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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Then you shouldn’t use that phrase in the marriage vows, that’s the issue. If you don’t promise the forever, you are not failing the promise
it’s not a requirement in vows; I’d be surprised if most people did it. your perception is colored by TV and movies which generally uses Catholic traditions because it’s more suitable for visual representation.
I grew up in a Swedish pentecostal church so my experience in vows are more coloured by experience from that denomination rather than catholic tv
fair but still there’s a lot of religions and countries out there. where i live people usually just promise to take each other as spouses.