to think wedding vows are a load of tosh?

[BeQuirkyMintScroller]

All anyone can promise is to be honest.

Just the idea that you can promise to always feel a certain way no matter what life throws at you for the the rest of your life is insane. You cant really choose your feelings.

AIBU to think that the only vow should be:

"I will always be honest [with you about how I feel]"

and maybe a second one of

"I will not get angry with you for being honest"

I have been to lots of weddings that wildly promise feelings of forever and always. But then again I've never married so am not really qualified!

Mnetters experienced in love and war - AIBU?

Well, I’ve been happily with DH since 1992. For 20 years of that we were unmarried, after which for a purely practical reason we did a register office ten-minute quickie involving no vows at all. Me thinking the religious vows are tosh doesn’t seem to have affected the strength or longevity of our relationship.

They really aren't, I know and have known enough divorced people! It's whether you as a couple are compatible. Paying to say a few words isn't going to give your relationship special powers, it's a commercialised event that makes money for businesses. You as a couple have to love each other and be happy together to make it work.

That's a bit of a stretch to link to a moment of certain death unless the hero husband takes charge. The reality is that there is a dark history as to the origins of marriage and the obey part was meant in the worst way possible because in those days it was a man taking a contract of ownership out on you!

It's quite worrying how many people think vows are real and bestow magic powers! Paying for a commercialised event doesn't change your relationship or who you are as people and that's why so many marriages end in divorce because people either thought a marriage would fix a bad relationship or thought a partner would change some bad traits. Sometimes it's the pressuring someone into marriage that leads to it's eventual downfall. Vows are superficial and just a bit of writing, if they meant anything or were magical, how is it that there's so many celebrities that have been married as much as 6 times.etc! You as people make the relationship work or not, not the vows.

I have a friend that I've known for 21 years, he's a good bit older than me, he and his wife married very young and had kids young and the problem was when his young adult mates were out being jack the jads, he was raising kids and he never really came to terms with it and once the kids got older, he started partying and having affairs all over, he used to Benidorm for a holiday and when their were asleep at night he used to.go off and see a woman that lived out there. It finally all stopped when the woman in Benidorm got a bit needy and a woman back here told his wife he'd slept with her. But the fact is the vows are superficial, if someone ain't happy, they won't necessarily be changed by being pushed into marriage.

That's what I'd like to do actually, my partner is good about us committing to each other financially and that kind of thing. He has just never been the wedding ceremony type and between important loved ones passing away now and certain family members wanting us to get married to just host a big expensive family knees up, I'm just not interested in that either. I'm going to look into the civil partnership thing!

Then he is breaking them.

They say to love and honour- there is no mention of honesty. You can love and honour someone without being honest.
You are writing your own vows-honesty is not mentioned in traditional vows, once the obey was dropped.
Honesty is very important, you are right but it is not the only important thing- it is not always kind to be honest.
I think you have misunderstood wedding vows.
Personally I have no real trust in traditional vows I have been with the same man since 1979 but we are not married.

It’s not the vows that are the problem, but the concept of marriage itself. The whole point of a formal, ritualised ceremony backed up by legal obligations was to keep people from doing what people naturally do.

The reason it was needed was because people couldn’t be trusted to take care of their financial obligations and the care of abandoned children, the sick, the elderly fell to the wider community.

Today we have a benefit system, and no stigma divorce, and women are better facilitated to support themselves financially through a robust educational system, legal protections etc.

Marriage isn’t needed in the way it once was. And the divorce statistics clearly show that feelings and intentions aren’t enough.

I think if it was well researched, we’d probably find that there is a subset of people suited to long term, monogamous commitment who thrive within marriage. But it would be better if we could avoid financially and emotionally wrecking people who aren’t suited to it.

That's the point. He's not 'a hero husband taking charge' type of person. For example, if I were to wake up with him shaking me and ordering me to get up NOW, it could only be for something like the house is on fire and my natural instinct to say 'who the fuck do you think you're talking to like that?' or to expect him to explain himself (and apologise) would be set aside for obeying unquestionably.

I don't see the point of marriage anyway.
You need a big party and a ring to prove your love? Don't get it.

The ‘point’ is economic protection, particularly for the lower-earning spouse.

I get that but the obey in marriage vows doesn't mean that and didn't with it's origins, it's about slavery and restrictions in its origin.

But language evolves with context. I'd never have married someone I didn't trust implicitly never to ask me to do something unreasonable.

I didn't obey btw but only because the vicar laughed and said I'd never obeyed in my life and if it was included, the congregation would burst out laughing.

Any form of interaction between breeding age individuals has restrictions - and not just in humans. It's what has been most successful on an evolutionary basis for multiple species for millions of years.

I'm not going to get worked up about one part of the fairly recent contractual terms stated in one religious ceremony that includes a declaration of intent to not have sex with anybody else when in other times, it wasn't necessary to say it as the consequence would have been death. Quite progressive in that sense to suggest that a woman would agree to do as she was told than it going without being said that shagging another bloke or looking at her husband a bit funny would get her stoned to a pulp or her head chopped off, really.

But there's other ways of legalising your connection such as civil partnership, quick Registry office thing and of course making sure you name each other as beneficiaries, share a mortgage etc. But let's be honest a lot of people just want the big fancy do really.

I feel really sad that I’ve been married three times! TBH I never even wanted to get married … but they did. Probably because I didn’t 🙄 and none of them took the vows they made seriously. #1 physically attacked me within months of us getting married. #2 lied, cheated and was the beyond disloyal … he tried to turn my family against me & sought sole custody of our children. #3 said ‘what we have isn’t working for me anymore’ because I put boundaries in place to safeguard my children (his complete alcoholism was pretty carefully concealed until after we were married).

Oh, you're talking about custom vows. I thought you were talking about the default ones: "In sickness and in health" "'til death do us part". A lot of people have trouble adhering to the standard ones let alone the custom ones.

I agree with PP; when you say vows, you mean them. Don't get married if you can't even stick to the basics.

Plenty of people who dress up and say all the right words are "doomed to fail". Plenty of people who "just live together" go the distance and care for one another until the bitter end.

But they aren’t ‘the default ones’, they’re specific to a particular C of E liturgy. The ‘default ones’, legally speaking, are the shortest form of civil wedding, which only require you to declare you’re free to marry, and that you marry X. Nothing about health or duration.

I don't think I realised how bizarre your comment is until I read someone calling you out on it just now. When I initially responded I tried not to see your comment as bitter and nasty but now I re-read it, it really is nasty! It's like you don't acknowledge unmarried couples as being couples! There's no difference between buying and expensive staged event and just getting on with life as a couple! If I had a quid for everyone I've known in life who has been divorced or married more than once.
The whole reason that marriage is less popular and questioned more it's that people realise it's just a paid for booze up these days! Or it's something insecure partners sometimes push people to. It's easy to legally take care of each other without a wedding! Are you really pretending that marriages never end? Unmarried couples are exactly the same as married couples so don't be derogatory in future!

It is perfectly possible to be married and not be financially protected- my mother has been married 5 times and never got any financial support- except the bare minimum for her children. She was definitely a lower earning spouse- the assumption marriage is hugely protective is deceptive- it gives you rights if your spouse dies, but so does a will.
Marriage is a very, very expensive way of getting the same protection as a will (£100-300 top whack), as opposed to the average cost of a wedding- around £15,000-£20,000.
If you have children you are entitled to child maintenance whether you are married or not, and getting spousal maintenance is extremely uncommon unless there are very small children involved and is usually tightly time limited.

You could insert a vow ' if you hit me, I'll leave '

I agree with you. And sometimes life can take such a hard turn, that you can’t even be honest.

I think it’s all wrong.

I do believe in love though. (But it’s temporary, like a song.)

Unmarried couples are absolutely valid.

One thing though is that for some people getting married is a religious act and they would intend to stay married even if they were to end up getting beaten up. It is only quite recently that even the Catholic Church quietly acknowledges (knows it will happen) ,that sometimes people really feel they have no other option than to end the marriage.

Hear hear.