So what you are saying Boot is that signing a marriage certificate is not worth the paper it’s written on, and the vows are just empty promises made on the spur of the moment?
Over the last 20 years or so (perhaps even further back than that) marriage and family life has been devalued, first by allowing weddings to take place anywhere you desire, instead of a church. Due to the latest fashion, religion has fallen out of favour because everyone believes they can do without it. It’s a luxury that imposes laws and rules that nobody wants or can afford anymore in a permissive world.
But as religion dies a death, so do the morals, decency and the family life in society that religion provided.
We are living in a world of “People should be allowed to identify as anything they want, live and let live, and what harm can it do so let them get on with it” But it does do harm, it is damaging the very foundations of community and family life, and as the next generation see the neglect of society, they too will carry it on until there is no marriage or family life just a lust for the material things in life.
Whether this has occurred by accident or design I don’t know, but family life and hetrosexual activity is being eroded away by being continually bombarded by LGBT etc. Same sex couples are being positively encouraged by pride events and the media, especially advertising. Our young people will grow up not knowing right from wrong or who they really are. The Christian faith, and indeed the Muslim faith, among others, see this as wrong and are being confused by the ramblings of people like the woke Justin Welby…
You don’t need an agreement to co-habit - but what some married people on this thread do not seem to understand is that even if a couple do not feel the need to have a marriage contract for them to live together, a lot of our country’s financial legislation was built around couples being married.
Things have been changing gradually, making it easier for couples who don’t want traditional marriage contracts to still be able to give each other financial security but it’s been a long drawn out journey.
And, of course, in the old days, one wasn’t given a choice of which vows to make in the marriage contract - it was a standard “repeat after me” text which had to be said to achieve that financial security which was denied to co-habiting couples.
My partner and I never particularly wanted to get married - we both felt marriage was an outdated institution which didn’t mean much to us.
We were quite happy co-habiting. It was only after 10 years of happy co-habiting I discovered that if I died before I retired, my employment Pension scheme would only automatically pay out “death-in-service” benefits to a spouse.
They would only pay out to a co-habiting partner if they could prove they had a financial need. That didn’t seem very fair, when my partner had set his Private Pension up with me as the beneficiary if he died.
So, it was this country’s legalities surrounding occupational Pensions which prompted us to get married.
Coincidentally, we were married for the same number of years we had co-habited before we parted company by mutual agreement after 20 years.
It was nobody’s “fault” and I don’t consider anyone was to blame. As we grew older and his kids and our foster kids had grown up and left home, we found we started to want different lifestyles. He found someone who shared his interests and I found I preferred to live on my own, so we’ve been happily living apart for about 15 years now.
This country’s legal system would also allow us to get divorced if we ever chose to - no matter what other folk think we “should” or “shouldn’t” do.
To be honest, I don’t give a flying fig what anyone else thinks about the vows my husband and I made to each other - they are personal to us and we are at peace with each other - we are happy in our own lives and it does not affect anyone else.
Actually, No. I did not say that at all. I was just saying which two bits of the marriage ceremony have to be recited to make it a legally binding marriage.
The rest is optional.
I think divorce is not associated to the start of the changes in our society today. Divorce for the general public has been possible since the mid 1850s. Long before any of these modern changes to society started to happen.
The last 20 years? - and the rest!
I have old family wedding photos of couples coming out of the Registry Office dating back to the 1930s and 1940s.
In fact, Registry Office Weddings have been allowed since 1836 - and so they should be.
There’s no way I would ever have gone to a church to get married - I have never believed in the existence of a god.
My marriage took place in one too because this old partially observant Jew married a partially observant Christian. The RO seemed the best arrangement to obtain that legal document, so the RO it was. That was over 56 yrs ago without a single days regret. There was no time for any kind of pledges etc, so after the brief marriage statements and signing of the register etc, we went swiftly to a pub for an hours get together and recited these words together. I know them off by heart and this what we said With hearts full of joy and awe we stand before God, linking our past to our future and uniting our lives. We consecrate ourselves to one another, entering into a sacred covenant of love, trust and commitment. We promise to cherish, honour and support each other, striving ever to be loving, tolerant, patient, honest, fair and loyal partners. Respecting our differences and sharing our strengths, may we together meet life’s challenges. May we always remember our sense of humour and may laughter be ever present in our lives. Nurtured by our marriage, may our souls blossom, our talents flower, and our dreams bear fruit. United in body and spirit, we will weave a tapestry of celebration, sanctifying the cycle of our years and the seasons of our lives. May God protect and guide us on our life’s journey, blessing our hearts with happiness, our minds with wisdom, and our home with abundance and peace. May we always share these blessings with our loved ones and all those whom we meet.
There weren’t any ‘till death do us part’ nonsense, just those simply meaningful words above.
My Father was a Private Investigator back in the early 1960s. Sounds a glamorous occupation maybe but not so in reality. A big part of his job was getting evidence for divorce petitions. This was most often about adultery.
He had to track down the guilty party and stake out the place where he/she were spending time with someone other than their husband/wife. Watch them go into a meeting place or house and watch them and come out again. This sometimes took all night as can be imagined. Once presented with the evidence, couples were invited to make statements for a divorce. Most would do because I suppose by that time, they’d already made the choice to go off permanently together.
Court action was needed for a divorce in those days. People had to go there to get a divorce. My Dad would have to stand up in a London Law Courts dock and give his logged observations as evidence for the divorce petitioner. The judge granting a decree nisi when satisfied he should do so.
Some couples would run away together, often to far flung places. Once their whereabouts had been traced, my Dad would make arrangements to go there and take statements for the Court. The furthest place he ever had to go was Tunisia …but evidence/statements were needed, so off he went.
I was a young teenager at the time and sometimes, he would take me with him. Not the stakeout jobs but purely for the travelling part of it. Cornwall was one location and the furthest being a Scottish border town. This couple took pity on me sitting in the car and invited me in for tea and biscuits. The place was so remote that it didn’t have electricity but they seemed happy enough. I was even offered a holiday there but it looked pretty bleak to me so I stayed quiet.
Just shows that if divorce is a sign of decline, it started a long time ago before any perceived decline was taking place. Right back in the early 60s when we all thought the country was great.
Edit: Thinking further, his occupation might even have been a few years earlier than I said.
And back in those days, even if neither party was committing adultery, if they both wanted to divorce, one of them would have to agree to be “the guilty party” and would sometimes “set up” some evidence of adultery just to get the divorce done because there was no legal recognition of a “no fault divorce”
The whole divorce system was geared towards playing the blame game, so divorces and custody battles were much more likely to be acrimonious.
I much prefer the modern options of “no fault divorce” and mediation to encourage couples to sort out custody and financial issues as amicably as possible.
Do you actually have to make any vows when you get married? Surely it is a choice the couple make, certainly at a civil ceremony. The Marriage Certificate says nothing about vows, it is just a certificate.
My naturalisation certificate on the other hand is for life.
One great thing for divorce in Australia was the Whitlam Government introducing “No fault divorce”. The only grounds for divorce in Australia is 12 months separation, no need to prove who is at fault.
My divorces cost me a grand total of $240 each (actually the first one might have been cheaper I can’t remember) However there has to be a registered property settlement first - that is the expensive part
I worked with a bloke who was married 3 or 4 times, when you asked him how he could afford it he said, “…half of $0 is $0”
Let’s face it, a lot of us get married in lust and mistake it for getting married for love, I know I did!
If you leave out the religious aspect, then marriage is essentially a legal, business contract and if our laws allow for that business contract to be dissolved, then so be it
And like dissolving a limited company, as long as it’s done correctly, no reason you can’t start up another one
I think there are three elements (to marriage, not doing a 69!)
There is the personal one, loving someone and making a promise to stay with them. It doesn’t matter who witnesses that, God, the registrar or no one. If you are genuine at the time, breaking that promise is a big thing, but I think justifiable in some circumstances
The legal element, as I said, a contract that is dissolvable in law
And the religious element, a promise made before God. Only applicable to believers, I suppose, is it a sin, that’s between you and your God. Churches can refuse second marriages etc of course, and then people can decide if that’s the type of church they want to belong to
It’s worth considering other countries and religions of course. Women tied into oppressive and abusive marriages by religious diktat and culture
I can’t believe what l am reading from some of these smug, ‘so perfect’ husbands.
Yet some of them are the biggest flirts on here and go ‘window shopping’.
Why stay in an unhappy marriage? When it’s gone, it’s gone! No point in flogging a dead horse!
You only come this way once so why stay in a miserable marriage as it’s not fair on either of you.
Only the minority get married, or are still married these days.
With hearts full of joy and awe we stand before God, linking our past to our future and uniting our lives. We consecrate ourselves to one another, entering into a sacred covenant of love, trust and commitment. We promise to cherish, honour and support each other, striving ever to be loving, tolerant, patient, honest, fair and loyal partners. Respecting our differences and sharing our strengths, may we together meet life’s challenges. May we always remember our sense of humour and may laughter be ever present in our lives. Nurtured by our marriage, may our souls blossom, our talents flower, and our dreams bear fruit. United in body and spirit, we will weave a tapestry of celebration, sanctifying the cycle of our years and the seasons of our lives. May God protect and guide us on our life’s journey, blessing our hearts with happiness, our minds with wisdom, and our home with abundance and peace. May we always share these blessings with our loved ones and all those whom we meet.
