...to want to say 'honour and obey' in my vows?

[SteelyMindedLiberal]

Background: we're both feminists. He's a strong personality, very intelligent, very loving, considerate, supports my career, does (more than) half the housework, cooking etc. We're not Christian or conservative.

But...

I am completely submissive to him and he sets the tone in every aspect of our relationship. Obviously there is a strong (and very hot!) BDSM undercurrent to all this. But it goes way beyond the bedroom: he leads, I follow, it's obvious and noticeable, and we both love it.

He's 'in charge'; never controlling. I am always listened to, and feel completely equal. I just do as he says and trust him to do the right thing. We're not ashamed of how we are, it's fundamental to us and because of that we want it to be included in our vows. He says it's up to me but he would like it very much, and I really, really want to say it.

BUT: it would mean outing our 'activities' to all our family and friends. I don't want our wedding to become all about that one line. Maybe no one would really care or give it any thought? We're happy to simply say: 'that's our dynamic and it works for us', to most people, but he has a 20-year-old daughter and it's her we're most worried about. She's sassy and worldly and she'd get it at once and probably be fine with it in private, but might find it really embarrassing and awkward... argh!

Help! It's the whole please ourselves or please others thing, I suppose...

I'd say the only thing the vows will 'out' is that you're not a feminist. Would that be even more shocking to them...?

As an aside, if I went to a wedding and heard the bride say "obey" I would find it very distasteful and anachronistic. In fact, I would honestly feel quite offended by it and might even have to leave.

Feminists do not obey their life partners. They strive and campaign for women to have equal value and voice. Hearing a female friend say this would slightly sicken me and the idea of a room full of people listening and condoning it would too.

Good luck to you OP.

You are an anti-feminist. Make no mistake.

To be fair to the OP, I don't think she is saying the all men should have control over all women. She is only saying that she wants it to be like that in her relationship (because it improves her sex life I think).

bunchoffives - I did it for none of those reasons.

toffeemoon - a wedding is about what two people want. If you are so selfish as to be offended enough to leave a wedding ceremony then it says more about you than anyone saying obey.

FTR I don't obey my husband as he doesn't tell me what to do. I respect him and we come to decisions together.

Yes, but she is leading by example. And that validates male domination to a certain extent, for some.

In the words of the Preachers....
If you tolerate this your children will be next

Why did you say it then Itsfab?

I agree bunchoffives.

Tradition, I am old fashioned. It was just something I wanted to do. Just as DH wanted to say love and cherish.

How is that different from a woman who chooses to follow a religion that makes her submissive to her husband?

is everything we "choose" suddenly feminist. Is this like pole dancing is empowering?

www.theonion.com/articles/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does,1398/

We that's illuminating then!

And do you keep your vows to obey?

Why do you care so much bunchoffives? You clearly think I am a fool. Luckily I don't need your approval so it doesn't bother me. I have answered your question already.

can we also convince you not to do this act in front of your children.

It is not my place to approve or not. And I don't really care that much.

I just wondered how obeying your husband worked in practice.

'Tradition' seems such a strange explanation to me. Whose tradition? The CofE dropped obey about 50 years ago from the marriage service afaik.

I'm absolutely astonished that any woman would promise to obey her husband, in the 21st century. That may well be how you feel now, which is lovely at the newly-wed stage, when perhaps there's never been a significant disagreement let alone a blazing row, but even with the best of intentions, life has a tendency to throw up the unexpected. What are you going to do if he has an affair, spends all your money or otherwise deceives you? Carry on obeying him? Yes I know you can't possibly imagine it. Lots of us never could imagine it would happen to us.

I don't agree that no-one will notice. I would be very surprised to hear it and would just be baffled really.

I said it in the same way I said in sickness and in health. It was part of the marriage vows I expected to say. Do I said it as I wanted too. I don't obey him as he doesn't tell me what to do.

I would notice and yes it would offend me too. I'd possibly slip you the phone number of the nearest domestic abuse agency.

I'm all for a varied sex life. I enjoy being submissive in bed, I also enjoy being dominant sometimes. I have absolutely no qualms with your sex life, if you enjoy being submissive in bed all the time and it works for you both then screw and get spanked to your heart's content. BUT the idea of a woman submitting in everyday life I find repulsive, especially when there's a young woman you are a role model for. AND it makes a mockery of all the amazing women who have fought and sometimes died in their quest for women to have equal rights.

I don't obey him as he doesn't tell me what to do. Bit pointless then, surely? Just empty words? Why bother?

I'm surprised it took as long as it did for you to say that.

What are you going to do if he has an affair, spends all your money or otherwise deceives you? Carry on obeying him?

I believe in these situations the marriage vows are considered redundant through the mechanism of divorce. Also applies to any vow to "love" the other person. What would you do in the same circumstances having promised to love them until death do us part, carry on loving them?

As an aside, if I went to a wedding and heard the bride say "obey" I would find it very distasteful and anachronistic. In fact, I would honestly feel quite offended by it and might even have to leave.

Also as an aside, I wasn't so rude as to leave my neighbour's Hindu wedding when she made these vows. The priest also translated one of them as her promising "to get up before dawn to make herself beautiful for her husband" but he had quite a sense of humour, and he was doing the ceremony in Sanksrit then translating into Hindi and then into English, so he might have been taking the piss for the non-Hindi speakers there.

Ok, I take that back, I actually wouldn't leave - but I would be repulsed by what I had heard and have zero respect for the bride - AND groom.

Isn't 'obeying' a bit more tangible than 'loving'? When my husband had an affair and then left, I still loved him, so I hadn't broken MY vows. But I sure as hell would not have obeyed him any more.

Okay then, "to have and to hold" "to cherish" "to honour"- you don't do any of those if your husband has an affair and leaves.

I just don't see why we all understand that the rest of the wedding vows are impermanent in the event of infidelity or one of the other Unforgivable Curses Sins, but not obedience.

It’s not the BDSM or the submission or the vows or the car that bother me… it’s the OP’s lack of boundaries. She says she is letting submission spill into all aspects of her life with her partner and she is encouraging her partner to behave without boundaries as well, and all she has kept to protect her is a naïve faith that “he would never do that”. She doesn’t seem to be leaving herself any way even to tell him if he’s overstepped, much less to get him to back off or give herself a way out. Correct me if I’m wrong but that doesn’t sound like a safe way to run a BDSM relationship.

In almost every long-lasting marriage there comes a time when two partners fundamentally disagree about something very important to them. How they negotiate that is the big test of a successful marriage. Upfront rules like “he will always listen to me and respect me and then I will always obey” just don’t cut it. Sooner or later he will make a decision that the OP had assumed was hers to make or one that to her is obviously plain wrong, but for the sake of the sexual thrill the OP is increasingly undermining the authority she will need to have her point of view taken equally seriously with his.

I could put it the other way round, and say that she’s making her marriage very fragile. Her marriage depends on him knowing exactly when to put her interests and her happiness first, without even being told. The moment he doesn’t do that, either the OP or the marriage are screwed. She can’t tell him if he’s overstepped because there isn’t supposed to be any such thing. If her marriage vow (even if it’s only in her head) is that she will obey him, then as soon as she decides “No I can’t obey that, he’s got it wrong” their marriage is defunct.

Steelyminded? Hardly. Lurve (or really satisfying sex) can turn even the steeliest minds to mush and feminists can make foolish decisions too.

Funny that most posters feel that to obey is to be submissive. The church disagrees somewhat....

The Rt Rev Peter Nott, Bishop of Norwich, who officiated at the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones, gives his own if somewhat vague interpretation: “It is a mistaken assumption that, when a bride says she will obey, it means that she is going to be subservient – it is to do with trust and listening, to recognise that in a family you have different functions. There are times when the husband will rightly obey the wife because she knows better and is in the lead in that area – the partnership is equal and, in a good marriage, always shifts.”

That's what I'd call a woolly and modern interpretation.