To think marriage vows don't mean a thing anymore

[worldshottestmom]

May get flamed for this, but I'm used to it.

One of the biggest things I hate about marriage is the vows. It's just becoming increasingly apparent that few people seem to take them seriously anymore, to the point that I'm wondering why they're even a thing now.

This isn't even really about divorce rates, either. It's women getting diagnosed with a terminal illness and their husbands leaving. It is now common practice for healthcare professionals to prepare terminally ill women for divorce / to be abandoned by their SO. What ever happened to in sickness and in health?

Frequent MN threads about frustration from women when their husbands lose their jobs and struggle to find a new one, saying they're looking at divorce over it. What happened to for richer or poorer?

Marriage in itself, to me at least, is a vow to be loyal. Yet even as far back as the olden days, a couple get married and the man is back with his 2nd family the second the honeymoon is over.

These days a couple get married and ten years down the line are both having affairs and fighting over who gets the dog.

There are endless examples and I just can't help but feel like marriage is a complete sham, but its the vows that irk me the most. Why not just stand at the alter and say we agree to marry each other for the financial benefits and because its the done thing, kiss, done. At least it would be honest. Weddings just seen to be an excuse to spend 30k on a nice dress and a huge party. It all just feels like one big roleplay to me at this point.

Disclaimer: I'm aware some people mean their vows and are happy in their marriage. Im aware there a circumstances that occur in life that make the bigger picture about survival, safety and happiness regardless of vows taken. Im aware of cultural and social influences on marriage and vows.

I'd also like to mention im aware vows and marriage are rooted in religion. I've heard the excuse before from a certain (divorced) person that they didn't take their vows seriously because theyre just a load of religious blubber. While theyre willingly stood in a church with a gargantuan crucifix with Jesus Christ on it in front of them. The irony. How can a person stand there and take vows they dont mean just for the sake of getting married. Its all so backwards it makes my brain hurt.

My point still stands that I just think the meaning of vows is so frequently taken so lightly these days. I wish I could believe in them, and in finding eternal love and happiness with someone, but with the above points mentioned, all hope is lost. People just don't seem to speak with much meaning behind their words anymore.

Even as someone happily married for 20+ years I would say marriage is a secure legal union and the arrangement in itself is practical not imbued with mystical moral or romantic powers in of itself, nor is it any shame to mutually agree to terminate the contract if it no longer works for you.

Well, exactly.. People saying you have to work at marriage, yes, but one person cannot do the work for both nor uphold the vows of the other person.

My parents celebrate 50 plus years of marriage, everyone gave them cards, they had a dinner where they spoke about the good times and how they’d worked through the downs as well as the ups. Everyone clapped.
They didn’t mention the violence, alcoholism, accusations of cheating. All in front of my sister and I growing up. The environment where we were afraid when coming home from school.
Well done mum and dad, you kept all that just for us. All your friends nod wisely when you spoke about marriage needs work, you got through the ups and downs together. You kept your vows till death do you part. Now you’re old, are you still screaming at each other, chasing each other drunkenly around, physically fighting? Who knows. Main thing is, you stayed together. Your 2 little girls who lay in bed at night hearing that haven’t chosen a life like that. You were so disappointed when both my sister and me left our first marriages and got divorced. You wanted us to stay, like you did. Like you did? Congratulations on your golden wedding mum and dad, remember I know what it was like all those years behind closed doors.
The violence has stopped so I suppose you could say they must have “worked at it”. As did all the generations before them. Before me, who got divorced because it was all a bit shit. I didn’t work at it. I just didn’t like my husband in the end.
I meant my vows at the time. It was the tradition at the time. But none of it matters if you’re going to waste your precious life with someone you no longer even like.

The thing is marriage isn’t more important to me than anything else. It’s not more important than my health, my child’s health or my happiness. Its not more important than my independence. Any marriage which doesn’t support any of the above isn’t worth it.

My approach to marriage is that at its best its a powerful legal and financial tool to support a couple in raising children and supporting each other. If it works, its life enhancing. If it doesn’t it becomes a huge burden. Preserving your marriage against rational thought and happiness is ridiculously self destructive.

I don’t believe in clinging onto a failing marriage like grim death to obey a vow taken many years ago which is no longer supporting me. And I don’t think anyone should apologise for feeling that a marriage which has outlived irs purpose no longer deserves to survive.

I meant them wholeheartedly at the time

20 years later and I am furious with DH - he didn’t vow to be an arsehole but there we go

I disagree with you. I think the seriousness with which people take marriage vows has remained reasonably constant. Look back on time and it was almost expected that men took a mistress if they could afford it. They all made their vows. What has changed are women’s options: their ability financial and socially to divorce. Men for the most part pretty much always had it and therefore had the upper hand.
This means that the other partner (mostly women) can now treat their marriage vows as conditional - they only count so long as the other partner also keeps theirs. Don’t love and honour me? Sling your hook!

It wasn't a recommendation, it was an observation in the light of the previous poster's comments that just a few decades ago life expectancy meant shorter marriages.

A friend of mine who has had deteriorating mobility due to Parkinson's Disease for 10 years (can't walk at all now, in a wheelchair, needs hoists for everything) has just been deserted by her husband in favour of a younger woman he met at a Karaoke evening at the local pub.

I don't know how common this is but I think it's a pretty shitty way to behave.

Agree with pp marriage is a legal contract, I look at it as been necessary to protect the parent who takes on more caregiving / unpaid work at the sacrifice of their own career.

Ive never been married, it’s not for me. I have split from a long term relationship that I thought was forever. I defo didn’t take it lightly but children changed me hugely, and him not one little bit and we no longer worked when I didn’t put him front and centre.

honestly reading what you wrote…. Marriage is not a badge of honour if youre being abused. You don’t get a medal if you stay with a violent man… just an early grave! and even if he’s not violent and just lazy and takes the piss, you get to be an unpaid slave instead!
and if you have kids and you stay with him, you could lose them because you’re not protecting them.
But sure… you lack commitment for leaving 🙄

I agree OP don’t say the vows unless you mean them.

its unrealistic to expect your life to be content /going well all the time, sometimes it’s boring, repetitive, painful and difficult.

Marriage at times will be similarly tough and likely you will have to make repeated and/or long term compromises.

Still would say leave if there is domestic abuse/ violence or if you cannot get past an infidelity.

Otherwise people should and do try and push through, improve and stick at unhappy parts of marriages. Expect difficulties, be proactively try to prepare for things that will come your way. Working with another person to raise children/ face difficulties is the point of marriage, otherwise wouldn’t it just be a relationship and you could leave if it wasn’t going well/ you were unhappy.

It is interesting to me to hear older people in retrospect talk about tough years they got through. Even Michelle Obama mentioned years her marriage wasn’t so good.

You need the vows because they form the basis of the legal contract you're entering into. If you didn't agree to terms then it's not a contract and so has no meaning. Divorce exists for when one or both parties have broken the terms of the contract. If you agree to love someone until death, then find you can't keep to that requirement the contract ends. No different really to an employment contract that last only as long as both parties adhere to the terms.

This is not a universal thing at all, OP. Most of my friends have been married 30+ years, very much through sickness as well as health!

I am struggling to find a way to phrase this, but I agree, although not in the same way as you perhaps feel it - vows are worthless and always have been. They're completely pointless. Marriage is a financial contract and frankly we should all just get the contractual bit done quickly at a registry office and have a party at a later date. Vows don't make someone a better human being. If they're the sort to make a swift exit when their partner is ill, then that will happen regardless of what they vowed. It has always been thus. There have always been open secrets about the men who beat their wives/kids, those that cheat on their partner or have a second family, those who gamble away their partner's life savings...it's just now socially (and legally) easier to leave. And thank heavens for that.

Vows are just meant to make you think there's a moral heft to being faithful and long-suffering within marriage, rather than it being a patriarchal structure aimed at making sure men could be sure they were passing on their name and the family goods to a child who wasn't someone else's in the days before DNA tests.

That's incorrect and a rather cynical view.

Marriage protects women.

Whether a marriage is legally recognised or not is very important because this can have significant consequences particularly in relation to finances and property rights. Not having a marriage which is recognised in law can leave you in a financially vulnerable position, for example you may have no claim to stay in the marital home, or no access to financial support from your spouse.
It is therefore very important to be clear whether a marriage is legally recognised in England and Wales, and to understand the legal consequences of being married

If you are not legally married but live with your partner it is important to be aware that the law does not give you any special legal status. There is no legal recognition of a ‘common law’ husband or wife.

I meant my vows to my late DH and kept every one of them. 🤷‍♀️

I’ve pondered this lately too. My DH is starting to show his age now and I’m still feeling quite young but there’s no way I would be thinking ‘right I’m off’ because I made vows. It seems the younger generation is more transient and used to disposing and moving on. It plays out in all sorts of different ways but to me it’s about my values and respecting the promises I made even though it might be uncomfortable.

Ditto for my exH.
Unfortunately he decided not to keep them and I divorced him.

The husband in those cases has already broken the vows.
I think the OP is talking about cases where someone breaks the vows and at the same time leaves. Some people leave without breaking the vows (except the "till death" part) and some just break the vows and don't leave.

Shes not incorrect at all. Yes marriage protects you once you share assets and children but it’s more protection to opt out entirely.

there is no evidence we married when we were nomadic. The penis itself is designed to suck out other sperm - ie humans were never monogomous or designed to be.

marriage is a patriarchal concept designed for whe women were property that hasn’t been updated.

Some people are just irresponsible, not just with marriage. We have a wealth of contraception for example, but women still choose to have children with dead beat men who aren't fit to be a parent.
Two of my close friends are divorced from men for whom they'd say 'changed' however neither of these men changed, they were arseholes before they married them!

I had two steady relationships before I met my husband, and if I'd been foolish enough to marry either of them I'd be divorced now (instead of celebrating my 23 year anniversary to a man I had, and still have, zero doubt about).

I would hazard a guess that most people do take vows seriously, and that separation or divorce are last resorts after they have tried for a very long time to fix things. But at some point you've got to stop flogging a dead horse.

Everyone makes mistakes. Good for you that you picked well. Not everyone is as intelligent and love makes people do stupid thinks. Blaming the women for choosing wrong is letting the men off with a free pass though. They shouldn’t be douches in the first place.