Why would these women marry themselves?

Brittany Rist went up to the altar with a dress and a white eye with the music “Girl”.

“Garota, perfectly her, broken and crushed”, sang the artist SMYL in a falsetto. “Shake the night and don’t hide the face.”

It was the marriage of Rist. But there was no radiant partner waiting for no altar.

Wearing a pink dress, the 34-year-old girl read her vows sozinha in front of a mirror in her quintal. She accepted her own proposal and owed her an anel. Instead of a wife, a bolus of velvety vermelho awaited, next to a carafe of champagne.

Rist says “sim” to herself and commits to loving herself for better or for worse.

“I swear never again to settle down or abandon myself in a romantic relationship”, she said to her reflection in no espelho. “I promise to honor my vocation and live life as a work of art.”

She did not have a celebrant or guests at her wedding and toasted herself at a reception just for her.

Months before the event, that the girl had a “soul commitment ceremony”, she had separated from her father after nine years together. Rist began to work to heal her insides, took a vow of celibacy and registered for therapy.

On that afternoon of November 2021, at her home in Ozark, in the North American state of Missouri, she marked her journey of self-love with a declaration of self-valorization.

“I perceived (that) I did not love and our relationships with other people, and he was not showing up and totally loving me during this process, or that it made it very difficult to receive love from others,” she says. “We dedicate all that time, money and energy to marrying other people, and we never clear it back ourselves.”

As part of her journey of self-discovery, she decided to commit to herself.

“I thought: “Why don’t I just buy a ring for myself?

“I thought: ‘Why don’t I just buy a ring for myself? Why don’t I just completely love myself during that period and do a little ceremony?” It was empowering to sit in front of the mirror and feel that I love all of myself and my scars and all that makes me feel unpleasant.

Followers of sologamy can be on the right path

Either self-marriage concept, or sologamy, has existed for years. In an episode of “Sex and the City” that aired in August 2003, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessia Parker) seeks revenge against a friend by telling her that she is getting married and the ceremony was marked in the luxurious Manolo Blahnik shoe store. .

There is no data on how many people celebrate sologamy with ceremonies, but the practice has been explored in several recent news articles.

TO CNN I talked to four women who were getting married and believed in it as a symbolic expression of self-love and an affirmation of a deep and meaningful relationship with oneself. They also affirm that they have nothing to do with renouncing future partnerships with spouses, or that they claim to be a popular misconception.

About a year after the ceremony alone with Rist, she married her current husband. She uses her wedding ring on her right hand as a letter of commitment that she assumed with herself.

The critics consider it a narcissistic practice. Sologamy is not legally recognized in the USA or by the laws of any other country. But one specialist says that people who commit themselves to love themselves after working on inner healing are not on the right path.

“What strikes me about this trend is that more and more people are perceiving that they need to take responsibility for their own happiness – that we can have a fulfilling and meaningful life without being in a partnership”, says John Amodeo, Therapist and author of “Dancing with Fire: A Mindful Way to Loving Relationships”

Amodeo describes this as a healthy form of narcissism. Without self-love, he says, people depend on each other to feel worthy and valuable.

“Na verdade, é a lack of self-love that leads to doentio narcissism”, he says. “We are constantly requiring the validation of two others to fill our inner void.”

She has a complete wedding for you, with the right bridesmaids

Body image coke Danni Adams had planned to marry herself for many years. She wanted a big party, had people she loved.

But the pandemic saw her and said goodbye to her plans. Instead of a wedding, she sought out a therapist to focus on improving her self-esteem.

“I took a few years to really invest in myself, doing therapy, going deeper, which means breaking generational curses, processing traumas,” says Adams, now 30 years old. “So, when I really felt good about myself, I said to my therapist: ‘I wish now I want to marry myself.’”

And so the fez, in front of about 40 guests in December at a place ao a livre in Sanford, Florida. Adams went up to the altar to the music “Self Love”, by Jayson Lyric, which includes verses: “I have been working on me / I been loving on me / I had to learn to love myself” (Eu tenho trabalho em mim, I loved me, I learned to love myself, in English).

The wedding cost about US$4,000 (approximately R$20,000) and included nine bridesmaids, says Adams. A friend celebrated. Like Rist, she read her votes in front of an entire body mirror.

As Adams went up to the altar, she thought not that she had gotten up at that moment.

“Everything that happened to me did not happen to me when I was growing up, all the things that harmed me, I thought, it is a restart in life. I am a lady of my life, my own joy, my own choices. And it was disso that it was treated.”

After their marriage, Adams showed up for a honeymoon in Tulum, not Mexico. In addition to a ring, she also gives herself a necklace and two bracelets as you say “pretty girl, you should change the world and focus no well”.

Adams says that critics dismissed his choice to marry as a request for help.

“Many people say that I have some kind of mental health problem that needs to be treated,” she says, adding to the interesting fact that people “are using mental health as an excuse at the moment when we say that everyone needs to have access to mental health services. mental health.”

Adams says that if she gets married in the future, she will place the alliance on the side that she owes herself.

“Everyone always asks: ‘Should I get divorced to marry a man?’ But the true question is: ‘Why do I need to lose myself to get married?’”

She married him at the age of 77 — decades after her divorce

Dorothy Fideli never married again after her divorce, which lasted for five decades.

But this month, at the age of 77, she married herself in front of her three children and two duzias de pessoas in her nursing home in Goshen, Ohio.

Fideli wore a white dress, a short jacket and white tennis shoes while she was wearing her walker decorated with a runner. Her favorite song of hers, “Because You Loved Me,” by Celine Dion, played in the background.

“I felt beautiful, as if you had won the lottery or something like that. I felt like a rain”, she says. “I felt important to myself… as if I were someone. It is difficult to explain the sentiment — I am afraid that I feel it in your soul.”

Fideli had never worn a wedding dress. Her marriage to her husband in 1965 was carried out in a court and ended in divorce nine years later.

Fideli’s message to younger women struggling with self-esteem problems is: It is never too late to love yourself.

His daughter, Donna Pennington, was told on the day her mother said she wanted to get married.

“She doesn’t have much confidence when she grows up… But she has traveled a long road in the last few years,” says Pennington. “There is this feeling that I took in account of her, this feeling that told her that she was enough.”

Pennington chose a dress for his mother and grew up from a menu that included sweet potato salad, punch, and biscoitos in the shape of wedding favors.

The family asked for Rob Geiger, don of the nursing home, plan and formalize the marriage. Geiger says he was surprised when Fideli, affectionately known as Dottie, told him that she wanted to get married.

“My eyes were very big and my mouth opened. I was like, ‘Or what?’ Isso was forced to begin to explain the reason”, says Geiger. “Knowing Dottie and the challenges she has growing up, is how she finally discovers how to love herself, or that most people don’t discover in their lives. Take it as an honor.”

She wanted to renew her vows with herself in a few years

Ena Jones got married on her 50th anniversary in September 2020. The three couple of guests thought they were participating in a remarkable anniversary party. Then, she emerged with a tiara and a white dress at the height of two jewels, carrying a bouquet of tourniquets, going up to the altar led by her husband’s father.

A three-step chocolate bolus was waiting for the altar.

Jones says she wanted to marry herself since her husband died of cancer in 2016.

“Are we in the marriage records of the county that married me? No”, she says about her marriage in Kenansville, in the state of North Carolina. “But it was something that I felt I needed to do. This is my most important relationship… It symbolizes my love for myself for the rest of my life.”

Jones gave herself a sunflower ring. If she gets married again, she will either move to the right ring finger and use the new ring in the left hand. Either way, she plans to renew her vows on her 55th anniversary.

Amodeo, a marriage and family therapist, says that while sologamy can help people with their self-esteem, it shouldn’t prevent them from connecting deeply with another human being. Self-love, he says, creates a solid foundation for intimate relationships that are healthier and more rewarding than others.

But looking for self-love is a lifelong process that does not end with self-marriage, he says.

“We don’t need to be perfect nisso”, says Amodeo. “If we wait until we love each other completely before loving another person, we can be in a nursing home before we feel ready for a deep intimate relationship.”

As women who falaram com a CNN we will understand isso. They tell me that I also understand why some people don’t understand sologamy.

“How many times are we excited or confused by things that we don’t fully understand because we never went through it,” says Rist, who is now helping other women plan their own weddings.

But she and the other women who talked with CNN They say that they are not bothered by criticism.

They say they are proud of the inner work they are doing to heal themselves – and they would marry again.