If You Want A Marriage That Lasts, Make One Simple Shift In Your Wedding Vows
Start your marriage off right.
Ave Calvar | Unsplash No matter who you are, when you get married, you enter the union, wanting your relationship to last forever. You want to know that the love, trust, hope, and energy you put in will be good enough to establish a lasting bond for the rest of your lives.
Hoping things will turn out a certain way doesn't typically work. For a marriage to withstand its inevitable challenges, both partners must commit to working together as a team.
Using what we know about attachment theory can make writing wedding vows more natural and intuitive—and it starts with examining how to write them.
As a couple's therapist, I've gained an understanding of what marriages are ultimately about. I can predict which challenges and issues will bring a relationship down. For prevention, couples need to create a secure functioning relationship from the beginning rather than waiting until it's a few years down the road and they're trying to fix their relationship.
One of the best ways I've found for men and women to do this is by framing the meaning and purpose of their marriage within their wedding vows.
When people think of traditional wedding vows, what first comes to mind is the repeated response of "I do." But the very nature of this statement — thinking in terms of "I do" — is two individuals, each focused on a one-person system.
When you stop to consider what a marriage is, it's the smallest unit of society — the union between two separate individuals, two autonomous, free-thinking different brains, forging a life together.
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When you shift the mindset of your marriage vows from "I do" to "we do," you are now focusing on forming a society.
Marriages that survive have a clear purpose — there's something we, as a couple, serve. There's a reason for being together, and it's beyond physical attraction, romantic love, and similar interests.
Those things are important, but for a union to be secure-functioning, it had to be built around something more substantial. There must be some reason for being together that is meaningful for you both in the long run.
Establishing this sense of purpose requires working together to consciously acknowledge your core driving principles — a code by which you can live and serve yourself individually and as a couple. Consider grounding values such as mutuality, collaboration, fairness, justice, and mutual sensitivity.
Marriage vows should be framed as a declaration of "we-ism.
A "we-ism" is a clear statement of what "we" as a couple believes in, agree upon, and do, such as the following examples:
We put our relationship first.
We tell each other everything.
We have each other's backs in private and in public.
We protect each other.
We are the first to know things about and from one another.
These mutually beneficial, we-focused principles are what vows should be and currently are not. Whether you are currently writing your wedding vows or you've been married for some time and want to re-establish your connection, ask yourself these questions:
- What are we?
- What culture do we represent?
- What do we stand for?
- What are the principles that we live by?
- What do we do as a couple, and what do we do not do, no matter what?
Doing this as a team makes life easier. It's how civilizations form. Otherwise, we'd all be killing each other, right? We'd be doing whatever we wanted. That's human nature.
So, how can two people live a long, happily married life together in harmony? By making agreements, by pointing in the same direction, by having a vision, a reason for being, a purpose.
We all need other people. We don't do anything well by ourselves. It's time to realize that and make dependency and interdependency good words again.
One of the greatest gifts you can give each other is making sure your marriage starts with togetherness and is built to function securely — and that starts with your marriage vows.
You will minimize each other’s stress and optimize each other’s health, knowing you can rely on the relationship you’ve forged with the person you love. Together, you will be an impressive force.
Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a clinician, teacher, and developer of A Psychological Approach To Couples Therapy (PACT). He specializes in working with couples and individuals who wish to be in relationships.