2024-01-28 20:49:00
Festively dressed guests, a bouquet in cream and salmon, a wedding speaker behind the desk and a bride all in white. So far everything is perfect, only the groom is missing. What may seem to many to be a major flaw in a wedding is increasingly becoming a goal and intention. “Yes, I want to marry myself!” So-called self-weddings, also known as sologamy, are booming. Singer Selena Gomez, like supermodel Adriana Lima and influencer Cris Galêra, has exemplified the trend and inspired more and more women to swear eternal loyalty to themselves. The reasons for this are very different: a plea for more self-love and self-esteem, breaking up classic social roles, overcoming a disappointing relationship or treating yourself to a lavish party without a husband.
This fad, which has no legal basis whatsoever, is not entirely new. “This already existed in the 1970s and 1990s,” explains the Graz psychotherapist and philosopher Monika Wogrolly. Even back then, self-weddings were celebrated at the US festival “Burning Man”. “Back then, it was more of a socially motivated signal to the outside world, a defiant reaction once morest the dictates of togetherness.” Women wanted to show that they had social value even without traditional marriage. “An antithesis to this must-have of conventional marriage,” is how the psychotherapist sums it up. Didn’t this mean that women were once once more subjecting themselves to social norms? “That’s the paradox. On the one hand, the marriage dictate is rejected and on the other hand, you then really marry, not a man, but yourself.” Today, influencers and actresses would escape this dilemma with a humorous, self-deprecating touch.
Lucrative market niche or therapeutic benefit?
Resourceful entrepreneurs have long since discovered a cash-filling business model in this trend. Online courses on how to properly prepare for your own wedding are also on the program, as are all-round packages from wedding planners. So it’s just a big deal with no deeper meaning? “Of course, this is a market niche that has opened up and has already established itself,” warns Monika Wogrolly. It always depends on how the act is motivated and lived out. “There are certainly people who suffer from pathological narcissism and then stage a wedding with themselves to culminate their narcissistic self-expression.”
The danger of this development is that people only act need-oriented and no longer relationship-oriented. “You lose contact with your fellow human beings and are no longer an emotional, insatiable caterpillar, tuned to artificially inducing emotions and artificially satisfying them, as a substitute program for a real relationship that is simply too strenuous for you.” So just another expression of the staged society? “If something is commercialized and exploited too much, then it no longer has anything to do with a ritual of self-esteem and self-care.” Because that’s exactly what a self-marriage can be, a tool that can be used within a psychotherapeutic process. In the future, all people, not just women, might use the act to set an example for self-care, self-esteem and self-love, for example to reconcile with themselves following a separation, to overcome previous trauma or to clear up self-doubt.
Monika Wogrolly is a psychotherapist and philosopher © Christoph Kleinsasser; Klz/Christoph Kleinsasser
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