Marriage from Ancient Vows to Modern Confusion. In an era brimming with dating apps, situationships, and fast-forward intimacy, marriage—once revered as a sacred union—has become a concept many are either disillusioned by or rushing into. Divorce rates are rising, not merely because of incompatibility, but because many step into marriages without ever fully understanding what they are stepping into.

What, then, does it truly mean to marry someone?

🔍 The Many Faces of Modern Love: From Connection to Confusion

Today’s relationships come with an ever-growing glossary of terms that reflect both our hunger for connection and our fear of commitment:

Situationships: Emotionally ambiguous entanglements with no defined future

Ghosting: Vanishing without explanation, abandoning emotional accountability

Orbiting: Watching someone’s social media silently after cutting off direct contact

Breadcrumbing: Offering intermittent attention to keep someone emotionally hooked

Benching: Keeping someone as a backup while exploring other options

Slow Fading: Gradually reducing contact to avoid confrontation

Zombieing: Reappearing after ghosting, often without apology

Love Bombing and Gaslighting: Psychological manipulation masked as affection

Pocketing: Keeping a partner hidden from friends/family to avoid commitment or public acknowledgment.

Cushioning: Flirting with others while in a relationship to prepare for a possible breakup.

Hard Launch: Publicly announcing a relationship on social media with clear photos or captions.

Soft Launch: Subtly hinting at a new relationship online—like posting a photo of two hands or a dinner date.

Paperclipping: Randomly popping back into someone’s life just to maintain emotional presence, not connection.

Stashing: Intentionally avoiding labels or clarity in a relationship while reaping its benefits.

Freckling: Starting a romance during summer and ending it as the season changes—short-term flings disguised as love.

Rizz (short for charisma): The ability to attract or seduce others through smooth communication or charm.

Dry Texting: Responding with uninterested, one-word replies that lack engagement or emotion.

Haunting: Ghosting someone but continuing to engage with their content (views, likes, reactions) from afar.

Thirst Trapping: Posting provocative or attractive content online to gain attention or spark jealousy.

Delusionship: A one-sided fantasy about being in a relationship when no real connection exists.

Wokefishing: Pretending to hold progressive values (e.g. feminism, LGBTQ+ support) to appear more attractive.

Love Hacking: Trying to decode mixed signals or unclear behavior using deep dives into text patterns and posts.

Emotionally Unavailable: Being incapable of reciprocal vulnerability, usually masked by charm or aloofness.

Submarining: Disappearing completely and then returning without acknowledgment, as if nothing happened.

In the noise of these fragmented interactions, the clarity and commitment of marriage often feels like an antiquated myth.

Yet beneath all this modern chaos lies a deep yearning—for constancy, for a witness to our lives, for sacred companionship. This is where marriage, in its truest form, still holds timeless relevance.

💫 Marriage: More Than a Social Contract

At its root, marriage is not a party, a photo shoot, or a societal milestone. It is a vow—an intentional, spiritual, emotional, physical, and social merging of two lives.

In Hindu culture, this sacredness is best encapsulated in the ritual of Saptapadi—the Seven Steps a couple takes around the sacred fire, each one a vow echoing the fullness of life.

🔥 1st Phera – Nourishment and Provision

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Om esha ekapadi bhava iti prathaman.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
The groom promises to provide for the material needs—food, shelter, and sustenance. The bride, in turn, vows to support the family, care for the home, and create a nurturing space.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This phera represents the root chakra (Muladhara)—safety, survival, and stability. It lays the foundation for a home built not just on resources but mutual responsibility and shared effort.
In a trauma-informed context, it also speaks to rebuilding safety after rupture—where nourishment is not only physical but emotional:
Can I trust you to show up for me when I'm hungry—not just for food, but for affection, presence, and belonging?

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to build a life of dignity and care with you. To be your provider and your peace. Your refuge and your resilience.”

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🔥 2nd Phera – Strength and Protection

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Om oorje jara dastayaha.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
The couple invokes strength—physical, emotional, moral. They commit to protecting one another from harm and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This vow aligns with the sacral and solar plexus chakras, and also the Inner Protector in IFS. It acknowledges that every relationship will face storms—addictions, distractions, falsehoods—and this phera is the couple’s psychological firewall.
They are each other's protectors—not just from outer dangers but from self-sabotage, from inherited traumas, and from the temptation to give up on one another too soon.

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to protect the sacred between us—from within and without. I will choose strength over escape, and honesty over harm.”

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🔥 3rd Phera – Prosperity and Righteous Livelihood

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Om rayas santu joradastayaha.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
They promise to work together to build wealth ethically and live a life rooted in dharma—righteousness.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This phera reflects a deep respect for the karma chakra—the idea that the work we do, and the way we earn, directly impacts our spiritual evolution.
It also touches on shared financial goals, legacy-building, and ethical choices. Do we spend mindfully? Do we share what we have with those in need? Can our relationship be a force for good in the world?

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to create abundance with integrity. Our prosperity will not just be counted in currency, but in purpose and peace.”

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🔥 4th Phera – Happiness and Harmony

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Om mayo bhavyas jaradastayaha.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
They commit to finding joy together, to nurturing harmony, emotional intimacy, and shared happiness.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This phera embodies the heart chakra (Anahata)—where love becomes a balm and not a battlefield. It emphasizes the importance of friendship, laughter, emotional co-regulation, and shared rituals of joy.
In today’s world where stress and burnout affect relationships deeply, this vow reminds us to be each other's lightness, playmate, and companion through both silence and song.

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to find joy in your smile, even on the hard days. I will choose kindness over control, and love over pride.”

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🔥 5th Phera – Children and Responsibility

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Om prajabhyaha santu jaradastayaha.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
They pray for virtuous, healthy children and vow to raise them with wisdom, love, and shared responsibility.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This phera is about legacy, nurturance, and the sacred duty of caregiving—whether through children, creativity, or causes.
In a broader sense, it acknowledges the couple’s role as co-parents to life—whether that’s raising a child, fostering a vision, or guiding each other’s inner child toward healing.

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to nurture life with you. In whatever form it takes, I will co-create with intention and parent with presence.”

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🔥 6th Phera – Health and Seasons of Life

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Rutubhyah shat padi bhava.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
They ask for a life of health, promising to walk through all seasons—youth, age, ease, illness—with steadfast support and care.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
This phera honors the cyclical nature of human life and the inevitability of change. It connects to the throat and third-eye chakras—how we speak care, how we see each other through transitions.
Will you stay when my body changes? When my dreams shift? When grief visits us? This phera is about aging with grace, accepting vulnerability, and walking each other home.

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to be your anchor and your wings. I will walk with you through every season—with hands joined and hearts listening.”

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🔥 7th Phera – Friendship and Spiritual Unity

🔹 Sanskrit:
“Yajne home shashthe vacho vadet.”
🔹 Core Meaning:
They promise eternal friendship and oneness, committing to grow together in truth, love, and spiritual purpose.

🔍 Expanded Significance:
The final phera binds them as spiritual companions—sakhya-bhava. It speaks of soul-level resonance, emotional attunement, and a shared path of evolution.
It also honors the crown chakra—a reminder that marriage is not merely a union of bodies or minds, but of souls on a shared journey.

This phera answers the question: Even if everything changes—will you still be my person?

🪶 Inner Vow:
“I vow to be your friend before anything else. To grow with you, not away from you. To seek not possession, but union.”

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🪷 In Essence

The seven pheras are not rigid roles or gendered expectations. They are sacred intentions—seeds that bloom through conscious effort, mutual healing, and graceful growth.

Each round around the fire is a dance of sacrifice and celebration, of letting go and letting love lead.

✨ Symbolic Meaning of the Saptapadi

             * It covers all dimensions of a conscious union—survival, strength, wealth, love, parenting, health, and spiritual liberation.

            *  Each step also reflects ascending layers of Maslow’s hierarchy—from physiological needs to self-actualization and transcendence.

🔱 Arya Samaj Marriages and the Rise of Women as Ritual Leaders

Unlike traditional Vedic rituals that often exclude women from officiating, Arya Samaj marriages—rooted in reformist principles—allow inter-caste, interfaith, and simplified unions based on mutual consent and Vedic vows. Increasingly, women are presiding over ceremonies as priests, reclaiming spiritual authority and rebalancing gender dynamics.

The symbolism here is powerful: A union doesn’t need extravagance to be sacred. What it needs is integrity, mutual agreement, and shared intent.

 

📜 Legal Requirements of Marriage in India

Marriage in India, regardless of tradition, must also adhere to legal frameworks to ensure protection and clarity:

✅ Legal Marriage Requirements (Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 & Special Marriage Act, 1954):

          *    Minimum age: 21 for men, 18 for women

          *   Consent from both parties

          *   No existing spouse (monogamy)

          *    Mental soundness at the time of marriage

          *   Registration of the marriage is recommended but not compulsory under Hindu law; it is mandatory under the Special Marriage Act

⚖️ Divorce Timelines:

           *   Divorce under mutual consent: Typically takes 6 months to 1 year

           *   Contested divorces or those with alimony/custody complications: Can take 3–10 years

          *   Which is why entering marriage impulsively or under pressure is deeply unwise—it’s much harder to dissolve a bond than to create one.

❤️ Arranged vs. Love Marriage: Two Roads, Same Destination

Contrary to popular belief, love and arranged marriages are not opposites. Whether you meet via Tinder or through your aunt, the real marriage begins after the wedding day—in the mundane, in the misunderstandings, in the intimacy built slowly through showing up for each other.

            *  In arranged marriages, love is cultivated.

            *  In love marriages, structure is often retrofitted.

Both can thrive or fall apart depending on the quality of communication, respect, and emotional maturity.

🧠 Psychological Impact: Breaking Vows Isn’t Just Legal—It’s Spiritual

For many, breaking vows isn’t just a life event—it’s a soul wound.

          * For trauma survivors, abandonment or betrayal in marriage can retrigger childhood patterns of rejection and worthlessness.

         * Some people experience deep shame, guilt, and disorientation—especially in cultures like India where divorce is still stigmatized.

         * Others cope through defense mechanisms—normalizing cheating, blaming the institution, or avoiding all commitments.

Over time, repeated breach of integrity—even if justified—can become a personality trait. One begins to believe that no one is reliable, or worse, that they themselves cannot be trusted. This cynicism erodes one’s ability to bond meaningfully.

 

🕯️ What Marriage Still Offers in a Fractured World

Marriage, when understood as more than a label, still offers:

          A sacred container for growth
          A witness to your transformation
          A partnership in care, joy, and crisis
          A chance to heal ancestral wounds through conscious connection
          A practice of spiritual discipline, similar to yoga, that demands effort, surrender, and evolution

It is not the absence of conflict that makes a marriage sacred—but the presence of two people who are willing to return, repair, and recommit.

🌿 In Closing: Return to Intention

So many people chase romance, weddings, or social validation. Few pause to ask:

          What am I truly offering when I marry someone?

          Do I understand the weight of the vows I speak?

          Am I marrying from fullness—or from fear, fantasy, or societal pressure?

In a world that changes its relationship status faster than seasons, marriage reminds us of the ancient wisdom: love is not just a feeling; it is a vow. A practice. A discipline. A path.

And like all sacred paths, it deserves reverence—not rush.