Did you promise to obey your husband?

[peace654]

I had an interesting discussion with my 90 year old nan about the royal wedding. She said she was surprised Meghan didn't promise to obey Harry, and the whole point of marriage is to follow tradition.

I was surprised - she's 90 but always been a feminist for her age at least, she believes in women working outside the home and not putting up with any bullshit. She's always pushed me to be strong and independent. She's not religious either. She definitely wore the trousers in her marriage too!

I've only been to a handful of weddings and didn't take much notice of the bows, so I wondered if it was usual for women to promise to obey their husbands nowadays? Do people still do it in order to be traditional?

I was under the impression that "obeying" was removed due to a marital rape loophole? Although I'm not sure why I think that. Church power vs state power etc

I got married in a Catholic Church, that well know bastion of the patriarchal society, and was actually surprised when the priest expected me and DH to come into church together. I said no way! My Dad was going to walk me down the aisle and give me away in the traditional manner....then I found out that there was no giving away option in the ceremony! (My Dad just passed my hand to DH with no words) and when I said I wanted to obey DH I thought the priest was going to pass out! That wasn’t available to us either. The wording was completely different to those that our parents (both Catholic families) had been able to use.

It was "love, honour and cherish" when i got married in church, in 2014 !

Same in 1986. Marriage should surely be a symmetrical supportive partnership.

'To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death etc' in 1992.

Yes I did, got married in 1998. Very proud to have it in my vows.

No

I thought that blyth parties were suppose to promise to 'love, honour and, obey'? I really can't remember what vows I had. Although we did a traditional religious ceremony afterwards as a separate non wedding thing and I remover some very funny vows in that one like vowing to only wear make for my husbands sake and promising to wash after my period! I threw in a promise to wash even on days when I wasn't having a period because I'm a super devoted wife like that. And something about having eleven sons but I can't remember who was supposed to provided the sons. It was quite an interesting insight into old faishioned views I suppose. Certainly taken with a pinch of salt but I feel sorry for men and women ego actually tame those ki SS of vows seriously.

We married in 1998 & DH was horrified that there was even an option to obey. I think he knew that was never going to happen, so it wasn't in our vows.

We were married in 96 and yep, I lied when I said ‘obey’. We weren’t given the option to not obey as far as I recall. I was very young and just did as I was told!

No, not at all. We had a church wedding and our minister suggested 'love, honour and cherish' for both of us, which we liked. I think it's terribly old fashioned now to say obey. And more than that I believed my vows when I made them and intend to faithfully observe them and I couldn't truthfully have done that if I'd promised to obey!

Yes, 1998

No we were both pretty adamant we didn’t want that in the vows.

No, 1992.
This particular DH would have been shit scared and run a mile if I had promised to obey. He would have thought that was scary stuff as it implies he might make a decision and then tell me what the decision was, expecting me to comply.
This particular DH has crept around for 26 yrs fathering a number of children, running a successful business and maintaining several consecutive homes and gardens, without once taking a decision. If he did ever make a decision and want me to do something, likely he would constrain his thoughts to the inside of his own head lest this lead to someone somewhere imagining he was the head of the household.
In fact, I think I recall him begging the celebrant to allow him to promise to obey me.
(He is currently sitting in the garden complaining of feeling dizzy. WTF it's only twenty to nine and he hasn't done the hedges yet. The night is young.)

I did.

We got married in our church and the vows we said were "love, honour and... " we could choose if we wanted to add a third options. After discussion I chose to say obey and my husband chose the word serve.

This is something that I put a lot of thought and prayer into. I felt that the right decision for us as a couple was for me to say that in the context of a husband who would lead in a way which served me and any children that we chose to have. It is not to say that I don't have a voice in our marriage because I do we sit and discuss things and 99% of the time come to an agreement that works for us. It is just those 1% of cases where we can't agree that I will trust him to make the right decision (sometimes he will go with what I was stating something what he was). It has worked well for us over the years of our marriage but probably wouldn't work for everyone. I think it would also work if paired with a husband who will lead in a way that he puts the interests of the family before his own.

Ha ha ha ha - no bloody way. DH would have fainted or laughed if I'd said it.

I can't remember our vows, I'll have to dig out the paperwork and look up the translation.

The only part I recall with any clarity is giving any children of the union DH's surname (which I intended anyway) and to bring them up to be decent members of society. Or something.

This thread has made me all nostalgic, so I will be trawling through the loft contents to find the Wedding box and refresh my lousy memory.

I'm sure there was nothing about obeying though, I'm not a Labrador.

Nope, my ex wanted the traditional service but our vicar retired and the replacement vicar we had did the more modern service where I didn't promise to obey. My ex was quite pissed off at the time. I was glad 😊

Not only did I not promise to obey him, but our vows had a section in them where we promised to take each others' views into consideration and it caused great mirth from our attendees as we are both known for being stubborn and opinionated.

Ah, the joy of organised religion.

Keeping women in their place for thousands of years.

Fuck sake.

I work with the elderly and quite a few of them said Meghan and Harry said the vows "wrong" because they said "I will" not "I do"
I can't really remember the exact wording for the weddings I've attended (not married myself) but I'm fairly sure they said "I will" at the more recent ones.
Did we used to say "I do" and if so when and why did it change?

I did try using Google and all I could find was that "I do" was American.

We married in 1999 and I did promise to obey

If we redo our vows I wouldn't say it then

Absolutely not! My husband still jokes more than 14 years later how I agreed to obey him. I offer to get the wedding video out to prove I didn't!

It's the most outdated terminology ever and has no place in a marriage.

I want to point out it WAS on option we were given in the booklet the Vicar gave us 15 years ago so not that outdated.

I had to as we married in church 20 years ago.

I did cross my fingers behind my back for that bit though

No. Catholic ceremony, didn't have it as an option, definitely wouldn't have taken it if it was. I think it was "love you and honour you all the days of my life" for both of us.