MAIL ON SUNDAY YOU MAGAZINE

Four little words: "Will you marry me?"

Every girl dreams of hearing these words (at least) once in her lifetime, but unless something goes drastically wrong with my marriage, I'll never hear them.

Hold on a second, I hear you say: if you're married, then somebody must have dropped onto bended knee and popped the four-word question? Ah, alas not. That's where I messed up, you see, because I asked him . In a moment of 'anything men can do I can do better' madness, fuelled by a growing fear of losing the man I wanted to grow old with if we didn't commit in some way, I decided to don some trousers and take the lead.

Experiencing his own moment of madness, he said yes.

Asking somebody to marry you is a hideous experience, and I sometimes wonder how I managed it without forgetting what it was I wanted to say, backing out in favour of chewing my left arm off or just throwing up right in front of him, through nerves. (Never a good move, that, if you're hoping for a 'yes'.) Proposing marriage is a no-win situation: if he says 'No' you have to find a dignified way of leaving the room which makes it look as though you are perfectly happy with the outcome, and were expecting it anyway - a kind of elegant "Am I bovvered?" This is one good reason not to propose on a nine-hour flight. If you can also leave an air of 'you are complete shit and have just screwed up the rest of my life', then so much the better. Then you cry for a month and put on two stone due to excessive comfort-eating.

If, as your trembling ego desperately hopes, he says 'Yes' then, after the required amount of crying, hyperventilating and calling everyone you know to share your relief, you suddenly realise that your relationship has just been defined forever: you lead; he follows.

Thus it is in my marriage: I write the shopping lists, book holidays, organise babysitters and landscape the garden. If there's a decision to be made on any domestic front from where to send the kids to school, to when to put the washing on or what colour the bathroom tiles should be, it falls to me to make it.

After many years of subtle attempts at role-reversal ('Frankly I don't care what we do this weekend - you think of something!') I now realise that this set-up, despite putting most of the decision-making pressure on me, has its advantages. Being in the driving seat, while also remembering the directions, stopping the kids from killing each other on the back seat and knowing which petrol stations sell decent coffee, is tiring, but do you know what? I, like most women I know, wouldn't have it any other way, because, in my frenetic, chaotic life as a mother of three, I need to have some element of control.

And the drawbacks? Well, my husband hit the marital nail on the head a few years ago after I spent an entire evening moaning that he never organised surprises for me. 'Liz', he said calmly, which is one of his traits I love. 'You are impossible to arrange a surprise for: if I did, you would be so pissed off that I had just ruined whatever it was you had already planned, that it would be a disaster.'

He was right. Before planning a surprise he knows to check with me first - thus, obviously, somewhat reducing the element of surprise.

After ten happy years of marriage, I know that the roles initiated by my proposal suit us perfectly. But being the ask er and not the ask ee has left me with one weighty question: Would he have asked me? It's a biggie, and one I think I know the answer to.

One sunny afternoon, after we'd been together for eight years, I was hit by a thought I'd never really had, or at least, never really believed before: "You know, I think you really d o love me, don't you?'

'Of course I do: I married you didn't I?' came the bemused reply.

Yes, but you didn't ask.