. As Earnshaw points out, the first year of a relationship is typically filled with a lot of highs, and it’s not necessarily representative of what daily life will be like together once the highs wear off. It’s helpful to have a few repetitions of good, bad, boring, and chaotic periods together as a couple before you commit to a forever together, so you have a sense of the flow of your relationship that you can expect to cycle through for the rest of your life. The thing is, these intense feelings are a marker that you’re likely in the first stage of a relationship, and this time of heightened emotions is often not a wise time to be making big life decisions. “These emotions often drown out the rational part of our brain,” licensed marriage therapist Linda Carroll, LMFT, writes at mbg. “Research tells us this first stage is marked by biochemical changes in our brain—a cocktail of hormones that trigger and maintain a state of infatuation, such as dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. This brain glow can often lead us to become ‘addicted’ to our partners and to ignore incompatibilities, red flags, or other issues.” Earnshaw recommends waiting until this “honeymoon stage” is over before you get engaged—at least a year, to be safe. Think of it like this: If passion is at a peak right now, you’ll want to know what your relationship feels like on the other side of that peak and make sure an engagement still feels right even when your hormones aren’t raging. The last thing you want is to be years into a marriage when you realize that you’re incompatible when it comes to (for example) your parenting styles, spending habits, or expectations for sex in a marriage. “If your reasons are superficial and selfish, it may be too early to propose,” says Andre. “If you can only think of things that person does for you, or aesthetic reasons, you might want to wait until you can identify shared values and character traits that your future partner shares.” Additionally, if you have yet to disagree with each other on anything, that may signal that you have not yet had enough daily, intimate experiences with one another yet (because if you’re together enough through the day-to-day and week-to-week slog of routine life, some disagreements are bound to happen). Or, it could mean that one or both of you is not yet comfortable being fully honest and authentic in the relationship yet—another sign that it’s much too soon to be thinking about a proposal. “While I would hope it goes without saying, in reality it doesn’t,” says Earnshaw. “Many people propose in hopes it will strengthen a faltering or noncommittal relationship. Only propose to someone who has an equal level of excitement and commitment to your relationship.” With her warm, playful approach to coaching and facilitation, Kelly creates refreshingly candid spaces for processing and healing challenges around dating, sexuality, identity, body image, and relationships. She’s particularly enthusiastic about helping softhearted women get re-energized around the dating experience and find joy in the process of connecting with others. She believes relationships should be easy—and that, with room for self-reflection and the right toolkit, they can be. You can stay in the loop about her latest programs, gatherings, and other projects through her newsletter: kellygonsalves.com/newsletter
