No surprise

Last night I was watching the Friends episodes where Chandler proposes to Monica, and they reminded me of exactly what it is about surprises that I don't like. Because yeah, I know, I'm weird, but I really don't.

I mean, I don't HATE surprises. Obviously if someone wants to surprise me with something lovely and unexpected, that's great. And it's fun to open gifts and not know what they are ahead of time.

But in general, I think that surprises are overrated. Surprise parties and surprise visits? Cute in theory, but in practice they mean that a) the person isn't prepared for them, might have other plans, or might just not be in the mood or in the right clothes or WHATEVER, and b) you lose the fun anticipation leading up to the event.

I had a friend visit me as a surprise in college one weekend. And yes, it was cute and fun, but I had a paper due that Monday that I hadn't even started yet. So we hung out, but a lot of the hanging out involved her sitting in my room watching me type. Whereas, if I had known in advance that she was coming, I would have written the paper ahead of time so that I could have had the whole weekend free to spend with her.

But the worst kind of surprise, in my opinion, is the kind that involves a ton of trickery and deceit to pull off. This is especially true of surprise marriage proposals. As far as I'm concerned, if two people agree to get married, it should be something that they have at least thought about before. So that means that if a proposal is going to be a surprise, considering that the person being proposed to has probably thought before about marriage, and if they're about to get engaged then they probably feel READY to get married... well, it seems that a lot of the time, the proposer builds this whole web of lies designed to make the proposal a surprise for the proposee.

And yes, the intentions might be good? But in practice, what happens is that the proposee ends up really upset in advance of the proposal. They think that their significant other doesn't want to marry them. They start questioning their whole relationship. They start wondering if they have a future with this person or if they were totally out on a limb by themselves. There are often tears, and serious self-doubt, and incredible unhappiness.

All that, just so the proposal can come as a total shock? SO not worth the trade-off for me.

With our engagement, it both was and was not a surprise. We had looked at rings together and I knew one had been purchased. I knew that there would be a proposal at some point. But when it came, on top of a cliff after a hike, I was totally caught off guard. I just didn't think that Torsten would have carried an expensive, as-yet-uninsured ring up a cliff with him. But surprise! He had.

That was the best kind of surprise. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't know when and where. He never tried to trick me into thinking that he wasn't serious about a future with me, and he didn't string me along for ages dropping fake hints. But he did pick a moment that I never would have expected him to pick. The best of both worlds, you know?

Am I alone in this? Do you like surprises or are any of you over here in the "I'd rather know about it and get to anticipate it and prepare for it" camp?