What we don’t say: Shadow vows in love
The phrase “I do” conjures an images of two people making a commitment to one another, probably the most important and durable commitment of their lives. The setting may be redolent with pomp and ceremony: extravagantly beautiful and the object of curiosity for millions. Or it may be small, private, brief, and bare, a seeming quotidian moment that attracts little attention. In both cases, others may be curious but only the couple knows what has moved in their souls. Vows, in even the most theatrical ceremony, are interior events.
As the relationship unfolds, the vows can become a relic of the past, the words once memorized but now forgotten, though occasionally dragged out for anniversaries. Or the words can remain alive, like emissaries that bear meanings for life with the beloved. Then vows deepen from a momentary event into an unfolding experience. Then we realize that accompanying every stated vow is a shadow vow: what we don’t say when we say “I do.” The emissary has a twin, and both are messengers.
Vows that move from event to experience root themselves in the soul and shape the fate of the couple. You will marry the right person, and it will go terribly wrong. You will marry the wrong person, and it will be exactly right.
Striving for daily happiness while tolerating intermittent pain gives substance to both vows and shadow vows. “The soul can exist without therapists, but not without its afflictions,” says James Hillman. Miscommunication, wounding, conflict, and silent withdrawal, part of the daily reality of many couples, are not the mark of moral or spiritual failure. Marriage may be most soulful when it is most troubled. For most of us, it may be the unique and incomparable “vale of soul-making,” to borrow Keats’ poetic phrase. No other experience except parenting comes close because marriage lands us exactly in the chaos of our old, persistent wounds—and does not cure them.
What if we welcomed discontent with the beloved as one route to the soul; what it wants, what it needs? What might happen if we asked How does this conflict show me an unspoken vow, either a promise to myself, my soul, my partner, or my marriage? Then we might use such moments as an invitation to open down into our own depths and appreciate conflict as incandescent jewels in a dark cavern.
The antique phrase “Love, honor, and obey” from old marriage vows still rings with truth, though not in the way traditionalists suppose. Outside of fundamentalist marriage ceremonies, wives no longer vow to obey husbands. Rather, both surrender part of themselves to the soul of the marriage, asking what it hungers for, obeying its needs. It’s as though both partners work together making a stew, preparing the raw ingredients, warming it on the stove, tasting it for flavor and adding spice as needed, replacing the lid on the pot to let is simmer, adjusting the temperature to keep it from boiling over—and when it does boil over, cleaning up the mess.