Do you assume that everyone has the same wedding vows?

No. Not at all. Not the exact same words. There are open marriages of course, so I guess their vows don’t include being faithful? Some people have the women offering different promises than the man. My vows were exactly the same as my husband’s and spoke of being committed and supportive to each other and building a home and a life together. Some people create their own vows, make it very personal and reflective and forward thinking at the same time.

Our wedding vows consisted of a single sentence: “We will all, verily, abide by the Will of God.” As you can see there is no explicit mention of faithfulness and until death do us part, but as far as I am concerned our vows include those promises and much more.

No. Marriage is a contract. You can write and agree to any contract.

With all the people having affairs these days you would think so.

My vows were based on 3 individual declarations that both myself and my spouse created and kept secrect until the day of our wedding. The template for our 3 declarations were:

1. You are…(sweet personal reasons why the other is so amazing and why doing anything but getting married to one another is a terrible idea)

2. I promise to… (insert our own personal commitments to the marriage)

3. I ask you to… (insert polite requests/commitments for the other to follow in order to make the marriage successful)

We had multiple conversations about what marriage meant to us (regarding faithfulness etc) as individuals before tying the knot, so our vows were a public declaration of our intent.

We didn’t talk about faithfulness in our vows since we do have an open marriage. But we did talk about how our lives have changed since we met each other and what we promise to each other for the rest of our lives – this includes being happy for one another and being able to let go if we grow apart, so the whole forever thing isn’t assumed though, at this point, 4 years later, of course I still want to be with him forever.

I think most of us are very aware that not all vows are the same; to me that is a given. Of course, none of our vows are the same- but in actual practice I think most people have a stereotypical social expectation of how married couples should behave. It’s like on one level we all know vows aren’t the same, but in action we subconsciously expect people to behave similar to others. That’s so interesting to me! Thanks for that thought!
When I got married I had two terms limits—abuse and addiction, and one stipulation- TALK before straying.
I was willing to work on anything, to a point, and in actual practice, even tried to work through abuse and addiction, and those two are what ended my marriage. If I have another go at marriage- I’d have the same two term limits, but way more fixed.
People in weddings make vows, but I agree, we rarely hear about the term limits—did anyone else have any?

I didn’t even know what my vows would be until I repeated them at my wedding.

People sometimes like to do their own so they can differ.

No. I’ve been raised by non traditional parents and have attended umpteen weddings. Very little surprises me anymore when people either lift excerpts from their religious texts or make up vows from scratch.

I’ve got 5mos. to come up with some for myself, where to start. oy.

No. People are not clones. Look how many different ideas and opinions there are here? Obviously people have different ideas about marriage vows too.

People often make up their own vows. Most couples that are getting married assert that they are going to be faithful to the end, even if they don’t use those exact words. Marriage, by definition assumes that the couple will be faithful until they die, otherwise they are just two people having sex/affairs. It is not always the case that couples stay faithful. Common reasons for infedility are because of the longtime/mortal illness of one spouse, weakness of one or both spouses, and simple, selfish infedelity. There are a few couples that state, upon their marriage, that they will have an open marriage, this is not common or the norm (but those people that have entered into those unions have done so, at least to each other, but not necessarily the other people who might become involved with them, explained that they do not intend to be faithful to their marriage partner)

I’m guessing that you are looking for an excuse for you and/or your lover to cheat upon your spouses. I’ve read all of your questions, and even though you want us to believe that they are not about you and your cheating, we all know that they are. Unless, of course, you are performing some type of psychological experiment on us, but so far you have not admitted to doing so.