Actually, the second engagement was arguably worse. We were on the back stoop smoking cigarettes, and I opened the conversation with “obviously, I’m not going to ask you to marry me.” There are red flags, and then there’s this.
What I was unaware of was the ring out of a quarter machine she’d given me a week earlier “as a joke” was not. So she happily let me fumble words for some 20 minutes after that opening, knowing exactly where I’d end up and basically said “you were already mine, but this was fun to watch.”