When I proposed to my wife, down on one knee holding out the ring, all traditional, she said, "Let me think about it."
She laid on the condition that I save, I forget how much money it was. She was and is a fanatic saver. I fulfilled that and now 34 years and one now grown and out-of-the-house child later we are still happy. She told me that my involvement with my children from my first marriage helped persuade her that I was acceptable husband material.
Had I not taken the hand my ex extended for help getting away from her second husband, who turned out to be an abusive monster, I am sure she would have loaded the boys (one mine) into the car and put as many miles between them and that bastard as possible and I would never have heard from them again, and who knows? Perhaps my wife, the real thing as it turned out, would not have had me.
Sometimes you make the right call for reasons you don't know.