Women told not to propose to their men on February 29.

Women are being advised not to use the February 29th leap year date to propose to their partner.

A recent study has found that couples where the woman has proposed to the man during a leap year are more likely to fail.

February 29th has traditionally been regarded as the one day of the year when a woman can propose to her man (which is, if you ask me, a crock of shit- do whatever you want) but recent think tank findings indicate that couples who enter into an engagement via the non-traditional approach are less likely to be successful in the long term.

The Marriage Foundation, set up by a former UK High Court Judge, seeks to obtain information and research to better understand the relationship of marriage.

They recently undertook a study of couples who were living together but who were not married. The findings shows that 32 per cent of women in these couples were wanting to get married but were waiting on their partners to pop the question. Only seven per cent of men in the study said they were waiting for their girlfriend to ask them to marry.

Harry Benson, Research Director at the Marriage Foundation, says that when a man makes the decision to propose to his partner they “buy into” the marriage more than if they were on the receiving end of a proposal and therefore are more likely to “stick with it.”

However before we get up in arms about this, Benson says that the reasoning behind his statements has more to do with the ways in which men and women are different, a fact he says cannot be changed.

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“Before we consign this unfortunate relic of patriarchy to the bin of history, we might consider an important aspect of human nature that hasn’t changed. Men commit in a fundamentally different way to women. There’s nothing “remotely quaint, or misogynist, or sexist about this tradition that men should do the proposing,” because it is “rooted in human nature and the need for men to buy in,” he told the Daily Mail.

Benson warns women who may be feeling frustrated at waiting for their partner to propose against using the February 29 date to lock it down. “Your man needs to make the decision for himself. Even if he says yes, he might not have bought in.”

Surely however the same could be said of many women on the receiving end of a marriage proposal?