Recently I’ve had more than one conversation or debate about finding your soul mate and whether most people were actually waiting for “the one.” I personally hope that most people aren’t waiting around for their soul mate, because I don’t believe that soul mates exist.
Now I will readily admit, I am not always the most romantic lady in the room. I will take a thriller over a fairy tale any day of the week. But outside of what we see in fairy tales, I don’t believe there’s any real basis for the idea of “soul mates” as we’ve come to define it in the present day. The idea that there is one individual on this planet who is going to be completely compatible with you in every single area of life is not Biblical, it has no root in psychology, and it is, quite frankly, something we as a society just made up.
I’m not talking about this today to try and crush romantic dreams. I’m saying it because the belief that there is a “one” with whom everything just clicks, I believe, is part of the reason behind the failure of a lot of relationships. Human beings are not magical keys sculpted to open your specific heart lock. And even if upon meeting one another you snap together like LEGOs, those compatible parts shift and change. The idea that there is a pre-destined person with whom it is supposed to “just work” is one way that we absolve ourselves of the doing the thing that is just as important as finding the one: doing the work.
How often do we see those people who had found “the one” and had met their “soul mate” only to be getting divorced a few years later because of irreconcilable differences? What happened? Did they find the wrong one? Or did they just do the wrong work?
It takes work to build a level of trust with someone who may not meet every item on a list of criteria, but is willing to accept you with your flaws and see who you are as a human being. It takes time and flexibility to build and maintain compatibility with someone who may not agree with you on everything, but can look into the future and share a greater vision for your lives.
Soul mates aren’t born, they’re created.
Instead of believing that meeting that “one” is what determines whether or not a relationship will last forever, we need to think harder about how we will create that forever in our relationships.
BMWK – Do you believe in soul mates?