What's so sacred about marriage, anyway?

Question

Someone made a comment recently about the responsibility married people who are not getting along to try and "honor their commitment."

For what? Just for the sake of saying you "honored your commitment"? What's the point if you are both unhappy and want out of the marriage? Let's presume there are either no children, or the children are grown or suffering from the animosity (whether spoken or repressed...children can sense unhappiness) of the parents?

Neo-pagans have a ceremony in which they promise to stay together "as long as love lasts." Doesn't this make WAY more sense?

Answer 1

It is sacred because you made a VOW to not only the one you are marrying, but to GOD.  You made that vow in His church.

Answer 2

Marriage is a committement you make in front of your friends, family and God therefore, you committ to trying to make it work. I think it is bull when couples get divorced and then all of a sudden hate each other. There must have been good in the relationship for them to get married in the first place right?

Marriage is not only a piece of paper and a last name change, it is a way of life. You vow in sickness and in health, for good and bad to always work it out and most couples dont. Now-a-days they have ruined what marriage is suppose to symbolize and it disgusts me! These couples may fall out of love but that is an excuse, why would you marry in the first place and waste time and money, etc. It is just pathetic excuses because when the tough starts, they walk and it is an easy way out instead of working through issues as a marriage (couple).

Nothing in life is easy and it irritates me that the divorce rate is so high. Luckily, my parents and my husbands parents have been married and in love for over 35 years. My grandparents have been married over 60 and are still in love. They say that when one wanted out, the other didnt and vis versa, they always made it work.

I strongly also want g*y and L*****n couples to be able to legally marry too. There should be anyone that can "pretend" to be married and then walk away with the consequence of saying I am divorced!

But dont get me wrong, if someone marries and their spouse becomes abusive to the other spouse or kids, that is different but dont we kind of know what we are marrying???

That is what I think . . . I am married and going on 3 years. I am proud of my marriage and I cannot wait to say I have been married for 50 years to my soulmate! Sometimes I get so mad and angry but at the end of the day I am d**n lucky to have married such a man!

Answer 3

You’re supposed to honor your commitments because someone who cannot keep their commitment is really not good for much else.  Marriage is a promise, one of the most important promises you’ll ever make.  It should be kept as long as one does not betray the other in an important way.  It also encourages people to work through problems and not just give up.

If you are not one that can keep such a promise, or you are unable to compromise and work through things, then you shouldn’t get married.  There are unmarried couples who live long lives together.  Or you can have the neo-Pagan ceremony that you mentioned.  Marriage is not for everyone.

I have something to say to your other responders.  What people need to remember is when you get married “’til death do us part” is not the only promise made.  You also promise to love one another for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health.  Divorce does not only happen because two people rushed into marriage, or because they are taking their promises too lightly.  Sometimes one person abuses the other.  Or sometimes one will abandon the other in their moment of need.  Or break an important trust.

I have a husband like that.  He doesn’t just abandon me in my moment of weakness, he lashes out.  Literally.  I’m not going to go into details here.  And after it’s all over, when I try to talk to him about it, he denies it ever happened.  Which ends the conversation immediately, there’s nothing else I can say.  This has happened time and time again.  So if you can’t talk about it, you can’t work it out … and since there are no consequences for him it’s pretty much a guarantee that he’s going to do it yet again.

We’re still married at the moment.  And I still care for him … we’ll be sitting and talking some days and have a good laugh, and I’ll look at him and feel sad … there’s no way I can trust him again.  I didn’t leave at first because I wasn’t able to.  Now I’m waiting to leave because there are too many loose ends … I just can’t leave yet.  I can only hope that I don’t get seriously ill or seriously injured before I can get the heck away from him.

So … don’t make generalizations about divorced people guys.  Some things really are unfixable.

Answer 4

If you feel this way about the commitment, why would you even make it?  The pagan ritual is pointless.  Why even go through the ritual if you can just leave when you want?  It sounds like a waste of time to me.

I think marriage is sacred because that's the way it was set up by God, but I know there aren't a lot of Christians on here so I guess I can see why so many on here think it's not.  While I don't think marriage is pointless at all, the way many people approach it today, they are making it pointless.  

Answer 5

You tell us, you're the one with all the experience.

Yes it does make more sense. Tracey, the leaders of what ever time did their best to keep order, that is why they wanted us bound together, it helped us to evolve, if they didn't the world would have been one big Gerry Springer episode.

Answer 6

In a typical marriage ceremony, they use the words(Till death do us part!). It is meant to be a commitment to their perspective spouse,and to God. With the belief that marriage is forever! Too many people look for an easy way out of any commitments by making excuses.Jobs,dates,etc. Dissolution of marriage is not supposed to be that easy. In the Army,soldiers are expected to finish the commitments of their enlistment,but some wimp out when the going gets tough.

Answer 7

I have seen old couples who have suffered infidelity, abuse, who have been together for "the sake of kids", even tough when the kids have already grown up.

My uncle split up with her wife because she was unfaithful, but my grandma never stop to pray for them, so they can came back together,  my cousin and his husband split up as a commoon arrengement, and her father stop to talking her.

I can't believe those situation still happening this days.

Sometimes divorce is not your fault, and yet you have to carry with the guilty.

Answer 8

Neo-pagans have a ceremony in which they promise to stay together "as long as love lasts." Doesn't this make WAY more sense?

Wow!  So this must be a "deeper truth" than until death do us part.

It must be a "deeper truth" than in good times and bad.

All this "right" and "wrong" stuff is just outdated.  Let's just live by the "deeper truths" our world has to offer us.

Answer 9

I may have verbalized the marriage vows (twice) but in my heart I knew it would last only as long as it was good and when it wasn't good anymore, it was in its death throes.  

Answer 10

I completely disagree.

It's far better to show children that family relationships are sacred (i.e., not merely to satisfy our Epicureanistic desires), that no relationship is problem free; yet family members (including their mother) are owed loved despite inevitable problems, differences, illness, etc.  Indeed, those relationships are worth making sacrifices for.

The view that relationships are only useful for one's personal and immediate gratification is one reason children are with increasing frequency growing up in unstable, loveless households, with only one parent or no parents (raised by grandparents, aunts/uncles, foster homes, etc).

That cold calculating view of relationships comes back to haunt people in time ----- ever wonder why some elderly are surrounded by loved ones and die with dignity whereas others are confined to sub-par nursing homes suffering early dementia and multiple bed sores due to neglect with nary a visitor?  

They taught their children that relationships are for one's personal convenience.  One reaps what one sows.

Answer 11

I dont believe in marriage, I believe in love.

marriage is a tradition made by men just to have certain rights inside the law of two people bonding in society.

otherwise the rest is bull.

Answer 12

Nothing is sacred about it. Christian-style marriage has just been ingrained into society so long people think there is no other way. Living with someone out of a foolish duty is madness.

I don't care much for paganism, it's just a replacement for religious belief, but its approach to living together makes more sense.

More pertinent is 'why' people don't stay together in the first place: money problems, infidelity, living seperate lives. Marriage can't solve these on it's own.

Answer 13

And even the neo-pagans don't need the ceremony. They just have to prove their commitment to each other, everyone else be damned. I've heard of couples with children who have stayed together forever, without getting married.

Answer 14

I agree, I will go for the pagan ceremony in the woods.

Answer 15

Marriage in some form has existed since prehistoric times.

The current incarnation of marriage, based on Judeo-Christian principles, is as much a land/property contract as it is a romantic promise to stay together through thick and thin.   Before the current era of rampant divorce, a marriage contract helped to ensure that any children born within  the marriage would inherit the family property.  Bear in mind, life expectancy was much shorter as recently as 100 years ago.  

Marriage is only as sacred as the couple make it.

Answer 16

What's the point of having a ceremony in which a couple promises to say together "as long as love lasts"? I mean that's not really making a commitment at all. Basically they're saying "We'll stay together until it gets too hard, then we'll break up and we won't have to feel guilty about it since we were never really committed in the first place." Lame.

Married people should try to honor their commitment. Or even better, they should try to realize what a commitment being married means before they even THINK about doing it. The problem with people now-a-days is that they rush into marriage without thinking it through and then they don't understand why they're so unhappy.

Of course, there are exceptions. Divorce happens but it would happen less if people didn't rush into marriage or get married for the wrong reasons.

Answer 17

Marriage is made sacred by the married.  When you vow to remain together "'til death do us part," you MAKE it sacred by making the vow.  It's kind of like how any promise is sacred - if you promise to do something, then backpedal on that promise, you've showed that your word isn't valuable and is subject to change.

Obviously people shouldn't stay in unhappy marriages (they also shouldn't run screaming at the first sign of trouble, either).  But I think the problem that most people have with the frequency of divorce is that people who get divorces shouldn't have been married in the first place.  If you're in a rotten marriage, you should get divorced, but more importantly, if you're in a hasty relationship, you need to spend a LONG time together figuring out each other's faults with an open mind to breaking up before you start talking about "'til death do us part."

Promising to stay together "as long as love lasts" is perhaps a more honest, less optimistic vow, but really you're not saying anything that's not always true in any relationship there, so my question there would be 'why the ceremony?'

Answer 18

Of course it makes way more sense.  More sense than people had back in the days when the "instutution" of Christian marriage was invented.  It's just that our laws and contracts haven't yet caught up to our evolution.  It will, no worries.

Peace

Answer 19

When the commitment is insecure and people cannot trust it.  Then they are afraid to make that commitment in the first place.  And even when they make the commitment.  Then they don't commit themselves fully to each other.  Because they must be ready to separate from each other at any time, at the whim of their partner or their own whim.

The more insecure and the less sacred marriage is.  The less sense it makes for anyone to get married and have a family.   As many divorce records show, marriage often is a very costly relationship for both spouses.  And it doesn't make sense to invest so much of yourself in a relationship that can disappear at any time without any benefit or reward for you.

Marriage works well only when it's a sacred promise that people try to honor.

Answer 20

"The secret marriage vow is never spoken.

The secret marriage never can be broken."