Soulmates (Excerpt from Chapter Nine)

One might better conclude that a soulmate relationship is not necessarily perfect in the sense that the two people never fight and never have any problems together.  Instead, the purpose of a soulmate relationship could be that the two people are together in order to work out their problems and issues.  From this perspective, even a very difficult, negative relationship could be considered a soulmate relationship.  If one believes in reincarnation, as the common definition of soul mates usually presumes to be true, then one could take this chain of thought further and conclude that any love relationship could be a soulmate relationship.  Since there are numerous examples of people who have experienced more than one romantic relationship in a lifetime, it is also possible to conclude that there could be more than one soulmate “out there” for each person.

Nevertheless, most people who use the term soulmate (or soul mate) use it to refer to “The One,” the person who they were destined to meet, fall in love with, and then live with happily ever after.  The fact that there are very few relationships like that, one could instead conclude that there are very few soulmates and that you won’t meet your soul mate until each person is “evolved” enough spiritually.  From this perspective, everyone else is just a stepping-stone towards achieving the goal of a soulmate relationship in this or another lifetime.  Or, one could consider all the failed relationships in the world and conclude that the people involved were deluded into thinking they were meant to be together.  From this perspective, there is no “soulmates,” no perfect partner waiting for each person.  Instead, there are relationships that have positive and negative sides, but none that are ever perfect.

I think that the “perfect relationship” definition of soulmates denigrates the importance of relationships in our lives.  If only soulmate relationships never end, and all others are mistakes, then that means that all relationships that end are meaningless.  I would argue that no relationship, even the innocent crush of a young person, is ever meaningless.   Each person we meet, and especially the people we form a bond with, however short lived it may be, has some reason for being a part of our life experience. That doesn’t mean that some relationships can’t be more significant than others can.  It simply means that we need to experience many contacts with many different people in order to grow and evolve mentally and spiritually, and that each of these contacts has some significance to us.

Advertisement