Bestselling author Cheryl Mendelson 鈥�73 (PhD) discusses marital vows, including their history and role, and why ditching the classic ones may be a bad idea.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheryl Mendelson holds a PhD in philosophy from Rochester and a JD from Harvard Law School. She has practiced law in New York City and taught philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University, and Purdue University. She is also the author of the bestselling Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, a trilogy of novels about Morningside Heights, and The Good Life: The Moral Individual in an Antimoral World. She is married to Edward Mendelson 鈥�66, a professor at Columbia University and poet W. H. Auden鈥檚 literary executor.
Cheryl Mendelson 鈥�73 (PhD) knows a thing or two about wedding vows鈥攁nd not just because she took them twice.
鈥淲edding vows, if they are from the heart, made before witnesses you respect and care about, are a potent moment in the ceremony. They change things. The tradition draws power from its brevity, its universality, and its great age, wisdom, and beauty. It deserves respect and protection just as great thousand-year-old works of literature, art, and architecture do,鈥� writes Mendelson in her latest book, Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite (Simon & Schuster, 2024), which made the Wall Street Journal鈥檚 list of 10 best books of 2024.
Publishers Weekly called the memoir of two marriages an 鈥渋lluminating鈥� meditation on marriage itself that traces the origins of marital vows to today鈥檚 widespread global practice, one that cuts across cultural, geographic, racial, economic, and religious divides.
Some, you write, have argued that 鈥渁ll marital vows are at best futile and at worst fraudulent, a tradition that should die.鈥� Why are they wrong?
When someone can鈥檛 or doesn鈥檛 want to promise their partner to love, keep (protect and support), honor, and be faithful until death parts them, that鈥檚 likely a red flag. Marriage means all those things, and most people who marry want to, and do, live by them. Open relationships and friendships may be right for some people, but they鈥檙e not what weddings celebrate, and they are notoriously unstable.
鈥淐ould I, would I, or should I make these promises to someone?鈥濃�攜ou ask rhetorically in your book. What鈥檚 the short answer?
There is no short answer. Lucky people have life experiences, from childhood on, that let them understand when they have the kind of feelings that are going to work. Unlucky people like me have to work hard to figure out how to get from being who they are to being someone who could choose a life鈥檚 love partner and get it right.
You write that your first, short-lived marriage at age 22 was a mistake, one that you realized as you were exchanging your vows. Apart from your then-husband鈥檚 cynicism about marriage and unwillingness to heed his vow of fidelity, you also blame the social context in which you lived.
The divorce epidemic that lasted from the 1960s through around 2010, when the divorce rate began a mostly steady decline, gave the institution of marriage a black eye. It fed suspicion and contempt for marriage that continues today. It justified abandonment of marital norms and rationales for preferring informal cohabitations and open relationships. These dissenting attitudes and their depiction of marriage as an ugly or outmoded way of living continue today in a large minority of the population. They continue to be a powerful undercurrent in modern culture, which still isn鈥檛 entirely sure that there is much to admire in marital relations. Vows addresses these currents and makes the argument鈥攁 contentious one in today鈥檚 world鈥攖hat being married is a wonderful way of life and the source not just of security and contentment but also of delight and exuberant happiness鈥攆or most of us, not all. It鈥檚 a reality that is one of the world鈥檚 best kept secrets.
For your second marriage, you and your future husband tried to write your own vows. What happened?
We, a pair of writers, spent many miserable hours trying to write vows and failed. We hated every version we came up with鈥攖oo sentimental, too private, too cool, too incomplete, and so on. Then my husband, an English professor, opened up the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which is universally regarded as an English literary masterpiece quite apart from its religious wisdom. Sure enough, it had a wedding ceremony, and, to my surprise, it was the exact one that the judge had read out to my first husband and me years ago. We secularized the Book of Common Prayer version and substituted 鈥測ou鈥� for 鈥渢hou,鈥� omitted the woman鈥檚 vow to obey, and thought that otherwise it said exactly what we鈥攁nd most other people鈥攊ntended and wanted in marriage: to love, honor, keep, and be faithful, no matter what, until death parted us. And, once again, it was a judge who read them at the wedding.
You have called on couples to stop omitting the traditional vows. Why?
People often write their own vows because they aren鈥檛 familiar with the tradition and don鈥檛 know that as often as not they鈥檙e used in a secular style and include no religious references (which may conflict with their own religion or convictions) or calls for women to obey men. Or they believe that they鈥檙e outdated, or they are intentionally avoiding the commitment of promises on the typical rationale鈥斺�淣o one can be sure that they will love and be faithful and so on for all their lives.鈥� But that鈥檚 just not so. You can鈥檛 have absolute certainty, of course, but you can be very sure. And the ancient vows aren鈥檛 outdated; they鈥檙e timeless and reflect current attitudes comfortably. An informal survey of online self-written vows used in real weddings shows that a majority omitted the vow to be faithful. This reflects no general social tolerance of marital infidelity. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 89 percent of people think infidelity is wrong.
The Roman Catholic Church formally adopted monogamy in 1274 by making marriage a sacrament, even though the idea of monogamy had been part of the Christian Bible for more than 1,200 years. In the book, you argue that the church鈥檚 support for monogamy became 鈥渢he great equalizer.鈥� How so?
Polygyny generally leads to a decrease in women鈥檚 freedom, education, and mental and physical health. It also leads to more crime and social instability. Monogamy鈥攔eal monogamy, not the formal monogamy of the ancient world, in which men had only one wife but sexual access to slaves and concubines as well鈥攊s itself a powerful form of equality. It gives everyone a chance to have someone, whereas polygyny lets some powerful men take so many wives that many others have no wife at all, and plural wives have to share one man. Monogamy is itself a kind of leveling that creates a common ground of shared experience, one that crosses social, sexual, and racial lines in the most important parts of life, while polygamy does the opposite.
Rush Rhees Library makes a cameo appearance in your book. What do you remember about your time at Rochester in the early 1970s?
I remember a staggeringly bright and engaged set of undergraduates in classes where I was a teaching assistant for the philosophy department. I went on to teach at other major universities, but, speaking honestly, no later experience ever matched this first one.
Do you ever return to Rochester for Meliora Weekend?
Years ago, I returned to visit several times, but life got busy and I eventually fell out of the habit. But my husband and I have gone to a couple of the University鈥檚 New York City events.
Promises
Excerpt from (Simon & Schuster, 2024) by Cheryl Mendelson. Reprinted with permission.
I LEARNED ABOUT THE INTERSECTION of personal and social realities in promises from a psychoanalyst, who points out that a society cannot function unless its people are able to make and keep promises and regard it as morally wrong to break a promise. Every promise, he explains, involves at least three parties鈥攏ot only a promisor and a promisee, but also a witness. The witness, who may or may not be a human person and may be physically or symbolically present, represents the social authority that backs the promise. The ability to make a promise rests on the fact that the words 鈥淚 promise鈥� or 鈥淚 swear鈥� or 鈥淚 vow鈥� carry weight, and they carry weight only if the society in which they are uttered grants them weight.
When society doesn鈥檛 back promises, promisors can鈥檛 get promisees to trust them and promisees can鈥檛 rely on the world to see that they have been wronged if their promisor breaches. The third-party witness represents the social force of the promise鈥攖he fact that not only this promisee but other people generally will hold a person to their word whether by light or informal sanctions (distrust, frowns, dislike), or serious ones (complete ostracism), or heavy, extreme ones (damages in a lawsuit or prison for major fraudsters). A serious or solemn promise is a little piece of social capital that can be squandered or saved. . . . Apply these thoughts to the realm of love and marriage and you see how, in some important ways, today鈥檚 lovers have a harder row to hoe than ever before in history.
In everyday life, in dealings with families, friends, and casual business contacts, the social demand to keep promises is witnessed mostly internally鈥攂y the promisor鈥檚 own conscience, the internalized voice of the social moral demands. Someone may act on that internal social voice by promising 鈥渙n my honor鈥� or on my heart or soul or life鈥攐r they might say, as children used to, 鈥渃ross my heart and hope to die.鈥� Shaking hands or placing the hand on the heart have the same force. The call on the witness shows that the words are more than a mere statement of present intent. This is important because there is a large gray area between announcing intentions and making true promises. A witness creates more confidence in the promise and more motivation to keep it. The witness, [says the psychoanalyst mentioned above], becomes 鈥渁 helper to keep the promise, or . . . an enforcer of it.鈥� In the Middle Ages, when vassals swore fealty with their hands on a relic of the saints, the relic served to call on holy and divine witnesses to back this especially solemn promise.
Many states require witnesses to be present at a couple鈥檚 marriage. Custom expects a couple鈥檚 friends, relatives, mentors, and often their coworkers and colleagues to attend their weddings, though few people now realize that they, too, are there to witness. . . . Today, two people who take marriage vows may well have no serious witness鈥攏o 鈥渉elper to keep the promise鈥濃�攁nd, socially speaking, the vows likely are featherweight.
I am reminded of an early quarrel in my first marriage, conducted in whispers on the stairs of a high floor of the [Rush Rhees Library] stacks. (We were immature but not inconsiderate; we respected libraries鈥� quiet.) The quarrel ended with my dramatically pulling off my wedding ring and flinging it down the open, winding stairway, which was at least eight stories high. Then we made up and urgently searched the staircase for the ring. A student going up as we came down paused and, helpfully, bent over to look with us. 鈥淲hat are we looking for?鈥� he asked. When we told him, 鈥淎 wedding ring,鈥� he pulled up and said, 鈥淪ure you want to find it?鈥� and climbed on. The message couldn鈥檛 have been clearer. When the entire larger society gives all couples that message, they are all on their own, their word backed up only by their own consciences, and their consciences, too, meeting with a good deal of social indifference. Moral and emotional confusion are often the result.
Confusion also results from entirely personal causes. Promises are psychologically complicated. A promise is what philosophers call a 鈥渟peech act鈥� or a 鈥減erformative utterance.鈥� How do you bind yourself to keep a secret? Simply by saying, 鈥淚 promise I won鈥檛 tell.鈥� Saying the word 鈥減romise鈥� makes it a promise鈥攍ike magic鈥攍ike saying 鈥渁bracadabra鈥� and making a rabbit hop out of an empty hat. A promise exists close to the line between reality and fantasy, or between reality-oriented thinking and the kind of thinking that dominates in dreams and psychosis. This makes some people vulnerable, in promise-making, to confusions of word and deed, of thought and reality, and to infection by neuroticism. Their romantic and marital relations fall prey in familiar ways to their general problem with promising.
The most obvious cases of slightly crazy promises are the childish ones that some adults repeatedly make, then break. The spendthrift buyer, who has broken many promises to control their spending, sincerely promises anew, then sets out for the mall with their credit card smoldering in their wallet. . . . Some types of serial adulterers and alcoholics seem to fit this mold.
On the other side of the coin, there are people who insist on keeping promises even when doing so is a kind of madness鈥攁s though they had no power to undo the 鈥渕agic鈥� connection between word and deed. . . . The most common kind of neurotic reaction to the promises of marriage, however, is the one that scores of books and agony aunts have made familiar. . . . Some people react to their own marriage vows as yokes, traps, prisons, or threats to their independence or autonomy, and experience them as imposed by forces other than their own will. . . . They may attempt to test the 鈥渂onds鈥� of their promises by measuring and comparing the marriage to see whether it is still good enough to stick with. In effect, they feel compelled to bring the marriage license up for renewal several times a year; it is never a done deal. . . . [Some people] move in with a lover and cohabit for years, seemingly contented鈥攗ntil they get married. Then everything goes haywire. . . . Naturally, their partner then begs for assurances鈥攑romises鈥攁nd that demand, of course, only intensifies the other鈥檚 ambivalence.
Love skeptics often argue that marriage vows are impossible for mature adults in much the same way that a promise to become a cardiologist is impossible for a five-year-old. They say that no one can really know whether love will last for twenty, thirty, or more years; nor can anyone predict whether they would resist extramarital love if love for a spouse waned (or even if it didn鈥檛). Who can ever be sure that the powerful sexual drive will not suddenly break loose from the marriage bonds? . . . You can鈥檛 seriously promise that your future unknown self will love that future stranger, so no one can really promise lifelong love and fidelity. All marital vows鈥攕o the argument goes鈥攁re at best futile and at worst fraudulent, a tradition that should die.
But there are good answers to these arguments. As for that future 鈥渟tranger鈥� we are supposed to find ourselves married to, most people who marry in their midtwenties or later will tell you, decades on, that with all the changes of age and experience, the spouse is still the same person, not a stranger at all, just as they themselves are, though changed and matured. In crucial ways, adults control who they become as they age. Control over what we will do and who we will be in the far future is a type of freedom that comes with the growth of adult capacities. . . .
We have excellent empirical evidence that young adults are actually very good at predicting their future marital affection so long as they are not too youthful when they marry. Most people who marry between their midtwenties and early thirties don鈥檛 divorce, especially if they were raised in intact families, finished college, or have a good job. But couples don鈥檛 marry on the basis of a statistical safe bet; they marry on the basis of justified trust in their feelings and themselves. . . . When people love in the way that ordinary, loving husbands and wives love each other, they know more or less intuitively that love like theirs is permanent simply because it鈥檚 that kind of love. They recognize that it鈥檚 like other permanent loves in their lives. And what if they have no such loves? Then鈥攊n one of life鈥檚 bitterest injustices鈥攖heir choice of a life鈥檚 mate is more likely to go wrong. Having loved and been loved is how we learn to love and to recognize when we love and when we are loved, and what that means. Those of us who were shorted in love have to work hard to learn how to do it.
Furthermore, these arguments against the vows don鈥檛 take into account one central fact: that the very act of taking marriage vows in a ceremony has a powerful psychological effect. For people who can take vows seriously, the near prospect of actually taking vows, witnessed by all the people who matter most to them, creates a dramatic, emotion-charged public moment. It sets in motion a process of psychological reorganization, subterranean, unconscious changes that people resort to poetry to describe鈥攂ecoming one flesh or half one鈥檚 soul and the like. . . .
In a traditional ceremony, unless one or both of the couple are ducking the meaning of their words, the presence of witnesses, representing social conscience and social backing鈥攖he third party鈥攎akes them feel the vows as a serious undertaking, which, in turn, helps to set in motion these powerful internal processes鈥攁nd the wedding actually helps to marry them emotionally as well as legally. And, for what it鈥檚 worth, our social scientists have often been curious about whether promises really do make any difference鈥攅specially promises in public. Their studies show that making public promises actually does result in a higher level of doing what鈥檚 promised鈥攎uch higher in some cases. . . . Two people whose sense of self and self-control reaches into the future will find warmth and comfort in the prospect of loving each other until death parts them. For wedding vows to fulfill their purpose, the ability to take pleasure in an imagined shared future life is indispensable. Vows are an ancient and still powerful means to take control of time.
A version of this story appears in the spring 2025 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the 人妻少妇专区.
