I disagree entirely. You are free to leave a marriage, that's what divorce is for. But the vows are what makes marriage what it is. And you should not get married unless you feel that you can make a promise like that and do your *absolute best* to try and keep it for the rest of your life. Otherwise just don't get married, which is a perfectly valid choice too.

But the point of the vows is that it's supposed to hold you accountable for a commitment that you want to make. Because there's no point trying to say vows if you don't want a relationship which does hold "in sickness and health".

I'll tell you something, my partner and I exchanged vows privately, without any legal binding or any other witnesses apart from ourselves. We're not legally married yet, and we plan to some time in the future, but when I said those vows to him I meant them 100% as seriously as if it had been part of a ceremony with all my family and friends witnessing. If I broke the vows, no one but he or I would ever know, and I'm "free" in that regard.

What did I say? "I promise to love you, for better or worse, in sickness or in health".

Since I made those vows, my partner had a psychotic break, killed someone while in the grip of a delusion, was arrested and sentenced for manslaughter, has been in prison for several years, and has at least a decade more to go. He has been suicidal multiple times as well. When I said "for better or worse" did I ever expect that worse would be like this? No!!! Neither of us did! But when I made the vow I was trying to think what worse could be, cancer perhaps, or serious disability, if he became a paraplegic, if we lost all our money, if something else happened. So even though I didn't predict what form our "worse" would take, and just how bad it would be, I absolutely meant what I said that day, and I am committed to him still and I don't regret it at all. And it's not hard to keep that vow.

Some key points to bear in mind: the vows I made were with the understanding that "so long as you are the person I believe you to be, so long as you remain yourself, I will commit to you" so if I'd found out he had been deceiving me or had actually been evil, I wouldn't have considered myself bound by those vows. Likewise if he became abusive to me. But the person I love, he is mentally ill, and his crime was committed while delusional and was not intentional, so I consider it part of "in sickness and health".

Maybe one day I will break the vow, but I don't think so. I don't think, having gone through what we have gone through, that there is a "worse" that would break our marriage. Because we are married, in our hearts, to each other, even if we haven't had it legally solemnised yet. And that's what marriage is. That level of commitment.

Yes I'm free to leave, I'm also free to be polyamorous, and I have become so as well, but yeah, don't marry someone unless you're truly prepared for the vows.

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