Let’s revisit the marriage vows you espoused in front of god, family, your community, your friends, and your wife.
Here is the Protestant wedding vows from my marriage to my now ex wife:
The vows: "I, ___, take thee, ___, to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith."
Yep, big talk here guys. I swore all of this at the ripe age of 23. I did my absolute best to abide by my vows until I filed for divorce in September of 2022 after 15 years of marriage.
I remember talking to my fiancé about what my plan was and it largely centered around my service in the Army. At the time the war in Iraq was in it’s deadliest year during the infamous “Surge” and the war in Afghanistan was ramping up as well. I knew that I’d be deployed for a year on and a year off for the foreseeable future. I absolutely did my best to ensure my young 21 year old soon to be bride understood the rigors and challenges that military spouses have. I was more correct than I could have imagined. What I could have never predicted was her slow descent into alcohol addiction and mental health crisis. I ignored some red flags to begin with but, I cannot regret it as I largely had a great marriage and was blessed with three incredible children.
One thing we don’t think through before marriage is the totality of these vows. You’re swearing that no matter how hard things get you’re going to support your spouse. We are blinded by love or if you’ve been saving yourself physically for marriage you are probably super focused on getting to bed after the wedding reception to consummate the marriage. The vows have 0 contingencies for infidelity, substance abuse, bad behavior, dead bedrooms, all of that stuff. The most consequential decision most men will ever make in their entire lives is deciding to get married and who they are getting married to.
The reality is that NO ONE can fully predict what challenges you two will encounter along the way. If you married young what can be predicted is that you will grow either together or you will grow apart. We need to start educating and better preparing ourselves and our children for this. Marriage intertwines families and creates a new one, it intermingles finances and worldly assets and debts and has the potential to either be one of the best things in your life, fizzle out into apathy, or become a daily nightmare you can’t wake up from only to be followed by the potential for a messy divorce.
I’m a big fan of revisiting these marriage vows annually. It’s something I deeply regret not doing in my marriage. It ultimately wouldn’t have mattered but, it would have made me think at what I need to do to be at my best and I would hope any spouse would look at it the same way.
Go into your filing cabinet and dig up the marriage script that you hopefully saved from your ceremony. Go through it with your wife. Bond over this. Think about those vows and the challenges you have now in your marriage and the predicable things that we all have coming for us (health issues, empty nest, menopause, death of parents). These are all predictable events, and our actions need to align with our words.
You can’t see the complete future of your marriage. What is the measure of your collective resolve to work through the tough challenges that life presents us? Marriage is a huge risk, and some would argue it’s a fool’s bet for men of the modern age.
How committed are the both of you in making this relationship worth staying in now that you’ve been married for decades?
Time for you to both revisit your vows.