If your boyfriend arranges for friends to hijack your car, before he gets down on one knee, it’s best to demur

Last weekend, a marriage proposal took place in Russia that went viral. The video showed a woman being dragged from her car by numerous masked “gunmen”, slammed on the bonnet and generally terrorised, before her boyfriend, who was in the car – and also in on the act, got down on one knee and proposed. The woman said yes. She should have most definitely said no.

Imagine. You are sobbing as they slam you on the car. You look up to see that they have taken something off your boyfriend and are pulling out suspect packages. You start screaming. Then, suddenly, your boyfriend is down on one knee. It is meant to be the most important question you will answer in your life, but your fight or flight response is so heightened you could punch a tiger. Of course you might say yes.

If you do ever find yourself about to be kidnapped, dunked underwater or pushed from a cliff, and your boyfriend suddenly proposes marriage, you really should say no. If you’re being proposed to in a way that endangers your safety or intends to make you feel vulnerable, then red flags should be waving.

In 2017, a man called Anthony uploaded a video of his proposal in a small aircraft. He took his flying-phobic fiancee up in the air and pretended he had lost control of the plane before initiating the proposal and safely landing. Without wanting to get too deep about it, I would probably say it demonstrates a weird facet of the male ego where men want to be the protector and thus, by saving their fiance, however falsely, they win their affection. It is not about the woman at all but more about how the man can manipulate a situation to their favour and win points for going over the top for attention.

I panic at the coffee shop when the barista asks for my name. I struggle to come up with a response when my boyfriend asks what I want for dinner. The confidence to think that it is appropriate to ask a life-changing question while engineering a terrifying experience is something I can only aspire to.