To honour and obey? Bollocks!
I know my life has now moved into its next phase, as we were invited to a wedding on Saturday and not by the marrying couple but rather by the belligerent father of the groom!
Anyway, my husband and I duly attended the wedding and was mortified with the proceeding sermon, based on the women’s duty to honour and obey, submit and love, oh and respect came later, her husband. Yes, you heard me right! This is a young couple, in their mid twenties being bound by some antiquated ideas of a bye gone era, and without flinching they both said ‘I do’. I sat with needles in my bum waiting for the bit about ‘any objections speak now or forever hold your peace’, but it never came! Is that legal?
The worst part, only in the finishing did it touch a little on the husband’s duties, announcing that he should endeavour to love and lead his wife well – and that was it!!!! Shock and horror (I am currently choking on the mere thought).
I am part of a 100% equal marital partnership and am way too selfish (even back then) to have ever agreed to anything less. This couple are local Afrikaners, a notoriously conservative bunch, especially in my area, but that is no excuse.
You have to honour and love yourself before you get married and I don’t think they could possibly be there yet, or they wouldn't have agreed - surely?
I hope I’m not opening a can of worms, sorry to those who don’t agree ... but this is my blog, after all.
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78 Comments
I'm still pissed you sold me for 25p by the way. I want a divorce.
By and large, Anita and I have manged it. Not always, of course, but enough, I guess. We celebrated our Ruby Anniversary this year and the birth of our seventh grandchild. Neither of us begrudge the promises we made. Antiquated? Well, we are both pushing on a bit now, I suppose. But, bygone? I trust they shall never be that. They work well; maybe better than any alterative. We will gladly keep on keeping them until death us do part :-)
On the one hand, I'm with you 100%. Marriage should be an equal partnership and the service should reflect that. Can't recall the precise wording when I got married but think we said the exact same thing. Not sure what the civil partnership vows are.
On the other, the couple are a product of their environment and upbringing and in that sense, they may never get to the place you want them to be. And they might just be happy as they are. Probably best you didn't object on the day.
Perhaps if you changed the syntax of your title slightly, it would be just as good a fit: To honour and obey bollocks.
I like Tony's reflections. Reminds me of Khalil Gibran's words: let there be spaces in your togetherness.
But yes, the gender politics wasn't quite right for 1990. But the vicar didn't mind a bit if we tinkered (which I'm sure you're not supposed to) We ended up with exactly what we wanted...
I luv the title change Mark!
Well done with the Ruby anniversary, Tony, that is fantastic and just proof that marriage is just as necessary and success at providing happiness as ever
Besides, we all know that you only have a church wedding because it looks better in the photographs... ;)
I certainly prefer these words to some of the made up 'clap trap' that seems to be gaining popularity!
Here see this dictionary meanings of Obey:
Oxford English Blokey dictionary: Obey: Do as your bleedin' told, tell me you would love me to go paint balling all weekend and come home still pissed and covered in god knows what and have my dinner on the table next to the engine I was fixing for my motorbike. Give me sex when I want even if its once a month!
Collins word gem ladies dictionary: Obey: You do what I say even if I was the one to say obey, I choose everything for the house and garden you do all the work, and yes whining and crying will always mean I get my way!
Oh boy there should be some fall out here.....I hope!
Me, for a start. If what he wanted/said/believed/wanted of me, was something I disagreed with, I'd have no respect for myself if I didn't stick to what I believed in. Though of course, he's welcome to try to explain why he's right and I ought to obey, just as I'd try to explain where he was wrong.
It's not the ideal in the vows, it's the fact that it's not reciprocal: obey one way, lead the other. Why? Sure they should both trust each other - perhaps to the point of obeying when they're still not sure why, on occasions (she knows more about what's wrong with the car, he knows more about which asparagus to buy.) If they can't trust each other at that level, then maybe they shouldn't get married. It's the gender difference that sticks in the craw, not the sentiment.
I reapeat, however, that the vicar was a really lovely man. Just very traditional.
Dear God! Even thirty years ago, that's fairly horrifying.
The marriage vows for the world wide wed should actually read…
‘I promise to love, honour and e-bay.’
My mum married into a very conservative, almost cult like Christian Sect. As a new wife, she had to wear her hair long and tied back, only sleeved dresses below to knee allowed, wearing a head covering in church, demanding the absolute abidance from women on every count. My parents had a very turbulent marriage, divorcing shortly after my elder sisters birth, this would be mid 1970's. Un fortunately, the church refused to recognise the divorce forcing my parents to remarry, with me as the result, some six years later. My grandparents, eventually tore my mum out the unhealthy environment, returning to her routes within a Methodist community. She divorced my father again when I was two and stayed so until forever ....
It is a long sad story, and I won't bore you with the details, but the wording in your marriage ceremony is important, there is just too much that can go wrong. The ministers should take responsibility ensuring the couple understand their vows, after all they are binding, not just a meringue dress and those chapel perfect photo's. The situation of my parents should never have happen.
I have a Methodist minister in my family and know the great lengths to which they go to educate 'uncommitted' couples, till such times as they are committed, but not all seems to agree. This is important and this is where religion comes in (and let me make myself perfectly clear, I am as questioning and suspicious as many other people on this subject!), but isn't this supposed to at least be the first step in the right direction, toward eternal happiness.
This young couple, both come from broken homes, with step-parents and step-siblings by the dozen, surely they should know better? That should a least be one thing you owe yourself.
This is not a religious dig at all, not in any way ...
I am really having a dig at my local surrounds and the dogmatic intolerances, its confines claustrophobic - thank goodness for the open-minds of my fellow Cloudies.
My WIP, works through many of these issues, being extremely personal to my experiences, set within a fictional story.
Just for the record, I am a 50% partner in a successful marriage!
I have been married to the same guy for twenty four years and trust me, there have been a number of occasions when this vow has been tested to its limit; I'm no angel and he's no saint.
In archetypal lawyerly fashion, prior to the big day, we picked apart the implications of this vow and discussed at length the aftermath which would inevitably follow should this clause ever have to be put into effect.
We chose to interpret the ‘to obey’ vow by incorporating the other vows which precede it, as follows:
If the man cherishes his wife’s opinion and honours her enough to take it into account and the woman cherishes her husband’s opinion and honours him enough to take it into account, then the rule to obey is never really called into action; a compromise is almost always available and should be reached. It has worked for us.
Feel free to vomit at will.
(Loved the first comment Wrath. It made me chuckle.)
After ten years together and continuous pressure on me from everyone (including my son), I decided to say "yes" and get married. We decided to get married in Mexico (furthest place possible, away from my family). I didn't understand any of the vows as they were all in Spanish (which was for the best otherwise I would not have agreed). This was the single biggest mistake of my life, we should have stayed as we were. My husband changed, he felt more secure which showed in his behaviour towards me. I've always had a successful career and been independent.....until my accident. This is when your spouse is supposed to step up, not step off! Everyday he reminded me of the fact that I was not earning enough, doing enough etc. Most men (in my experience) use marriage to make themselves feel better / more secure / in control.
Sorry, getting a bit worked up now (hahaha). I respect anyone that can make it work or has great memories of that extra special day, but you don't need everyone elses approval or a piece of paper for that. :)
Kiki, you have a difficult story and I can honestly feel your hurt. When I was sick, my husband stuck to me like glue for the first few month then ditched me like a hot potato for the next 2 years. I thought I couldn’t forgive him, but we have come out the other side stronger than ever. I had to realise the illness was not just mine but his too, and a very rude awakening into manhood!
It was presided over by the most miserable vicar whom I have ever encountered. He began the proceedings by announcing that one out of every three marriages ends in divorce and so the odds were 'not looking good' and that the happy couple would need all the help that they could muster. This was followed by a tactless dig about the collection which would follow; I think his words were, "Remember, 50p does not buy a mars bar."
What a happy day that was! No really - we couldn't stop laughing at the irony.
I'm truly happy for the happy couples who've said as much above; but is your happiness down to the promises you made? Or would you have tried as hard whether or not you'd promised?
I do believe there is psychlogical value in making a public statement of intent/goodwill in front of your friends and family - and it certainly feels different to plain old living together; and all rites of passage need marking - I believe that rituals are part of our psyche and something that happens in every society since time began, shouldn't be dismissed too readily. But love marriages are a relatively new concept in the west (+/- 100 years?), and still quite rare in some other cultures. A wedding was (still is in places?) principally a political alliance, a joining of families, a prudence to safeguard future children. It strikes me that there's little more than random chance of honestly keeping such peculiar promises, so why make them in the first place? Does it really alter how you behave in the end?
P.S. I'm not trying to provoke, I'm quite interested in the answer because I don't know it.
Him 'Why did you do that?'
Her 'You told me to!'
Yeah, right. We mess up together, me'an'him.
This being said, I go through phases where I really doubt the whole institution altogether, but for me the process after the doubt makes my commitment stronger. I do completely know that Marco will be my husband for the rest of my life, of course unless he decides something different, in which case there will be fire and smoke coming from this mouth !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GB, The obedience vow seems like a bit of an irrelevance to me. Women will always get their own way regardless, won't they?
Beautifully phrased Choccers
Except it's not exactly obeying. It's just being sensible. If someone's got a better view of a matter it makes sense to defer to them. If husband sees something better - like "come on, we need a break, let's be selfish for once" - then a sensible wife will say "Okay, let's go!"
It's like a buddy movie, jogging along together, agreeing/disagreeing, deferring/not deferring, saying okay, groaning but agreeing anyway.
It's not the ideal in the vows, it's the fact that it's not reciprocal: obey one way, lead the other. Why? Sure they should both trust each other - perhaps to the point of obeying when they're still not sure why, on occasions (she knows more about what's wrong with the car, he knows more about which asparagus to buy.) If they can't trust each other at that level, then maybe they shouldn't get married. It's the gender difference that sticks in the craw, not the sentiment.
Gerry puts it very well, it seems to me, and others have implied the same. Marriage is a partnership of equals. I've already expanded on that, above.
"Tony, if God wanted men to be superior to women, why did he create nearly all of them to be so inadequate for the job? Respect where respect is due, I say." Ha ha, Chocko; touche :-) Of course, if you want a serious answer, your conditional clause is incorrect. God made men and women different, each with their roles to play, not one superior to the other. In God's eyes we are all equal. Sorry Chocko, you'll just have to come to terms with that - or embrace atheism ;-)
Actually the Bible gives a far, far stronger instruction to husbands regarding their wives than it does to wives regarding their husbands. Husbands are told to 'love your wife as you love yourself'. I'm not going to expound at length on all that that implies, but merely repeat, that if taken seriously, it is a profound undertaking very difficult to fulfil, but a very worthwhile aim, nonetheless. It will lead to a wonderful relationship where, as others have hinted above, the question of obeying or submitting (it seems these have come to have very emotive meanings in this day and age) would not arise - an equal partnership resolving any differences together.
I tend to agree that the words spoken at marriage ceremony matter not a jot. Often they are recited and paid no attention (or they're in Spanish!) What DOES matter is what is INTENDED. What the couple are really committing to in their hearts and minds. How they say it, or don't say it, is pretty irrelevant. What is vital, is that they do solemnly intend to... ...
For some, of course, the traditional wording actually helps them in this. For others, a different form of wording may be helpful. But the words have no magic effect. We have to mean them. That, I feel, is the commitment of marriage.
My youngest bother-in-law got married to an afrikaans girl, and I'm ashamed to say that even after thirty two years in this country I still couldn't understand most of it. I don't praat di taal lekker! I know she promised to obey him, but he is the one who does most of the housework etc, whilst she studies, so she has the whole thing sussed.
My hubby and I got married in a registry office, totally unromatic, it was a tax issue, we'd already been living together for two years. But it was a good job we didn't go for the whole white princess dress thing, not really my scene as you can probably tell by my profile pic, because I had a migraine and spent a lot of the day puking into a plastic bag. Not cool if you're wearing a long white dress!! Anyway that was 22 years ago, and we're still together, 50/50. I can't remember what our vows were, I could quite easily have said I would obey him, it would have been no biggie, I had my fingers crossed throughout the entire thing anyway. Point is I still love him to death, and probably would obey him, or at least go along with something if it meant that much to him.
Oh, and I made a huge gaff when we went for our interview for the farming job, the farmer's wife asked how long we'd be married, and I said, "About six months, but we've lived together for two years." I wanted her to know we were in a stable relationship, I didn't realise that she would start worrying about our immortal souls because we had lived in sin!!
I think the basic problem is that marriage began as a civil property contract between people who had more interest in survival than spiritual or moral scruples. The religious forms of service may even have come along as an antidote to a trade in people, I don't know. But every generation has stamped its values on ceremonial. Currently, the most important element seems to be the price tag on the reception.
There again, love marriages (often in the form of fancying exotic strangers over boring locals) are very good from a genetic diversity point of view. I don't know if the human race would have thrived so far if we'd all arranged our marriages to the extent of producing haemophilia (as per the Russian royal family) or suchlike.
'Hey, you do this for me ... obey me ... you said you would!' How sad would that kind of relationship be?
We get so little time together with our family and work committments, that I once joked to someone that we have to argue and shag at the same time! This isn't true though, coz we simply don't argue. Course we have disagreements, different points of view, but we don't rant and rave or fight and throw things at each other like we've seen other couples do.
In case you're wondering, we do shag. At a very rough estimate, in our 32 years together I'd say the latest score is,
Shags .............. 2,376
Arguments ....... 0
I bid you goodnight. It's my wife's birthday tomorrow, there's a good chance of number 2,377, but I won't argue if she says 'no', after all she doesn't have to 'obey' me.
I travelled alone in Asia when I was 18/19. People would sidle up to me in cafes and ask "is it true? In your society you let your people marry for love? How can this be?" At 18/19, I'd never considered that you could marry for anything else; the subsequent conversations made a deep impression on me - I'd never thought to justify it, yet I had to, and it made me think.
And obliquely, you're touching on a pet topic of mine - that what happens in literature - is what people would *like* to happen in their real lives, but doesn't. Barbara Cartland sold gazillions of books. Do you think any of them ever represented real life for anybody? Or was it confined to their dreams? Pure escapism from the reality of their real lives? QED. In the nicest possible way.
Male posters - award yourself points for not responding in kind to the thwack of Recovering Choc's glove across your cheek.
Female posters - ditto re the Unreasonable one.
It looks to me like there's much agreement about a bit of give and take being better than the notion of blind obedience. When the G&T balance is out of kilter (either way, by husband or wife) seems to be when trouble brews. Too much giving or taking might be the threshold at which one stops being 'nice to her' (to quote AlanP) or to yourself. I believe coalitions are the fashion these days...
However, tradition is often overlooked, especially these days. Not all, but much of it comes from the experience of generations learning a best practise, or at least, a way of doing something that worked pretty well for them. It means that future generations don't have to find their way by complete trial and error. Quite so much. Guidelines are good, but forcing everyone to abide by strict rules and wording cannot possibly work for all. A balance of traditional guidelines, and what two people who love each other feel would work for them, suggests, to me, a more likely happy outcome.
I'm glad I live in an era where I can question things without having a red hot poker shoved up my bum.
My comments were not intended to throw down the gauntlet to all men, only to those people (male or female) who actually believe that the possession of a Y chromosome automatically equips a person for authority over someone with two X chromosomes.
The bit about the pet was one of my tongue-in-cheek moments. And I did say I was in a belligerent mood :)
Marriage is totally for the benefit of women, anyway, to give them someone to blame everything on.
Women should marry each other (but still have sex with men) and pubs should be men only. That would work.
RC - I am still chuckling about your pet husband - hysterical!!!!! Sorry, all men out there, but come on you must admit that was funny?
I would like to bring the thread back to the point of the actual vows, as this is where the contention came from for me. If you are actually making a legal binding with someone, surely you should at least have the decency to actually listen and understand them? And when you say ‘I do’, to actually be responsible for those vows. A union of any sort is precarious at best, demanding absolute love and respect. Isn’t this what we should ask from our vows, not ‘honour and obey’?
Oh and, Gerry and everyone else, the man does equally ‘obey’ in many marriages, but my issue is then why do the marriage vows not then follow, by asking be man to obey the groom? Why is it only imposed on the women?
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Some fairly smart contextual stuff going on in socialgo. Not quite what Green polka intended I'm guessing. Now where is this Mariupol place anyway.
Horror of all horrors! Tell you friend, RB, to get her head read.
Ron - I think the worst in men and the worst in women is when they are in single-sex groups. I think that's when they're most horrible about the opposite sex and harder still on their own. Irrespective of gender, it's hard being one of the troops and then to become the boss - a difficult transition for all. Hardest perhaps if you've been one of an all male or all female gang - familiarity breeds comtempt and all that.
Perhaps vows should be renewed every few years?
'I promise to love, honour and hoover more frequently.
And I promise to love, honour and put my laundry in the basket.'
Not identical, but perhaps more meaningful to the couple concerned?
"I promise to go down the pub."
The point of interest here is that I bet you can guess which one is male, and which female.
I love the newly proposed vows, Mark, I will carry them in my backpack and impressed their importance on anyone willing to listen, after all who else can effective work a hoover!
And Wrath I am pretty sure I can figure out who says what, it was s dead giveaway, those exacts words have come from my husband’s mouth on many occasions.
The bit about same sex groups, is one of my pet topics, I explore it in my WIP. A gaggle of women can only be compared to piranhas, feverishly devouring anything in their wake. There should be warning signs surrounding any posse. And then, I absolutely believe men invented the term ‘pierre pressure’ as they witting coerce each other to down copious pints of beer consecutively, and in this country, that can be a lot!
I just wanted to add that I 'obeyed' too. *dodges burning bras* Of course I was my husband's 'equal', (nobody would have dared say otherwise ha-ha) and I was a young, 'high-flying' professional; independent and confident. I was also a committed, communicating Christian and wanted to use that particularly meaningful and beautiful marriage service. Some of the posts above show that the meaning of that obey is (sadly) still wrongly interpreted by the 'unchurched'. It is a purely theological 'obey' - the service is referring to the union betwixt Christ (the Groom) and His Church (the Bride). (And no I didn't mind not being the 'Christ'!) My vicar was delighted to have the opportunity during the sermon to explain it - following the audible(!) gasps as I said it!
I think life's too short to get worked up about someone else's choice of wedding/vows. People should say and do what they choose as a couple - it's all good-intentions and promises to love.
PS. Read what you will into the past tense of my thread.... x
He said. I will love you and lead you in the ways of god and Jesus.
She said 'I will cook, sow, clean and take care of you and do everything you say. If you beat me it will be the will of god and I will deserve it...
Can you imagine our faces!!!!
And thanks, Autumn, for explaining the Christian origin of the wording, which is why it's so meaningful for Christians, but perhaps not always so for non-believers.
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