There Are No Soul Mates
A buddy of mine was in a dysfunctional relationship for seven years. We’ll call him John. He’d met his girlfriend when he was only 21 and she was 18. This was the first real relationship that either of them had been in. This was also the first real intimacy either of them had experienced thus far in life.
According to John, the first few years of the relationship were fantastic. They got alone well, shared similar interests, and were all over each other, all the time. They talked about marriage often.
The last three years of the relationship, if you could even call it that, were not very kind to poor John. By that point they were living together. John was doing all the housework and cooking as well. You could pretty much say that he was “trained” by this point. He treated his woman like a princess, which is just fine if she’s reciprocating.
His girlfriend on the other hand treated him like garbage. She’d spend HIS money, expect him to cater to her every desire, and would sometimes stay out all night without giving him a real explanation as to where she’d been. He knew that she was cheating on him and yet he stayed with her for several more years.
"WHY do you put up with this crap?" I would always ask him. He would always reply, “Because she’s my soul mate.” He’d insist that eventually things would change and go back to the way they used to be.
What really happened is that he became so infatuated with her, so dependant upon the relationship that the mere thought of leaving her was unacceptable. He was willing to put up with just about anything in order to stay in the relationship.
He finally left her when she gave him herpes, the gift that keeps on giving. To add insult to injury, he’d just purchased an engagement ring and was planning how best to present it to her. Yeah, not a fairly tale ending…
There are no soul mates. There are just ranges of personality types that you’ll experience varying degrees of compatibility with. Of course this is all influenced by physical attractiveness, shared goals etc… But there absolutely is NOT one special person out there waiting for you to find her. There are thousands.
Although a classic romantic notion, the idea of the “soul mate” can sometimes be harmful, as it was to poor John above. John made many mistakes and I won’t talk about all of them here, but one of the worst was to give up his power in the relationship. Relationships need to be equal. If he’s cooking and cleaning, then she better be contributing in an equal manner.
Holding onto the sincere belief that he’d met his soul mate, this idea only made him cling more tightly to her when things went downhill. Instead of tossing her to the side like he should have, he misled himself into thinking that his fairy tale ending would in fact occur.
Age also played a part in their breakup. The difference in emotional maturity between your early 20’s and 30’s is just tremendous. You will literally be a different person at age thirty than you were at age twenty. As John and his girlfriend changed, they grew apart from each other.
Don’t let this happen to you. Acknowledge that there are no soul mates, just personality ranges that you’ll experience varying degrees of success with. This is another reason why I suggest that you date more than one woman at a time until you meet someone worth settling down with. And odds are, you won’t meet that special woman until you’re over thirty.