Are Soulmates a Thing?

"Did anyone here believe in soulmates when they were young?"

The question was posed at my book club recently. We were discussing A Year By The Sea, in which a 54-year-old woman leaves her husband to spend a year on her own communing with seals, learning how to clam, and figuring out who she is and what her life is really about. It was a wealth of insight contained in a vortex of metaphors the size of the great Atlantic trash patch. (The book, not the discussion.)

"I still do," I answered wondering why the qualifier: "when you were young"? Was it a given that anyone who was old enough to have a 401K would know better than to believe in soulmates?

Soon, to offset my fear that I seemed either disingenuous, naïve or gloating, I was feeling the need to throw in some qualifiers about my relationship. Of course, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine and frolics in the park. Sure, there have been difficult times. No relationship is perfect. He doesn’t know how to work the washing machine.

But yes, if soulmates exist, I found mine. I failed to mention that it might be possible to have more than one and that my alternate soulmate list may or may not include British comedian Steve Coogan, Scottish actor Iain Glen (GOT’s Ser Jorah Mormont), and curmudgeonly teddy bear Paul Giamatti. Not important.

What is important is love: messy, complicated, dirty, intense, kind, supportive, enduring love.

If you had asked me when I was twenty-five if I believed in soulmates, I might have said no. I dated somewhat pragmatically, probably because I had broken off an engagement at twenty-three with a man who I initially thought to be my soulmate. We were just a few weeks away from the wedding—gown ready, invitations engraved, flowers ordered—when somehow my future-self intervened. She forced me to look at some troubling issues in the relationship. If he behaves like this now, my future-self queried, how do you think he will behave after you’re married?

After that, I was more discerning. Chemistry wasn’t enough, though it certainly was requisite. Over time, my idea of a soulmate changed. It’s more than the initial rush of chemistry and connection. The deepening of a relationship through shared experiences—good and bad—is what creates the bonds that endure.

It’s easy to become a couple. It’s harder to remain one.

An article published in Psychology Today examined differences in the quality of relationships of those who said they believed in soulmates and those who didn’t.

The results indicated that the passionate rush of connection based on a belief in romantic destiny typically ended as soon as challenges began to arise, as they are bound to in any long-term relationship. Rather than see these challenges as inevitable in a relationship where two different people with different needs try to meld their lives together for the long-haul, soulmate seekers see this as a sign that they are not meant to be and give up on the relationship.

Those who are less inclined to believe in soulmates are cultivators, people who recognize the need to work at a relationship, growing together and meeting challenges as they arise. These relationships, according to the research cited in the article (Knee, Patrick, Vietor, & Neighbors, 2004), tend to be less passionate, less euphoric, and less intense, but more satisfying and rewarding over time.

I fall solidly in the middle. I am a cultivator. But I am also a hardcore romantic. I believe in passion and intensity. I want to be more than a partner in a business arrangement called marriage. I think it’s possible to have both. But just as meeting challenges and growing together takes work, so does passion and connection. Especially over time when the mundanity of daily life can creep in and cause you to forget that you once spent an entire day writing and illustrating an ode to your love or that there was a time when you didn’t even notice that sex on the edge of a sink was really, super uncomfortable.

The book club discussion moved on to how to maintain a successful marriage. One woman said she’d once been advised to put her husband on a pedestal. That was met with groans all around.

However patriarchal and condescending that advice may be, it holds a tiny grain of wisdom: the idea of holding one’s partner in esteem. But it must apply to both partners equally. Each should be raised up, supported, valued, put on a proverbial pedestal by the other. Love, passion, companionship, the fact that you’ve chosen one another to share this experience of life on the planet, deserve a kind of reverence from both parties. And within that reverential space is where soulmates live.