As I am right around the corner from my senior year, I am experiencing what is only the start of this unique social media tension. Slowly but surely, everyone on my Facebook is about to go FBO with his or her current girlfriend/boyfriend. They call it engagement. Now, I, too, have a boyfriend. We've been dating for five years and I love him to death. It's not even a conversation if my friends, acquaintances, and even friends-of-a-friend don't ask, “And how's your boyfriend?" I don't mind it at all. I love that we're a package deal. I love that everyone who knows or doesn't know me knows that he is the most important person on this earth to me. However, he and I are starting to face this awkwardness where people have expectations for our future. People treat this whole engagement process like it's casual, like it's routine, like it's brushing your teeth when you wake up and go to sleep. It's strange.

First, I would like to add that, of course, my boyfriend and I have expectations for our future. It has come to a point where avoiding the topic of “engagement" is not an option anymore, especially since he and I graduate at different times. If he and I want to live a life together, we have to plan one. Life is not a romance movie where everything is happily-ever-after just because. Life is happily-ever-after because you and your other work hard to be intentional, make sacrifices, and actually build a life together. My boyfriend and I have discussed what would be ideal for each of us in our future timeline. I have told him what I would like most out of engagement, when events could play out, and where I want to be in four years. He has told me his preferences as well. But guess what? Our ideas didn't line up like puzzle pieces. And here is where I get to my frustrating point.

Every couple has a love so unique to them, that engagement is a sentimental subject. It is personal, special and delicate. It's frustrating that random people are starting to ask me, “So when are you getting engaged?" I think that is a conversation meant for my mother, father, brother, or best friends. It is not a question to just pop like candy from the dollar store. The public isn't meant to know, “Okay, I'm getting engaged on this date, at this time, on this bench, at this waterfall…blah, blah, blah." This is one of the most memorable moments in a man and woman's life! Do people and strangers casually go around asking what color underwear are you wearing? Or ask when you first started your period? Or ask whom you called when you got your first broken heart? No! These are all very personal conversations. These are life-changing moments (okay, not the underwear question), which need to be treated with delicacy and privacy. Just because everyone's life is out to view on Twitter or Instagram doesn't mean couples have to volunteer engagement information like one volunteers a casual selfie on #selfiesunday.

Heck! Half the time, the couple doesn't even have it figured out! Deciding when to get engaged can be overwhelming. There is a lot of social pressure on couples to get engaged during college. I found that my boyfriend became so tense about the topic of engagement. Let me add that he is a man who has taken many leaps and falls for me through the years. He has prioritized our relationship above many people, so, getting engaged seems like it would be easy. Pressure doesn't get him down. He is a chemical engineer. I think it is safe to say he actually likes pressure. However (and I'm speaking from my words and observations, not his), pressure from everyone to expose how he plans on asking one of the most important questions of his life to the most important person in his life seems a little stressful and odd. This isn't a math problem with a set solution. This isn't telling your grandparents the date of your high school graduation two months before so that way they can catch a flight down to see it happen. This is the next step in love and commitment to another person. Engagement is beginning to feel mainstream. It is trendy to get engaged. And I realize this more and more as I approach post-college life.

I just came to this realization. This paragraph is where I have to admit that I, too, have made engagement mainstream. I have dropped the casual question, “When are you getting engaged?" just to avoid a silence in conversation. The question is so common is doesn't seem wrong. But now that I am beginning to face the same type of questions, and people are posting proposal pictures left and right on Facebook, I know it is only about to get worse, as people will expect me to get married, as well. I'm writing this because I want to be the last person on this earth who makes tying the knot with the man of my dreams a casual conversation and just another note on other's agendas. If there is not a ring on the finger, let's avoid small talk about this very important, precious topic.