One I still feel bad about now and then, came in a letter from my boyfriend - we’d been together for a couple of years before going to different universities quite a distance apart - in the days before no phones easily available, let alone email.
I liked him, but the proposal made me realise that I was never going to marry him. I don’t think I’d even met dh by then, but I still knew.
I didn’t even reply to the letter. I just didn’t know how to say it. Shameful, I know.
My parents moved area after my first uni year - 100 miles away - so I never saw him again.
They had really liked him, and my mother kept telling me I’d never find anyone else as nice!
Dh did fairly soon turn into ‘golden boy’ for her, though - that is, after Dbro, who was always Golden Boy Number One.