The common vow at a wedding ceremony goes like this:
“I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.”
Anyone could make a promise along the lines of “for better, for richer, in health”. Yet life isn’t an upward spiral of every increasing wealth, health and happiness. We make mistakes, we hurt others, we get sick and things don’t go as planned or as hoped. When we stand up and make these vows we are recognising this reality, and still promise to commit to each other until “death do us part”. It’s a major (and slightly frightening) commitment!
Surprisingly, marriage isn’t one of my areas of expertise, so I am not confident to draw any conclusions on the reasons for the increasing numbers of failed marriages in Australia. What confuses me is why the numbers are so high in 2007 – why is it that today, rather than any time in the past, we’ve reached a 50% failure rate in marriages?
This post is tagged
2 Comments
I also have no real knowledge about marriage, but I think people just don’t commit to what they say. Now days people don’t RSVP and hold of for a better options, marriage certainly is different, but on some levels the commitment maybe the same. People say they will commit to the hard things, but when it happens they bail. The whole idea behind a prenup shows a couples level of commitment before marriage.
If I wasn’t a Christian I wouldn’t see the point in getting married (epically in a Church) and making vowels before a God I didn’t believe in. For some reason our culture pushes marriage to be a big and important thing, but on the same hand this important culturally pushed event can be cancelled at any time with no one to blame for it breaking down.
Just came across this great quote:
“I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect
people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage.
And when our children were growing up, it wasn’t a house that protected them; and it wasn’t our love that protected them – it was that promise.
Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
Incoming Links
Leave a Reply