Are You Searching for Your Soul Mate?

“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you I had no control over.”

I was bumping around Facebook the other night, and I came across a post which one of my friends “Liked.”  The title peaked my curiosity and I clicked on the link (My Husband is Not My Soul Mate).  I really liked the article and thought the author, a woman named Hannah, did a really great job presenting her perspective (and I love her writing style!).

Her perspective is this: She doesn’t believe that there is any “one person” for you to find and marry. Rather, she believes that you can have a great marriage with any number of people. But, she continues, once you marry that person, then that person does indeed become your “one person.”  She dismisses the notion that (as we are often led to believe as a society) there is indeed one special person out there waiting for us to find them (or vice versa), and that it is Divine Intervention that brings us together.

She asks a great question: If we credit Divine Intervention with bringing two people together, then what happens when 50%+ of first marriages end in divorce? Instead, she writes about how her marriage is based on her choice to love her husband daily, not a master plan.

As a divorced woman, many of Hannah’s points resonated with me. If I believe that my first husband was my soul mate (and why marry him if I didn’t), and that Divine Intervention brought us together, then how do you explain our divorce 17 years later? Did Divine Intervention get tired of keeping us together? No, not at all. Rather, choices were made that created an environment where we didn’t continue to intentionally focus on loving each other every day. Not surprisingly, divorce followed.

If I look back at my life, I would say I have been in romantic love three times. Is my current husband my soul mate? According to Hannah, no.  According to Hannah, there might have been many men who I could have married, but what is important is that I chose my current husband and he chose me. He is now my “one person” and I am now his “one person.” Now it’s up to me/us to “choose” to make our marriage work each and every day.  I am still surprised by our compatibility. We think alike. We talk alike. We have the same energy.  That being said, we also have tremendous differences. These could be viewed as irritants or deal breakers, or we can instead choose to embrace those changes and be thankful that we aren’t clones of each other. Those differences allow us each to introduce the other to new things, new experiences, and new ways of thinking.

To me, that’s the important takeaway! Marriage is a choice, and marriage is hard work. Take the time during dating to be sure that you are ready and willing to make that commitment. Make sure you are willing to make the choice that he or she will become your “one person” and that you are willing to put the hard work into making your relationship work.

To Hannah’s point, maybe you should quit feeling the pressure to find your soul mate. Instead, try searching for that person who you are able to intentionally choose to become your “one person” who is right for you.  And then, make the choice to love that person each and every day. It takes hard work. There will be ups and downs. There will be similarities that bring you together, and differences that threaten to tear you apart. But, if you focus on recognizing that this was your choice, then you realize that you control the rest of the story!

What do you think? Do soul mates exist? Why do we drive ourselves crazy trying to find our soul mate? Is there more than one great person out there for each of us to find, date and marry?