Andrew Proposes to Margaret, Explained

What happens

Margaret is packing up her office, ready to leave New York, when Andrew bursts in, out of breath from the trip back from Alaska. He tells her he has to say something, walking her through how his feelings changed, then asks her to marry him. She tells him he doesn't really want her and that she is fine on her own.

What's really going on

Andrew's speech is built like a legal argument, which is the joke: he lists evidence — a kiss, a tattoo, a look in a bathroom — and only then reaches the point, that the woman he loves is being deported. The line "Because I'd like to date you" is the real tell. After a week of pretending to be engaged, the proposal is technically still about the marriage of convenience, but he has stopped pretending. Margaret's answer is the harder one. She has spent the whole film keeping people at arm's length, and she does it here with a softer weapon: "Trust me. You don't really want to be with me." She is not rejecting him so much as protecting him from herself. He agrees that leaving would be easier — which, for once, is not the end of the argument.

Key lines & what they mean

“Because I'd like to date you.”

The proposal's punchline. Instead of grand promises, he reduces marriage to its smallest honest next step: he wants to date her. It sounds like a joke and lands as the most sincere line in the scene.

“And I think it would just be a lot easier if we forgot everything that happened and I just left.”

Her way of saying no without saying it. Framing the breakup as a kindness to him lets her end things while keeping her distance, which is exactly the habit the film is about.

“Trust me. You don't really want to be with me.”

The line that gives her away. It sounds like a warning about him, but it is really an admission about herself, and it invites him to agree rather than argue.

“But I didn't realize any of this until I was standing alone in a barn, wifeless.”

The turning point in his speech. Only when the fake wedding collapses and he is left alone does he understand what he has been feeling, and the word 'wifeless' makes the loss sound real.

Theme

• Romance — After a week of faking an engagement, the real proposal arrives and the question becomes whether either of them can admit what they actually want.
• Loneliness — Margaret defends her choice to stay alone and says she is comfortable that way, even as she pushes away the one person offering to stay.