A few passages from the old rite of marriage sum up pretty well the uncertainty,
This union then is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life and are to be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.
As well as the joy:
No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God. Nor will God be wanting to your needs; he will pledge you the life-long support of his grace in the holy sacrament you are now going to receive.
This little exhortation or instruction used to be read to the parties by the priest just before the exchange of vows. It went through a few minor revisions over the years. Perhaps it should be revived. On the other hand, a 50% divorce rate would seem to make a mockery of this little exhortation.
I found a copy of it
here
)
