Woman asks if she’s wrong to remove ‘in sickness’ from her wedding vows.
Writing marriage vows is difficult — that's why every sit- and romcom of the last century has been required, by law, to explore the issue. And legally, the episode must climax with the groom winging his vows spectacularly at the alter.
That might have been the better move for one woman, who took to Reddit to ask if she could reasonably plan to exclude a few of the more depressing parts from her otherwise traditional vows.
She turned to the internet to ask: 'WIBTA (Would I Be The As*hole) if I remove the 'in sickness' part from my marriage vow to my fiance'?
She writes:
This is harsh but I hate taking care of sick people. My siblings and I were always taking care of our parents whenever they get sick and I just hate it, I'm sick of it and I hate feeling bound or obligated to take care of somebody.
I'm going to be married soon to my lovely partner and the best person in the world. I'm so lucky to have him by my side.
We are planning to have our marriage vows. My fiance is going to have a traditional Christian one:
'I, _____, take thee, _____, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith.'
I'm going to have an identical one to this one but without the 'in sickness' part. I'm going to replace it with 'in happiness'
My fiance says that he will not accept this and he is very mad at me, he is even rethinking the whole thing, I just don't want to take care of anybody sick and I think he is being very unreasonable right now, it's just a marriage vow. WIBTA?
The central question here is as follows — can you have a committed, monogamous relationship that is specifically, and in the eyes of your minister, legally and spiritually dead at the moment of serious illness?
The post was so inflammatory it was in fact removed, likely under suspicion of fakery. Could anyone be so clueless? But before the removal, the original poster made an edit, specifying that they would of course remain married during a cold or flu, but bail at the first sign of something more serious like, say, a Groat's Disease.
True or not doesn't really matter. Nothing on AITA is verifiable. What's important is that the post hit a raw internet nerve, with impassioned responses from outraged spouses and betrothed.
From jwjnthrowawaykfeiofj:
YTA How about changing it to 'for better, richer, in health, in happiness, till inconvenience do us part'? [sarcasm]
From nerdlife:
'In happiness and in health'. So not only are you not going to take care of the 'love of your life' if he's sick but 'in happiness and in health' assumes you're only going to be around as long as things are good.
YTA. Don't get married, it doesn't sound like it's for you.
From the midnight handyman:
YTA, gently.
The phrasing of vows isn't the issue. The issue is that you only want a partner if he's healthy and can do everything you want to do.
But the truth of life is that we will ALL get sick and, eventually, die (unless we're killed suddenly before that happens). That's an unavoidable fact of life, and being someone's life partner means dealing with that.
You aren't ready to be someone's life partner. And that's okay! If you never want to take care of someone, don't take that leap. You're free to live the single life, date, and never commit. But that means you don't get the benefits of committed partnership either.
You can't love people in slices. You have to take the good with the bad.
And finally, one response seemed to sum it up:
You are telling your fiance that you will abandon him if he gets cancer. Of course he’s rethinking everything.
There are just shy of 4,000 comments on this post. All of them, it seems, calling this person an as*hole. Let's hope it's fake.