It's hard. I'm pretty sure that in the general case, the problem isn't solvable.
In Morgan LLywelyn's Finn Mac Cool ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312877374/ ), Finn is a man with no family from an inferior tribe, and he's a troop leader in a band of scummy soldiers of no social standing whatever. On the other hand, his potential is obvious -- he will eventually work his way up to self-made king.
While stationed in the capital, he falls in love with a respectable, middle-class blacksmith's daughter. She won't give him the time of day because of the difference in social class, but over time, as his respectability steadily climbs, she warms up to him.
They have a failed sexual encounter, and everything falls apart. She feels too awkward to approach him anymore. He believes (incorrectly) that they've become married at a level inappropriate to her class, and eventually comes to her home to propose a much higher grade of marriage. But she doesn't know how to accept without -- in her own eyes -- suffering a loss of dignity. A painful scene follows in which it's obvious that he wants to marry her, she wants to marry him, her mother wants her to marry him, but somehow none of them can see how to actually get to that point.
People really don't go for innovation in social protocols, even when the protocols they know are failing them.