Please, please back away from the chicken

I'm going to talk a bit about being engaged. This is mainly because I and my future husband have just entered this state after a long, long year of that 'pre-engaged' state where everyone looks at you expectantly when you come back from holiday.

I'm also going to talk about being engaged, or at least, waiting to be engaged, because of this link to the Engagement Chicken. I'm not joking. According to Glamour, if you cook this chicken for your boyfriend, you will get engaged.

Now, maybe this works if you have never cooked for your boyfriend in your whole life, and he's so overcome by the flavours of garlic and lemon he realises he can never let you go. But most people have been cooking for a while. I myself have made, oooh, at least 10 or so chickens like this since my fiance and I started dating. Strangely enough, it wasn't the chicken that made him propose.

If you want to marry your current boyfriend, at some point, you need to swing the conversation around to whether he wants to get married and how he sees his future. It should match to yours, or at least not deviate a huge amount (liking wanting kids when you don't). This should be called the Engagement Conversation. It is not a chicken. It is what adults do instead of playing games with food (alright, we play games with food too, but actual games, ok?).

If the Engagement Conversation goes well, you can maybe start the Ring Conversation. This can lead to Ring Research Trips or Ring Research Web Searches. These also are not chickens.  These are called sharing and envisioning a life together.

If the Enagement Conversation doesn't go well (if you have brought it up on the first date, for example, or if he wants to become a monk), then you can make a chicken. But not for him. Make the chicken for you. The chicken is comforting and warm, and you can make chicken soup with the bones. You can eat the soup while internet dating for your next boyfriend, who doesn't want to become a monk, or who isn't so weirdly fixated on his culinary future that he pins it all on a chicken.