"I, [insert name here], will respect thee in thy successes and failures, will care for thee with great warmth, joy and compassion, will nurture thee and grow with thee throughout the seasons of life."
- Sample marriage vow
"The conception of two people living together for 25 years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep"
- Alan Herbert, British journalist and writer (18901971)
Ah, yes - self-written marriage vows. That's one of a series of treacly trends we boomers imposed on the rest of the world in the neon afterglow of the '60s. Back then, today really was the first day of the rest of our lives. We were wide-eyed and sweetly naïve - confident that practicality would never interfere with the tender, bubbly sensation we felt with our lovers. Then mortgages and mothers-inlaw elbowed their way into our kitchens and grabbed us by the throat. As we desperately tried to manoeuvre a path through a minefield of mundane daily living, we turned to experts for wisdom.
"Falling in love is not the same thing as being in love. Embrace the change and know that it takes effort," suggested guru-of-all-things Dr. Phil McGraw.
"[Relationships] take time, effort and energy," agreed love expert and psychologist Mort Fertel. "Most importantly, they take wisdom. You have to know what to do [to succeed at them.]"
Ha! Like their advice worked! Half the marriages didn't survive the onslaught.
Many of us remain idealistic, but we can be forgiven if our inner pragmatists have also surfaced. Now, when we partner up in our dotage - as so many of us are apparently doing - we know to temper and revise our expectations. Sure, sure. The love thing and all that.
Goes without saying. But let's get real. Life is often about leftovers and laundry - and perhaps our prom-ises should reflect that truth. So here are some suggestions for co-habiting vows in 2012.
- I promise thee that I will faithfully eradicate from our cupboards all Tupperware bottoms that have no lids and all lids that have no bottoms. This vow also applies to thy 168 yogurt containers, no matter how useful they might turn out to be as herb pots, as thou hast repeatedly said.
- I promise thee that I will never complain about how thou stacks the dishwasher, even if thy system clearly wastes space or the cutlery ends up spotted. I also vow to rarely mention when thou forgets - no matter how often I tell thee - that the heirloom fine bone china left to me by my sainted mother should always be hand washed.
- I swear to thee that I will never question thy beer consumption, provided thou never questions my visits to manicurists, eyebrow pluckers and hairstylists, given that the costs involved in these, our favourite respective activities, are likely equal.
- I vow that I will watch with thee one movie per week that has guns in it if thou agrees to watch with me one movie per week in which flowers are involved.
- I promise to indulge thee when thou bringeth home that bust of Napoleon left out on the sidewalk (someone clearly didn't understand the value of objet d'art, thou saideth), so long as thou agrees not to put it on the living room coffee table. I pledge to leave space for this monstrosity in the hall closet.
- "Dost thou really need all those books?" thou asks. I vouchsafe that I will scan the shelves for volumes that may be stashed in the hall closet along with the Napoleon bust, leaving room, possibly, for one or two of your own tomes.
If this sounds glib or cynical, it isn't meant to. Many of us are quietly delighted to find ourselves in affairs of the heart that appear to be working despite the odds and our advancing age. The vows are more a reminder to bring humour and a good nature to dealing with petty annoyances.
They were the sorts of issues that likely brought down past relationships when we were young hotheads.
We are not sheep, Alan Herbert suggested. There are bound to be words, from time to time. How much better to make those words kind - and funny.
