When I am King...Marriage vows aren’t the only things that should be renewed; we should celebrate all of the permanent commitments in life.
Some couples get their marriage vows renewed. I used to think that it was because they were reaffirming their relationship, but now I realize that it’s probably because their marriage was so many years ago, they couldn’t remember whether it had happened or not. Meanwhile, my married gay friends and family members are so lucky. Thanks to the constantly changing laws in our states, they get to renew their marriage vows on a regular basis.
That act of that reconfirmation is so important, remembering each other and the promises you made as the years go by and you each get progressively less attractive in your own, distinctive way. It’s society’s way of telling each other, “I will if you will.”
But other than these vows of marriage and lifelong marital indentured servitude, there are no commitments that we take the time to renew in our lifetime. Of course, there’s the renewal of our driver’s license, but that’s just an affirmation that the DMV is still a place that we’d rather not spend any more time. Which, come to think of it, sounds like a lot of marriages I know.
When I am King, we will renew all of the truly important and permanent commitments to each other. For example:
Prenuptials: What’s the good of having built-in distrust at the beginning of a relationship without, every few years, renewing that legally binding contract of mutual wariness? It would be wonderful if, every five years, the happy couple could take a weekend retreat away, just with each other and their respective lawyers, and hammer out the new clauses to cover life’s evolving circumstances and return with a fresh, new prenuptial contract with both signatures. In blood.
Divorces: The statistics clearly prove that divorce is a more common commitment in any relationship than the marriage itself. What marriages ever go to term anymore? Few things are more sacred than marriage. But nothing is more permanent than divorce.
With that reality, let us celebrate our differences by gathering on neutral ground every 5 years to renew the commitment to staying the Hell out of each others’ lives. This celebration will be a warm, even heated, remembrance of why the couple got into this situation in the first place, from the reading of the respective restraining orders to the final words in the ceremony, “Till death do us be apart.”
Sure, we should remember the good things in relationships. But we should really celebrate our differences.
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