Second Marriage Wedding Vows
Second marriage vows are not the place for first love’s saccharine sentimentality – butterflies and rainbows. By now you know that love is not enough, that butterflies and rainbows do not a marriage make, and that no matter how great you get along, you will have arguments and frustrations, you will wonder if you made the right choice, you will want to leave or your partner will want to leave you. Marriages last when people choose to stay. In your second wedding vows, your goal is to declare in front of everyone – spouse and family and friends and God – the reasons you have for staying, and your understanding of what staying entails.
These reasons should be something that will stay true ’til death do you part. Transient reasons – your partner’s beauty, your need for health insurance, hospital visitation rights, grand passionate love, etc – are not the reasons to discuss in a second marriage vow. Permanent reasons – the comfort and joy of having a partner in life, mutual respect and acceptance, and the compatibility of your conflict resolution styles – will stay true. You want to be able to read your vows 10 years from now and think joyfully, “Oh yeah. That’s why I married him.”
“What you taught me.” Everyone we meet offers us a lesson; the more intimacy we share with someone, the more important those lessons are. Life partners bring some of the most profound and most challenging lessons. Sometimes we learn to challenge ourselves to overcome our most detrimental habits. Sometimes we learn to open ourselves to the risks and beauty of new experiences. What has your partner taught you?
“You have taught me the importance of patience. I bring this lesson to our marriage and vow to practice it every day. You have taught me the meaning of joy. I bring this lesson to our marriage and vow to celebrate it every day.”
“This is how we fix it.” The success of a relationship is directly related to the ability of the people to resolve conflict. Incorporating this skill into your vows emphasizes your commitment to resolving conflict fairly and compassionately. ”
From this day forward, I vow to listen to you with respect and compassion, to struggle through sadness and frustration toward resolution, to count your happiness equal to my own. I promise to be kind in conflict, to be loving in anger”
“Till death do us part.” This is my personal favorite. Marriage for me is a contract where my partner and I swear that, whoever dies first, we’ll both be there for it. Morbid, maybe, but realistic.
Having (more) kids isn’t inevitable; even growing old together isn’t inevitable – one of you could die in a car crash tomorrow. If you envision a future together, the odds are good that you’re envisioning something other than what will happen. Death is the only inevitability, and marriage is the decision to watch the other person die, whether it’s tomorrow or 60 years from now.
Finding way to celebrate at a wedding the inevitability of death is easier than you might think. Imagine the heartache of dying alone. You are promising, on your wedding day, not to allow that to happen to your partner.
“I declare to you on this sacred day that you will have me at your side, every day, to help you and support you, through the joys and traumas of life, and the transformation of death. I declare before these witnesses that you will never be alone, as long as I have breath in my body.”
More than anything, second marriage wedding vows are about you and your partner and the unique nature of your relationship. Vows that are relevant and specific can’t go wrong. Linking the specifics of your love to the universals of human experience will generate wedding vows that speak poetically about the nature of your love and the love shared between all people
