What constitute a marriage?

It has been common practice in many cultures worldwide and especially now in the modern west, for partners to enjoy long-term exclusive sexual partnerships, especially in youth.

However, there is still a difference between these often deeply healing, loving relationships and a real marriage -- at least for the purpose of calculating the timing of future marriages. The difference is, were vows taken or a child born ?

Most often the live-in partnership, while mimicking marriage in terms of division of labor, is explicitly *not* a marriage spiritually speaking, because the partners explicitly decline to take sacred vows.
What constitute a marriage:

·      Any officiated marriage whether secular or religious, where vows are spoken (by the partners or their priests).

·      Exchange of written vows in cases where the husband or the wife are not permitted to speak.

·       Any consciously committed partnership *if vows of matrimony are taken, even in private * in the presence of the divine, between any persons of any gender.

·       A child born from the union