Marrying Yourself...Creating Vows for Self-Love

[woodsgnome]

I once read a piece entitled "Marry Yourself: Creating Sacred Vows for Self-Love". Cool heading, at least. Recently I stopped back and re-read the vows. Some of the ones that stood out for me were:

I vow to comfort myself during times of hopelessness, despair, depression, disillusionment, or any difficulty that arises.

I vow to be my Beloved always and in all ways.

I vow to never settle or abandon myself in romantic partnerships again.

I vow to live in the faith my life unfolds in mysterious imperfect perfection.

I vow to honour my calling and live my life as a work of art.

I altered a couple and the author doesn't list some others, but the concept is something I like; despite my resistance  to vows in general--they remind me of religious abusers from my youth who started their thought-control by implanting things like confirmation vows into very vulnerable minds. Only they treated those seemingly innocent vows as a license and shield, behind which they inflicted their cruel and multiple abuses down the road.

In the process of living an individual life in a social world, it's easy to also blindly accept that one's task is to blend in as much as possible. While that's sometimes more amenable to peace, there is that tug to remain true to self, or even find it at all.

The elephant in the room--the objector to the vows? Inner Critic and her/his pals behind that door labeled CPTSD. At the very least, they'd love for you to forget that you count. While all the vows touch on areas I'm sensitive to, what leaps out  for me is "vowing to comfort myself" paired with the declaration to "live my life as a work of art." 

To some, this is but a leap into narcissistic fantasy. Taken to the extreme, perhaps so. But to a damaged soul, someone who easily slips into self-abandonment and self-loathing, who painfully stands aside when others pummel him; someone who tries to salvage pride in retreat, etc., it's too familiar and devastating to fall to implications of selfishness, narcissism, and the social anxiety about self-love. I share that, actually--obviously self-love can become over the top; and it can indeed lead to self-absorption, way beyond mere self-love.

It somehow has to start with self, to an extent. But given the viciousness of what happened coming out of a CPTSD environment, it's huge just to get a distant view of any kind of love, whether it be from self or anywhere else. It's that small step again--but because of how we're made up, self can be the only first step we can truly experience. Then the boundaries can be found; and too the limits of self. But it seems like many on this forum are still desperate for that first step, that little twinge of self-worth.

So a concept like 'marrying oneself' can indeed seem silly to the socially conscious. But guess what? There's a spectrum of people for whom it's crucial to find love wherever they can, and rediscover the first step. In my case, it seems like that was a bruising stumble and not a step; all my energy became defensive and desperate to find safe ground. They said there was love out there, and I never found it. In the process, I missed the first vow, and only now am daring to return and rediscover that ambushed self hiding within.

I'm not presently married, but if the unlikely happened and it came about, I'd  start with these vows to self, and anticipate my partner might also be so inclined. It's a two-way waltz, but we take all the steps on our own as well.

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The link for the article referred to above is:

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/marry-yourself-creating-sacred-vows-for-self-love/

[radical]

I very much relate to all of this.  It was good to read it because it is so much where i am at, struggling hard to find ways to value and validate myself.

I don't care anymore how silly anything might sound to anyone else, it's urgent that I find ways to make some kind of commitment to give to myself the things I needed but never received, when I was growing up.  I have to rely on myself, but i never learned how to protect myself, and I've seen far to much of the darkness in humanity as a result, which has left me scrambling to find safety instead of reaching out for happiness for so long now.

I'm on that spectrum of people you have described so eloquently, and I'm grateful to be able to dare to take these steps for myself alongside good people like yourself. 
I like the word "dare"

[sanmagic7]

beautiful concept, woodsgnome.