The Luv Doc: Dropping Hints

Dear Luv Doc,

Me and my boyfriend have been together nearly six years and he still hasn’t asked me to marry him. We are coming up on our anniversary and I have been dropping hints all over the place and he has ignored all of them. This has been going on for years. Should I just give up? I want get on with my life ... have children, buy a house, etc. etc.

– Running Out of Patience

I generally like to stay positive, but this seems like a bit of a red flag to me. Six years? Wow. I can’t imagine really wanting to get married to someone and then waiting six years for them to pop the question. Your patience is heroic. If it were me, I would have thrown in the towel by year three or four. This dude really must be your soulmate. You should ask him to marry you immediately – at the very least as soon as you quit reading this column. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to hurry you off prematurely – Lord knows the Chronicle needs your eyes to stray over to the boner pill/Ozempic side ads every now and again. I just think it’s time to quit fucking around with the coquetry and go in for the kill. Six years? Your baby could already be doing wheelies on its first dirt bike by now – or maybe playing gut-wrenching blues guitar solos like that little Asian kid with the bowl cut on TikTok. He clearly met the devil at the crossroads and the devil did him dirty. I bet he told that boy, “You’re going to be able to play guitar like BB King after his second divorce, but your hair is going to look like Jim Carrey’s in Dumb and Dumber.” You know that little Asian kid hasn’t seen Dumb and Dumber. It’s PG-13. Shame on you, Satan.

Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Who knows? Your as-of-yet unconceived child might not even be an Asian blues guitar prodigy, but you deserve the same chance as everyone else to try to mold it into your guitar shredding facsimile. You also deserve a chance to buy a house – ideally one that’s less than a half day’s drive from Central Austin – and have some babies who can get a decent education without the assistance of one of Governor Roomba’s school vouchers. I firmly believe those lofty goals are within your reach, but not if you aren’t willing to descend from your damsel tower and face the possibility of rejection – or simply the possibility that your real life is going to be a bit uglier and harder than the one you’ve been fantasizing about. Would it be amazing if your boyfriend took you to dinner at Uchi and then proposed to you on Mount Bonnell? Yes! Well, actually no. Uchi is the ticket, but unless you’re choppering up to Mount Bonnell, your boy would be way too winded to properly propose after climbing all those stairs, so that fantasy’s a bust. Maybe he should keep the propo on the down-low – especially after bangin’ back a bunch of expensive sushi. The Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge has an ugly name but a pretty view. It oughta do, and it oughta do for you too. You don’t need to wait for your boyfriend to come up with a list of romantic proposal ideas when you can put your noggin to work on it as well. You’re much less likely to disappoint yourself.

The main thing – and I can’t stress this enough – is that you need to communicate your expectations or they will only ever be expectations. I have no idea where your boyfriend’s head is on this subject, so I am in no position to make suppositions about his long-term commitment to you and your desires. That’s your job. Sometimes it’s a really ugly one, but if you really want to know where you stand, you’re going to have to ask, then listen and accept the answer. Easy enough, eh? Maybe not, but I wish you luck nonetheless – especially if you’re in a hurry to make a baby Asian blues guitar prodigy. The good news is you truly couldn’t have picked a better town to do it in.