She proposes he disposes...

Love him? Then go and get him. But wait, are you sure the guy is going to like it if you pop the question? Confused? But that’s the truth. Men might give a dozen lectures about possessing a liberal mindset. They can act as if they have no problems accepting a woman making the first move to speak her mind out to the man of her choice. But when it comes to reality it’s a different story altogether. Says 22-year-old Anirban Chatterjee, “Girls ought to have certain feminine characteristics. And that gets spoilt when she makes the first move to propose to the man of her life. Men like them to be coy, slightly frail and also vulnerable.” For Sourav Roy, however, it’s the ego factor that works and that’s why the whole idea repulses him. He said, “Girls should be like girls. So what if we are in the modern age? Have we forgotten our traditions? Till date it’s the groom who takes the bride to his home. Similarly, there are certain man things and women should stay away from such matters.” Men feel proposing has deeper connotations, though. “Most of the girls have a tendency to take help from their friends to disclose their feelings to the boy. Whereas when a guy proposes to a girl, he always thinks of innovative ways and that tends to make the whole thing so romantic and memorable. But girls fail to do that for the simple reason that they neither can be straightforward nor can they hide their shyness. As a result they mess up the whole thing. So it’s better for them to stay away from such practices,” explains Ankur Biswas, a college student. For some men, however, it’s their possessiveness that stops them from sharing the practice with women. “Men are the ones who invented the practice of proposing ladies in various styles. It’s a form of art and we are the sole proprietors of it. Hence we cannot think of passing the baton to women. Women have various other fields to excel in, like cooking, looking after their husband and children. Let them excel there. Just as we do not intrude in their territory, they must also avoid doing so,” quipped Abhishek Ganguly, creative head of a multinational company. These might be some of the primary reasons why guys dislike girls taking the first initiative to speak out their mind, are still more reasons can be explored. Sometimes it’s also the fear factor that works in them. What fear? Well, what if she later says that the man in her life did not have the courage to go to her to say that he loved her? And she was the one who did everything for the relationship. “Later on when we have the fights I can’t imagine being told that I didn’t have the guts to propose her. Moreover, I have a feeling, that girls who propose tend to be of a domineering type, for they feel they are the ones who have given birth to the relationship and have raised it to the present status,” summed up Kunal Ghosh, an MBA student. Although there are plenty of women who will swear by the fact that they have taken the first initiative and it has worked, but it is also a fact that most men feel more awkward and bewildered if women pop the question. There’s no denying that.