If there’s one personal development concept that sounds simple but is difficult in practice, it’s self-love. In recent years, a self-love revolution has taken over social media feeds, self-help sections in bookstores, and even T-shirts. But despite the message of loving yourself being ubiquitous, it’s not always so easy to adopt.
In a Psychology Today article, Dr. John Amodeo, a marriage and family therapist, explains that most people learn to view themselves through a lens of negativity, focusing on perceived flaws rather than strengths. On top of that, some may believe that happiness and self-acceptance are luxuries they aren’t allowed.
Fighting back against low self-esteem can be a long, though completely worthwhile, journey that may require a little therapy and a whole lot of introspection. Working on self-love might result in you setting better boundaries, learning healthy coping strategies, and forgiving yourself when you slip up. And for a growing minority of people, self-love can even lead to sologamy.
Monogamy might be the norm in most cultures today, especially when it comes to marriage, but sologamy — sometimes called “self-marriage” — offers an alternative for those who want to marry, well, themselves. By expressing their devotion to themselves, sologamists can kick up their self-love practice a notch (or several), as Sasha Cagen, author of the book “Quirkyalone: A Manifesto For Uncompromising Romantics,” told Vice. “Creating a ritual is more powerful than just sitting in your room and journaling that you want to love yourself, or even writing a love letter to yourself,” Cagen explained. “When you make a ritual, you’re making a vow. It draws a line in the sand and it has a depth and a weight to it, like marriage.”
Kshama Bindu, a woman who married herself in 2022, agrees. “Self-marriage is a commitment to being there for yourself, to choosing the livelihood and lifestyle that will help you grow and blossom into the most alive, beautiful, and deeply happy person you can be,” she shared with BBC News. “For me, this marriage is really a deep act of self-acceptance. What I’m trying to say is that I accept myself – all of me, even the parts that don’t look pretty.”
