I’m like 70% this is just bait, but I’ve got some time to break it down so I’ll bite. For reference, the traditional vow is usually something along the lines of
I, [my name], take you, [partner’s name], for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.
From OP:
What this entails if you mean it,
If someone cheats. The other partner has the right to kill them, if one tries leaving without mutual agreement. The other one can kill them. It’s not about anything unhealthy but two people collectively agreeing to a statement.
That’s quite the leap from promising to take someone as your lawfully wedded partner until death to having the right to kill them if they do something you don’t like. In fact, the vow does explicitly say that you have to take them for better or for worse, which would include just about any sleight against you, including cheating. So not only do you not gain the right to kill them, you yourself would break the vow if you stopped having/accepting them when they cheated.
If you don’t want that then something like Till Time Do Us Part.
This way there is no death involved and your relationship isn’t built on a false and shallow promise.
Is there actually a reasonable interpretation where promising to do something until death is less shallow than promising to do something until time progresses? Promising to do something for a period of time without specifying the period means that doing it for 1 second is enough. Unless you’re going to die in the second after you get married, “until death” is a lot more meaningful.
If you’re unwilling to make a vow with any heft to it, don’t get married. Marriage is no longer required in a good portion of the world thanks to common law “marriages” now. In other places, marriage is just a legal contract which can be broken by another proceeding called “divorce”, not “murder”. In most of the world, it’s agreed upon that nobody has the right to murder someone else in any circumstance except for war (and plenty of people would prefer that single exception be removed too).
Edit: I clicked post too early
Because saying “I’ll do [thing] until I die” is not the same as “If I stop doing [thing] you can kill me”.
If the vow is broken by cheating, then the part of the vow about being lawfully wedded until death is also broken. So then you’d also lose your right to murder them to get out of the vow, since you’re already out of the vow. If you’d like a fun take on divorce as murder, see The Orville’s Moclans.
Is your culture Klingon? Because honour is not a real thing, it’s just an excuse to shame people for doing things some don’t like. If you’ve got a good reason why it has to be this way, I’d love to hear it. As it stands, that’s just intolerance by peer pressure, which are both bad things to do. I’d encourage you to spend a bit of time doing some critical thinking about your culture, since I saw some of your other replies saying that some of your beliefs come from your culture. I come from a culture that still likes marriage a lot (Canada + Catholic), but that same culture is also responsible for (triggers incoming) genocide, child abuse, cultural cleansing, and rampant pollution.
I’m not going to defend cheating too much, but the vow has no statement about monogamy (though that is usually and reasonably assumed to be the case) so the pedant in me would like to point out that cheating is not breaking the vow. Even with the reasonable assumption that cheating is breaking the vow, the vow does not set consequences for breaking it. Technically, divorce does not even break the vow. It is also possible to protect, love, and care until death while ending the marriage. Even after a divorce, your partner was still your lawfully wedded partner. (I don’t really agree with this paragraph, but it’s a totally valid opinion with some strong arguments so I wanted to mention it)
I’d like to believe that the vow is acknowledgement that they intend to fulfill it until death. From that basic tenet and knowing that humans aren’t perfect [citation needed], it’s easy to come to the premise that somebody might grow to realize they can’t fulfill that vow, and so they want to get a divorce. It’s actually probably the most protective, loving, and caring thing a partner could do – realize they aren’t good with their partner and so leave. The fact that they broke the vow does not invalidate their intent to fulfill it when they started the marriage. This is basically the idea behind no-fault divorce, btw.
If you want to acknowledge time by changing the vow from “death” to “time”, you’re definitely allowed to for your own wedding. But don’t presume that people don’t understand the meaning of what they’re saying because they made a vow that they ultimately didn’t keep.
Here’s a parting thought: Would a good partner ever murder their spouse? Is human life truly valued lower than this made up concept called “honour”?