Soul mates – reality or fiction?

The concept of soul mates has been around since….well since any of us and our ancestors can remember. It is further personified through movies, music videos, celebrities with their 2.1 perfect families (on the surface anyway), books and pretty much every other media avenue that exists. There’s just no escaping it. We’re constantly bombarded with images of what the ‘perfect’ couple should look like from our infancy age and we’re even coached by certain books on how we can actually go out and find this phantom ‘soul mate’ we seek (ladies you know these books exist so let’s not deny it please). Even TV adverts are in on the game so no wonder most of us embark on the ambiguous and usually frustrating notion of finding our ‘soul mate’. Some would call this soul mate ‘the one’ but the question is ‘do they really exist’? Does the concept of soul mate (for everything it stands for) transcend from fiction to reality or is it really just a fiction?

To answer this rather onerous question I first looked to the thesaurus for an alternative meaning of the word ‘soul mate’ and came up with ‘friend’, ‘mate’, ‘pal’, ‘playmate’, ‘companion’ or ‘partner’. In other words anyone you really get along with can be your soul mate but in this article we are mainly referring to the romantic partner type of soul mate so I delved deeper and searched for the actual definition of what a soul mate is. The definition is ‘somebody with whom somebody else naturally shares deep feelings and attitudes’. So to elaborate on this definition, your soul mate is someone who is completely in tune with you mentally, spiritually and emotionally. They understand the way you think, feel your pain and can even complete your sentences when you get stuck. They’re everything you are and stand for all rolled into in one. Most of us search for this enigma in the hope that they will make us happier than we’ve ever dreamt of and erase all our worries so some of us with this promise end up relying solely on another person to make us happy / make us whole. In theory most of us are seeking for perfection but obviously in reality it does not exist. One person cannot possibly be our everything / our world. It’s not only destructive but also clearly bonkers because what happens if something was to (heaven forbid) happen to this person? It’s important to step away from the romantic novels and Hollywood movies and into reality. So in the interest of keeping things real, what we really need is someone who understands us, treats us the way we deserve to be treated, puts a smile on our face and possesses the reasonable traits we have in our long list of requirements (c’mon now, i know some of us have unreasonable demands). The concept of looking for someone to complete us is farcical because we are already complete in our own individual and unique ways. What we really seek is someone who compliments our persona and style.

I was at lunch with a colleague of mine recently and she told me about a guy she met saying that he seemed to be really in sync with her and understands her even though they’d only known each other for a short time. He possessed most of the qualities she had on her list. She proceeded to ask me whether I believed in soul mates because this guy could possibly be hers and that was a scary prospect for her given the short space of time they’d known each other. My Advice to her was that if she felt really drawn to him which she did then she should just go for it. Obviously not to completely throw caution out the window but give the guy a chance and be open to the idea of potentially having something real with him. She was single and as far as she knew so was he…so what’s the problem? She proceeded to say that he comes from New Zealand and has his own place there so he goes there a lot but this wasn’t the problem for her or what was making her hesitant. The problem was that she seriously considered living in New Zealand herself (i.e. she would actually migrate if she had the opportunity) so they somehow coincidentally had too much in common and for her when things feel too good to be true it usually is too good to be true. She was half expecting some nasty skeletons to come crawling out of the closest. Ever battled with this concept? You ask for something, you search everywhere and you finally find it but on the realization that you’ve found this thing you desired fear creeps in and you’re scared of accepting or committing to it. They do say ‘be careful what you ask for’. Is it me or do we as complex beings have the tendency to over complicate matters that don’t really need to be complicated?

I do believe that soul mates can and do exist but it means different things to different people. Most of us have our checklists of what we expect from a potential partner and some lists are so sophisticated that they are divided into ‘critical (must have attributes)’, non critical (can live without) and extra added bonus (icing on the cake). So the question really is, what is your definition of a soul mate? Judging from what the dictionary defines a soul mate as, anyone can really be our soul mate but is ‘your’ own definition realistic? If you’re expecting to find Mr or Miss Perfect who will suddenly take away all your pain and be solely responsible for your happiness then you’re looking for a fictitious character and quite frankly this can lead to obsessive and controlling behavior when you do meet someone special. We’ve all seen examples of crimes of passion in the news. One person cannot meet such superficially high expectations. Anyone is sure to buckle under the pressure and strain of this type of scrutiny. If however you bare in mind that your sole mate will have their own faults just like you and will not always be on the same page as you meaning that the word ‘compromise’ will frequent your vocabulary then you do not open up yourself up for too much disappointment and potential heartache. The other question of course bearing in mind that you have now sieved through your list and narrowed it down to only realistic attributes is ‘are you really ready for what you’ve asked for?’

So do you believe in soul mates? Do you think you have met yours?