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Key points
- Wedding vows often get little in the way of actual attention—they are often hand-waved as simply procedural.
- When people look at a standard set of wedding vows via an evolutionary lens, even generic vows turn profound.
- An evolutionary perspective on pair-bonding can help people to understand wedding vows at a deeper level.
I am excessively fortunate to have just married Shannon—a woman whose approach to life matches mine in uncanny and extraordinary ways. To say that we are giddy to be starting a life together would be quite an understatement. In fact, we feel unbelievably fortunate that we found each other at this life stage.
Our wedding proper took place in an extremely hum-drum office building in Ventura County, California. We had both mistakenly thought that it would be held at the gorgeous Ventura City Hall overlooking the Pacific—but we laughed and made the most of it. And we re-shared our vows on the steps of the City Hall as well as at the banks of the mighty Pacific on that same day (yes, we're both a little bit extra!).
One thing that struck us like a bolt of lightning pertained to how profound, beautiful, and important the "generic" wedding vows that were used in the municipal ceremony at the county building turned out to be. The space looked like a DMV office that could have easily been anywhere in the nation. And the justice of the peace and witness (who were both wonderful, by the way) were simply county employees who were around at the time. And the formal ceremony itself took place in a windowless, somewhat cheesy room that simply could only have existed in a government building.
Shannon and I were both about to enter our second marriages—and let's just say that we were so excited. We had both learned a lot about relationships by this point in life.
And as we has joked with one another prior, we'd happily get married next to a dumpster in any Walmart parking lot in the country just to get to be with each other.
In short, we initially saw the formal wedding at the county building as simply pro forma. At the event, they had us read aloud to one another what seemed at first like the most generic wedding vows possible. That said, once we got going, Shannon and I, both professional writers, by the way, were immediately struck by how meaningful, beautiful, and profound these words were. We each shed tears of love during this simple, unexpectedly beautiful ceremony.
If you get married in Ventura County in Southern California using the "generic" vows, here are some things you'll find yourself saying aloud:
- ...in prosperity and adversity and forsaking all others
- ...to comfort and to honor
- ...to love and to cherish for all the days of my life
Yesterday was, in fact, our one-month anniversary. To honor this event, we took a copy of these vows down to the banks of the Hudson River and re-read them to one another. I cannot overstate how meaningful and beautiful the experience was. We plan, in fact, to do exactly this regularly. And we plan to frame them and put them up on the wall of our house. Into forever.
In many marriages, the wedding vows are all but fully ignored—in spite of their deep meaning that speaks to promises made for lifetimes between two people who are committing to decades of care and love for one another.
At this point in my life, I don't plan to take these words for granted for one second.
If you're married or are planning to get married at some point, perhaps you might benefit from thinking about wedding vows in a deep and authentic manner.
As an evolutionary behavioral scientist who focuses on using evolutionary scholarship to shed light on the positive aspects of life (see Geher & Wedberg, Positive Evolutionary Psychology, 2020), it strikes me that some of the core themes of even the most standard wedding vows have deep and critical evolutionary meaning. Below are three evolution-based analyses of some of the more common sentiments found in wedding vows.
Three Wedding-Vow Sentiments in Evolutionary Perspective
1. Forsaking all others: Perhaps the best-known sentiment in standard wedding vows pertains to a commitment to a monogamous pair bond. Thus the phrase "forsaking all others."
The amount of evolution-based research on the adverse effects of people stepping out of marriages is voluminous (see Guitar et al., 2016). This kind of outcome famously leads to stress and tumult. It's not surprising to have found this sentiment in the standard vows prepared by Ventura County. Affairs lead to a broad array of hurt feelings and concomitant social and relational fallout.
That said, when you read the vows more carefully, you find that the "forsaking all others" element of these vows is but one of several critical pieces of a loving marriage. There's more to it.
2. To comfort and honor: In forming a long-term pair bond via marriage, you are typically promising to go well beyond staying faithful. In fact, when you look carefully at a standard set of wedding vows, you see that most of the content is about truly caring for your partner—in a deep and genuine way—across a broad array of contexts (...in sickness and in health).
In their seminal research on features that are desired in long-term relationships, David Buss and colleagues (1990) found that kindness and mutual love are typically among the most-emphasized characteristics that people look for in marriage partners. When kindness and mutual love exist, one can expect their partner to really have their interests in mind.
Life is not always easy. Having someone by your side who truly has your interests at heart is critical in navigating life's often-treacherous waters. If you truly have someone whom you love and respect promising to comfort and honor you every single day, then you've got the gift of a lifetime in your hands. From an evolutionary perspective, we can think of it this way: If you can dependably count on your partner to have your interests in mind and to stand with you, comforting you when needed, then you have one heck of a teammate in the game of life. And this fact will benefit not only you but your children and broader familial and social networks.
3. To love and cherish: Close friends help one another and can count on one another. At any given point, I have a few guys that I can definitely count on to help me move furniture or the like, for instance.
That said, with a long-term marriage partner, the mutual support is much deeper and multi-faceted. As a great deal of work in the evolutionary behavioral sciences has found (see Fisher, 1993), love is a major part of the human evolutionary experience. And a core part of love is found in cherishing. When someone feels truly cherished, they experience a broad array of positive emotional states. And such an experience has all kinds of positive effects on one's broader sense of self. It's kind of like if this amazing person whom I care about so deeply cherishes me, I must be alright...
Bottom Line
To say that marriage is not to be entered lightly is to put things mildly. In cultures with monogamy as the dominant mating system, a happy marriage is often a critical component of success and happiness across one's lifetime.
When Shannon and I first saw the generic wedding vows in the Ventura County government building on that sunny day in the summer of 2023, we initially didn't give the words much thought. But as the simple municipal ceremony progressed, we found ourselves finding extraordinarily deep and meaningful emotions stirring in the moment.
In fact, the basic elements of standard wedding vows, such as forsaking all others, promising to comfort and honor one another, and promising to cherish one another forever, can easily be understood as deeply rooted in the broader human evolutionary experience. Maybe this is why Shannon and I found ourselves tearing up with emotion during that simple civil ceremony in a building that could have been any DMV in the country.
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This post is dedicated to my amazing wife, Shannon. Every word in those vows that we read on that day rings true in my heart. And always will.
References
Buss, D. M., Abbott, M., Angleitner, A., Biaggio, A., Blanco-Villasenor, A., BruchonSchweitzer, M [& 45 additional authors]. (1990). International preferences in selecting mates: A study of 37 societies. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 21, 5-47.
Fisher, H. (1993). Anatomy of Love - A Natural History of Mating and Why We Stray. New York: Ballantine Books.
Guitar, A. E., Geher, G., Kruger, D., Garcia, J. R., Fisher, M., & Fitzgerald, C. J. (2016). Defining and interpreting definitions of emotional and sexual infidelity. Current Psychology.
