Fox News reports that a new marriage-vow fad is on the rise:
In some weddings, “’til death do us part” is going the way of “to honor and obey” — that is, out the window.
Vows like “For as long as we continue to love each other,” “For as long as our love shall last” and “Until our time together is over” are increasingly replacing the traditional to-the-grave vow — a switch that some call realistic and others call a recipe for failure.
This fad stands in even greater contrast to the LDS “for time and for all eternity” than does the “’till death do us part.” Let’s hope that it doesn’t make the transition from fad to trend.
The article interviews “wedding expert” Sharon Naylor who declares:
“People understand that anything can happen in life, and you don’t make a promise you can’t keep. When people get divorced, they mourn the fact that they said ”til death do us part’ — you didn’t keep your word in church (if they had a church wedding). Some people are in therapy because they promised ‘til death do us part’ — it is the sticking point in the healing of a broken marriage. The wording can give you a stigma of personal failure.”
I think that the fact that Naylor is described a “wedding expert” and not a “marriage expert” communicates tomes.
Most disturbing to me is the phrase “…anything can happen in life, and you don’t make a promise you can’t keep.”
It used to be that people said “you don’t make promises that you don’t intend to keep.” In order to avoid being hypocrites we are now told that we shouldn’t promise to do anything that we cannot guarantee that we will actually do. The meaning of hypocrite has been changed from someone who makes promises that he or she doesn’t intend to keep to someone who makes promises that he or she intends to keep, but cannot guarantee 100% will be kept.
This is a subtle bit of sophistry that wrests the concept of hypocrisy to devilish effect. It represents the abandonment of ideals and idealistic goals. Those who honestly try for an ideal and fail are seen as hypocrites, while those who refuse to try because they might fail are considered honest.
I find offensive that the “expert” is trying to minimize the appropriate feelings of guilt & accountability someone who has a broken marriage has to (should, and better) deal with. Reminds me of Isaiah and calling good for evil and vice versa.
Divorce is and should be seen as a personal failure; whether of one or both parties is a different question.
Cool! This could spill over to other areas.
“I promise to defend the Constitution of the United States as long as I agree with it”
“I vow to defend this country as long as I feel like fighting”
“I vow to be honest in all my dealings, except for the ones where I’m not”
This moves marriage one step closer to just being a temporary financial arrangement.
“It represents the abandonment of ideals and idealistic goals.”
That’s our brave new world, all in the name of not wanting people to feel bad under any circumstances.
Someone has been watching too much Flash Gordon it seems.
I don’t see why this is such a big deal. Many people promise to love each other “for time and all eternity” after knowing each other two months and end up divorcing 10 years later. At least this is more straightforward and less disingenuous.
My wife owns a bridal store (I get to work for her there)The majority of “brides” are already living with their boyfriends without any vow or commitment. So getting married and making the commitments / vows you have quoted is actually a step up for them!
This ain’t a big deal, as Becca says. At least it’s realistic and honest. Many people have no intention of being married to someone “forever” or even until death. For many, it is but one stage of life which may or may not work out into a long-term commitment. Mormons need to get off their high-horse.
I attended a wedding recently of a good friend and co-worker. It was held in the couple’s backyard (they had been living together for years) and they wrote their own vows. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it definitely dropped the “’til death do us part” line for something like what has been quoted before. It was definitely noticeable and I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I really love this former co-worker of mine — she’s the bomb and I know she has a great heart.
Still, this does leave you wondering what people ultimately want. It seems to be a surrender to cynicism about marriage to some extent.
There is a growing sentiment among some members of the Church that a civil marriage is “just as good” as a temple marriage, that because both are “ordained of God,” as it says in the Proclamation on the Family, we are being judgmental if we consider temple marriage to be a superior form of marriage compared with a civil one.
Well, call me old fashioned. But I think a marriage that has the potential of lasting forever is better than one with a built-in divorce clause. Of course a temple marriage is no better than a civil one if the couple are not keeping their temple covenants and enduring to the end. But at least a temple marriage has possibilities beyond this life. Ultimately, a civil marriage is destined to fail from the get go.
I know that many Church members have loved ones who are married civily for various reasons. Many others are themselves married for time only or have nonmember spouses. And we need to be loving and sensitive towards them. We need to avoid hurting their feelings. But to allow our concern for loved ones to downplay or obscure the truth, and in some cases even confuse some members about correct doctrine, is unconscionable in my opinion. The fact is, we cannot obtain eternal life without a temple marriage, either in this life or vicariously after we are dead.
This move to marriage “as long as love shall last” nonsense is just another move in the wrong direction, one more nail in the coffin for true love.
I think we need to worry about keeping our own marriage vows than offering our judgment on others. One of my most memorable conversations I’ve had in quite awhile was with a married co-worker with three young children who decried the legalization of same-sex marriage as the harbinger of the destruction of traditional marriage while he was carrying on an affair with his secretary.
Being married obviously means different things to different people, but it does disturb me that people would get married on the basis of staying together until something better came along. People may think this privately, but to publicly state that they probably aren’t going to be sticking around that long as part of the marriage ceremony seems a bit strange.
You know, “For as long as we continue to love each other” might mean eternity or “’til death do us part”, but in different words.
Put me in the it-doesn’t-really-matter camp.
Amen, Pris, to your first paragraph.
And if wording really mattered in any wedding ceremony, we would change the sealing ceremony so that the couple promises to love each other at all. It’s always struck me as ironic htat in a ceremony that supposedly has the potential to keep a couple together for eternity, there isn’t either an expectation or even a promise to love each other.
Becca said, “It’s always struck me as ironic that in a ceremony that supposedly has the potential to keep a couple together for eternity, there isn’t either an expectation or even a promise to love each other.”
If love is all it took to keep people together, marriages wouldn’t end. Many people still love each other after a divorce. However, one or the other or both aren’t interested in the number one glue for marriage – WORK.
Agreed, but when people are commenting on wording for what some find a meaningful ceremony (they, at least they’re getting married!) they should look at their own customs and consider why “love” isn’t included. If words indeed matter, to the point that ia blog post is dedicated to lamenting the meaning of “as long as we both shall love”, it is only fair to comment that “love” isn’t even mentioned at all in a sealing ceremony.
“Love” doesn’t keep a marriage together; that’s true, but neither does “sealing”.
Becca,
I do not feel it is appropriate to discuss the specifics of what is pronounced in the sealing ceremony. However, there is a portion of the ceremony where the participants make a covenant that obligates them to to obey all the commandments that relate to marriage. And the Lord commands husbands to love their wives:
If husbands do not love their wives then they are breaking their covenant.
“I do not feel it is appropriate to discuss the specifics of what is pronounced in the sealing ceremony.”
JMW,
Why not?
Answer to 17:
We don’t discuss temple covenants. That’s the rule. Marriage is one of those covenants.
Sam, I for one have never heard or read the instruction not to discuss temple covenants, much less ever promised not to do so. In fact, at a recent stake conference a visiting GA spoke in great detail and with precise wording about the temple covenant to remain chaste.
“It’s always struck me as ironic htat in a ceremony that supposedly has the potential to keep a couple together for eternity, there isn’t either an expectation or even a promise to love each other. “
Becca, I strongly disagree that love is a requirement for marriage. If that were the case, then as soon as you didn’t feel “love” your marriage would be over….and divorce the next step. I think it is the overemphasis on romantic love that causes the most marital problems. I think that we need to emphasize the work that marriage requires. I think put up with…well, whatever is the hardest thing for me, not because I love him, but because I am committed to making our marriage happy and successful. It is completely normal for feelings of love to kind of wax and wane. But after 13 years I can honestly say I love my husband more than I did on our wedding day and we are very happy together. It is scary to think that if we were not totally committed to this marriage, we wouldn’t have tried so hard and we’d have possibly given up during times of stress.
In my world, love is a requirement for marriage. I wouldn’t do the things I do with or for my husband if I didn’t love him, especially considering financial/living/sleeping arrangements. I’m just not that kind of gal.
Again from Becca, “It’s always struck me as ironic that in a ceremony that supposedly has the potential to keep a couple together for eternity, there isn’t either an expectation or even a promise to love each otherâ€
That’s because love is expected already. As Kierkegaard said,
“Believe that if all the poets joined in one song of praise to erotic love and friendship, what they would have to say would be nothing in comparison with the commandment; “You shall love, you shall love your neighbor as yourself!â€
And it seems to me there is some equivocating of ‘love’ going on in the discussion. If we limit it to eros, then of course, eros is not enough. But if we take love in its fullest sense…then yes, love is all you need.
If love is a verb, then certainly even when we, as changeable humans, do mnot feel romantic love, then love’s actions (washing up, being kind, being thoughtful) will carry us through until that feeling returns.
There’s love, and then there’s love. The question is, how long does love last? Hopefully longer than just when the emotion leaves our immediate experience.
Sam, I think there are a few very specific things about the temple that we are bound not to discuss, but I also think many people needlessly expand that prohibition so that parts of the ceremony that we *should* be talking about to help each other learn are treated in an unhelpfully hushed and guilty way. I don’t think there’s much in the text of the marriage covenant that can’t be respectfully discussed.
Actually, I totally get why”love” never is mentioned in a temple sealing.
Since the ceremony is essentially the same for the living and the dead (with one logical omission), the wording is the same. Posthumous marriages/sealings don’t need to include “love” since non one knows whether the deceased love each other.
We seal them anyway and if they accept the gospel in the next life, they are expected to live with their families forever and ever, love or no love (this includes arranged marriages, slaves and their masters, people sold into marriage, etc.). Anyone who married legally, or whose names can be found on records where they have children together can be sealed by proxy in our temples and it doesn’t matter whether they loved each other in life or love each other in death. If they accept the gospel, they will have to accept the sealings too (or else can you imagine the major musical chair-type thing that will happen when we find out almost no one wants to be married to the spouse they had while alive just because they didn’t happen to “love” them?). And what a waste of time it would be if so few of the millions of ordinances we do will actually stick.
But, Becca, as C.S. Lewis said:
The problem with your suggestion (that you wouldn’t do the things you do if you didn’t love your husband) is that it provides an out for the couple who don’t feel that they’re in love anymore. (“I don’t love my husband anymore, so I won’t sleep with him/live with him/cook/clean/share my paycheck/rebuild the retaining wall/prepare the taxes anymore.”)
I didn’t say “in love”; I said “love”. I still wouldn’t sleep with and receive financial compensation from someone I didn’t love and wasn’t’ married to. I think that’s called prostitution.