- Yikes.
- Oh, boy.
(squealing)
(sighs) I'm a fool.
- I know that I'm laughing,
but it was, ooh kind of traumatic.
(sad music)
Hi, my name is Jordan Van Clief
and this is my proposal horror story.
I dated my boyfriend for about six years.
We went to college together.
So at this current point in our relationship,
he was going through this massive depressive episode.
You know just super internal, very upset
and he kept telling me that I could do better than him
and I thought that was crazy.
He had been my lifeline, my best friend,
we had traveled the world together,
we had survived our crazy families together.
He was my everything.
So I put my old fixer hat on and I can't fix his depression.
That is not how depression works,
but I thought I am going to take away the one worry
that he has in regards to me and I am going to propose
to him so he knows that I will never leave him.
So in true Jordan form, I was going to throw a big proposal.
This was not going to be some private get-on-one-knee thing
because one, I don't get on a knee.
I wanted to do this big declaration of love
so I threw a party under the guise
of a friends of a friends birthday.
I gathered all of our friends and loved ones
and for the past couple of months, I had been working
on a music video, fully choreographed with a couple
of my friends with a sign printed out at the very end
where they all flipped up that said will you marry me?
And it was all coming together perfectly.
My friends were there.
I was nervous but I looked amazing,
you know, of course I did.
My hair was done, my outfit was picked out.
At the end of the night, the screen went down,
the lights went down, the music video played
and I proposed and just like in my dreams,
he said yes.
We hugged and we kissed and everyone applauded.
I was a real-life celebrity, just for a moment,
but that wasn't the important part,
the important part was I got to look into his eyes
and I got to see how much he meant to me
and he hugged me and he asked me very quietly
if we could go and I thought,
"No, the party's here, our friends are here.
"Let's celebrate."
And he said," No, Jordan, we really need to go."
And I trusted him and I went home with him
and I am elated and I am going through all
the little lies I had to tell him
to set up this proposal.
I'm just so excited 'cause I never lie to him
and I just wanna tell him everything and he's sad
and the emotion starts to hit that something's not right
and I get this little red flag of like,
this is not how this should feel.
There was something a little angry about him
that I couldn't place until he told me.
He had been cheating on me with his coworker.
Yikes.
So not only was it a betrayal but now I'm a cliche.
(squeal)
And I did what any normal person would do,
I threw my freaking glass of champagne at him
and I kicked him out and ooh, hoo, hoo boy was it hard!
Yeah, lots of tears.
Tears and sobs and dry sobs and dry heaves.
Rough, man.
When your best friend doesn't wanna be with you,
and I was very lucky that I had amazing friends
and a family and a therapist and about 18 different types
of cheese that got me through this.
It was a day by day thing, you know.
But I did it 'cause I'm better off
with someone who doesn't treat me like that,
but that was a really hard lesson for me to learn.
He's not in my life.
Not even a little bit and thank god for that.
I would like to tell you that I'm actually hotter now
than I was before so the world has a way
of working out for you.
And that's my proposal horror story.
(drumming)
- Hello, I'm Victor
and I'm gonna tell you my proposal horror story.
I've been with my wife for 11 years now,
six of which we have been married,
five of which we were dating.
When we were in school and dating and we were talking
about getting married we had been together
for a handful of years by that point
so I felt pretty confident she was gonna say yes,
like on a scale of one to 10,
I felt like a 10.5.
I just felt confident, like I felt like she's the one.
This is gonna be great
and I think that might've been my downfall
'cause I was a bit cavalier with this whole experience.
So every year, us and a group
of friends would go up to Traverse City, Michigan.
There is a film festival that they do every summer
and my game plan was was to take her to one
of the pebble beaches they have there, super pretty
and it was just gonna be simple
and I kinda made the mistake of telling everybody
in the friend group that that's what was going to happen
and kind of immediately everybody wanted in on it.
I was like, "No ways, guys."
I wanted it to be intimate.
I didn't wanna be super showy about it.
I didn't wanna make this big statement
of I will take care of you,
I will be your rock in the storm.
I'm just not, that's not me.
I wanted it to be intimate.
So basically, what I decided was I still wanted
to take her down to the pebble beach
and maybe catch the sunset,
but I couldn't tell my friends so I was like,
"Well, we'll do this on the first day of the festival."
We had a movie lined up for that day, it was just one movie.
It was in the early afternoon, it would have been perfect.
So we go to see the movie
and I realize that hindsight is 2020
'cause the film that we saw was "The Act of Killing".
Hoo, boy.
Not a good movie to watch right
before you're planning on getting engaged.
It's a downer.
So, anyhoo, we both felt pretty depressed after that movie,
rightfully so and I figured I'll deal with this tomorrow.
So we get back to the campsite
and everybody's waiting around the campfire
and they're kind of looking at me,
looking at her left hand and I was trying to be like,
"(mumbling) Don't do it, guys."
Immediately the demeanor changed to everyone was like,
"Hey, are you all right?
"Were you pretty nervous, huh?"
And I was like, "Oh, no we just saw a depressing movie,"
and they're like, "Right, right,
"right, right, right, right."
And it kinda ramped up their enthusiasm.
They're like, "Listen, so what we'll do is
"tomorrow we'll go to one of the theaters ahead of time,
"we'll talk to one of the ushers, we'll set up this,"
And they wanted to make this big thing out of it again
and I was like, "No, I don't wanna do that."
So I decided that I couldn't necessarily count
on my friends not intervening so I would circumvent that
by letting fate decide so I took the ring
'cause it was in a box, obviously and in the morning
while Emily was away, I put it in the bottom of her purse.
She had a big purse she was carrying around
which has all of our snacks and stuff.
I figured either A, she would come across it
at some point and it'd be a surprise
and destiny would pick the time so I would just roll with it
and that would be kinda fun
because it'd be kinda impromptu or if she didn't find it,
she would be the one carrying it around
because it was summer time and it was kinda obvious
if I had a box, a ring box in my shorts
and I didn't wanna just take the ring out
'cause I'll lose it for sure.
(sighs) I'm a fool.
Basically what happened was is
for the next two days I was waiting
for her to find the ring.
I finally get to the point where
that I just needed to pull the trigger.
We're beer people.
We drink beer.
So we went to this pub called Dillinger's.
It's cute.
It's kind of a dive bar
and I kinda just decided then and there.
It was already nighttime so we missed sunrise.
We were leaving the next day.
My friends kind of figured at that point
that I had just given up so they weren't with us.
At one point she gets up to go to the bathroom
and I was like, "This is my time.
"It's now or never, dude.
"You gotta do this."
So I go in her purse, I grab the ring.
Of course there's other patrons
who are just watching me go through my girlfriend's purse
and looking at me like I was crazy which I was.
I grab the ring, put in under her napkin
and put the pint glass on top of the napkin, perfect.
So she comes back and I'm kinda sitting there like,
"Yeah, this has been a fun trip, huh?
"Oh, look, it looks like
"there's something under your glass."
And she picks up her glass and she looks under it
and she's like, "Um, no.
"No, I don't, there's nothing,
"this is just a glass, oh well."
And I was like, "No, no, no.
"I think there's something under your glass.
"I think you should look under your glass."
She picks it up again and she's like,
"Mm, no, no, it's just a glass.
"Just a normal glass."
And I was just like, "For the love of god,
"will you just look under your glass?"
And so then she noticed under her napkin,
which I should've just said napkin, this is again,
you know I'm not nearly as intelligent
as I thought I was or am.
So anyhoo, she looks under her napkin.
I make the proposal.
She says yes, thank god.
I don't know, I don't know why, but thank god.
You know I was so worked up by that point
of people breathing down my neck
about whether I was nervous, what plan I had,
what plans I didn't have, me trying to be creative,
then not being creative, me then just being cynical
about the whole thing that I completely forgot
and disregarded the fact that I didn't get down on one knee.
We were just sitting on pub stools essentially.
When I retell the story though to friends and family,
I kinda now play it up like,
"Yeah, I totally got down on one knee
"and did this whole speech.
"It was awesome."
I didn't.
So then I felt pretty cool once I calmed down a bit
and I was like cool we're all set
and I go to tell her this whole story and I was like,
"You're not gonna believe this.
"I had the ring, but then we went to go see that movie"
and I'm thinking this is gonna be hilarious,
you know, the fact that she was carrying it
around for so many days and didn't know it.
And she just looks at me and she just was like,
"Yeah, I found it after the second day.
"Yeah, the ring was in my purse
"and I kind of figured you were gonna take the initiative
"and, you know, propose like most people do."
So, but she still said yes.
We're still married so that's good, right?
So word of advice, if you find yourself in love
with someone and you want to propose, keep it simple,
but if other people wanna get involved, be open to it
and don't forget to get down on one knee
and don't hide the ring in their purse
'cause they will find it
and it's almost a reverse trap set for you.
(sighs)
Feels good.
Fells good to get it off my chest.
All righty, yeah, so that was my proposal horror story.
(upbeat music)