We’ve all heard of the concept of soulmates: the idea that there is somebody in life who is made just for us and that we are meant to have a lifelong romantic relationship with. I’ve had my share of relationships in which either myself or my partner believed that the other was their soulmate. I’ve also known a number of people who have felt this way. When we feel this way, we are often too caught up in the feeling to really sit down and figure out why. In my observations, I’ve noticed that when people believe that they have found their soulmate, what it means that they are having a romantic experience with somebody that feels extremely profound and meaningful. More specifically, this experience usually consists of one or more of three things: emotional fulfillment, compatibility, and/or romance.
Emotional Fulfillment
Here, I use “emotional fulfillment” as an umbrella phrase to encompass multiple things, including feeling taken care of, feeling important, feeling loved, and feeling significant. From birth, there are many things that can cause lasting detrimental effects on our emotional health, including our family, our peers, our environment, and our culture. We are expected to be/think/feel/act a certain way. Deviating from the status quo and not meeting someone’s (often irrational) expectations can result in other people ostracizing, ridiculing, berating, and abusing us. Unfortunately, this results in us feeling alone, lonely, insignificant, unworthy, and unloved at some level. Without being taught how to effectively combat these feelings, we are left living a life searching for emotional fulfillment (consciously or not) but not knowing how to find it.
Sometimes, someone will come along who is able to provide us with some of the emotional fulfillment that we have been missing in our lives. Perhaps they have a loving embrace that makes us feel safe and warm. Perhaps they listen to us without being critical. Perhaps they do the small sweet things that let us know that we are important to them. Whatever it is that they do, it’s like a breath of fresh air when we’ve been suffocating, or like a glimpse of color when we could only previously see in black and white. It’s a very profound experience to find something that improves the quality of life in a way that we never knew could exist before we experienced it ourselves. And to have such a positive life changing experience can understandably cause us to associate the source of that experience to divine intervention, i.e. finding your soulmate.
Compatibility
We all have some idea of what qualities our perfect romantic partner(s) would have. These qualities can span many different characteristics, including hobbies, interests, values, sense of humor, physical attributes, material possessions, behavior, morals, attitudes, opinions, etc. We may want them to be similar to us in some ways and different from us in other ways. Now for a little math: assuming that each of the 10 characteristics listed above had only 4 possible variations, that makes about one million different combinations of traits, which makes your perfect person literally one in a million!
Realistically, most of us aren’t actually looking for our ideal partner(s)–we are usually happy enough with someone who has a few of the qualities that are more important us. However, when we do happen to find someone who has many, most, or nearly all of the qualities of our ideal romantic partner(s) (especially if some of the qualities are atypical), that translates into a profound experience for us. Given today’s American life expectancy of 78 years, even if we went out and got to know someone every day, that’s only 28,470 people that we would be getting to know. Taking a more realistic (but still very liberal) estimation of 2 people a week, that’s still about 8,000 people. Finding our perfect puzzle piece, our one in a million, while meeting less than 1% of that million seems next to impossible, and so in the case that it happens, it can cause us to feel like we’ve met our soulmate.
Romantic Connection
Almost everybody you meet will agree with the idea that romantic relationships are a very important part of our lives. We are constantly reminded that falling in love is something that we should strive for in life. Falling in love itself can be a very profound experience. It incites a flurry of intense passion and desire within us. The object of our affection becomes very important and very central to us. It can motivate us to do many things that we would not consider or think possible otherwise. Love can move mountains, right? There’s something about falling in love that makes us feel connected to that person in a way we don’t feel connected to anybody else, and so just the act of falling in love with somebody, especially if it’s the hardest we’ve ever fallen, has the potential to make us feel like that person is our soulmate.
Whether or not the concept of soulmates is true is a completely separate topic, but regardless of it’s validity, there is always a reason that can explain why we may feel like we’ve found our soulmate. We may never be able to prove or disprove the existence of soulmates, but we can’t deny that there are times that people can effect our lives and feelings so intensely that the experience is extremely profound and meaningful to us. But it’s only when we understand why the experience is profound and meaningful to us that the soulmate experience can have a practical application to our lives. Understanding why will allow us to identify the things in life we need, are important to us, and make us feel happy, which in turn will allow us to build a life that provides us with the things we need, are important to us, and make us feel happy. After all, that is the kind of life that we all seek, isn’t it?
Food for Thought
If you’ve ever felt like you found your soulmate (or if you’ve known somebody who has felt like they’ve found their soulmate/who feels like you are their soulmate), which reason(s) explain it the best? Are there any other reasons that can explain it? What do these reasons tell you about the things in life you need, are important, and make you happy?
