He’s your guy, and you adore him.
But you wonder…
Is he the one?
Are you meant to spend the rest of your life with him?
How would you even know?
Only Soulmates Need Apply
Now more than ever, single people aren’t just looking for a relationship.
They’re seeking a soulmate.
Someone so in tune with them that it’s as if the heavens conspired to join them together.
Surprisingly, the word soulmate is just two centuries old.
Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term in 1822.
For most of human history, people didn’t aspire to marry a soulmate.
They aspired to marry a “good match.”
Women were urged to look for a man who was decent, stable, and a good provider.
Passion, after all, couldn’t put food on the table.
But times have changed.
Today, more young people dream of meeting their soulmate than finding their future spouse.
They’re busy building their careers and enjoying their lives. Marriage is a distant possibility rather than an urgent obligation.
They’re happy to stay single until they meet a truly exceptional person.
That doesn’t mean they won’t casually date along the way. Finding companionship is easy with dating apps.
If you aren’t wary, you might find yourself providing companionship for a man rather than building the foundation for a lifetime together.
Just Entertaining Each Other?
In the past, if you were in a committed relationship, you could take it for granted that you’d end up married if you stayed together.
Not anymore.
Today, marriage is optional.
Only half of never-married singles want to marry someday.
Even fewer divorcees and widows plan to remarry.
That doesn’t mean they don’t want to enjoy romantic relationships.
But they see relationships as companionship and entertainment.
There’s no built-in assumption that marriage is on the cards.
This can be confusing for a lot of women.
They assume that a relationship means the same to him as it means to them.
They assume that he’ll want a lifetime commitment as soon as he sees how great they are together.
But that’s not necessarily the case.
If a man doesn’t see you as his soulmate, chances are he won’t feel strongly enough about your relationship to consider marriage.
So what distinguishes a soulmate relationship from a merely great relationship?
Spot a Soulmate
If your goal is to enjoy the opposite sex, then look for someone who is attractive, great at communicating, and fun to be with.
This is why most dating advice prioritizes attraction, communication, and easy-going companionship. Those traits make you a catch on the dating scene.
But the soulmate scene is different.
People who are looking for their soulmate try to avoid getting distracted by superficial traits.
It doesn’t matter if this guy is hot. What matters is whether he’s yours.
Your soulmate is your person.
No one else may see them as a catch, but you know the truth.
You know that this person is made to fit you.
As you’ve already learned, that powerful sense of knowing comes from your past.
Your soulmate will feel familiar to you, because they have traits you subconsciously associate with your parents.
This is why meeting your soulmate feels like coming home.
Because you ARE coming home… to a familiar emotional climate.
There is nothing you can do to make someone your soulmate.
Soulmate recognition happens on a subconscious level.
Either you trigger each other’s unfinished business, or you don’t.
So there’s no shame if the other person doesn’t see you as a soulmate.
All it means is that you don’t remind him of any deep, unresolved issues from his past.
The reason we find soulmate relationships so powerful is because they can be the vehicle for our own emotional healing.
Deep down, we believe that this person can rewrite the past and infuse love into all our hurt places.
Unfortunately, soulmates also have the power to hurt us badly, in exactly the ways we were hurt before.
Just because you found your soulmate doesn’t mean that the path will be smooth.
(Just look at celebrity couple Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. Despite considering each other “two halves of the same soul,” their relationship has been rocky. Being soulmates doesn’t necessarily guarantee a happily ever after.)
There are ways to strengthen your soulmate relationship (or any relationship) so that your love has the very best chance of standing the test of time.
I’ll share them in my next article.
Let us know what you think!