are soulmates real?

a hopeless romantic's take

Since before I could remember, the idea of a “soulmate” has permeated my thoughts surrounding love and partnerships. When you’re raised on meet-cutes and Prince Charmings, the inevitable outcome is a resounding belief that your person is out there waiting for you—and you only. 

Historically, the term "soulmate" first appeared in English in the 19th century, but its roots extend much further back. In Jewish tradition, there's the concept of Bashert, which suggests that souls are paired up before birth. Similarly, Hindu mythology tells of a primal being split in two, each half eternally seeking its other to become whole again.

I first stumbled across Chinese mythology’s “red thread theory” in high school. The theory, in its simplest form, suggests that there’s an invisible red thread that connects two people destined to meet, no matter the circumstances. The thread might twist and tangle, but it will never break. To my fifteen-year-old self, it felt just sophisticated enough to believe in—romantic, but not embarrassingly so.

Fueling my belief in fate were the stories I grew up with, stories that made me believe that fate was not only real, but personally invested in my bloodline. 

When my mom was a senior in college, she lived on the corner of Flood Street in a little house with a wide front porch. She’d sit out there with her textbooks, legs stretched out on the railing, trying to get some studying in. One day, a guy in a maroon pickup truck drove by and gave her a wave. She waved back. 

This happened again the next week, and then again after that. It became a routine—him driving by, her waving from the porch. That was all it ever was, and eventually, she moved out.

Years went by, and my mom met my dad at church. They fell in love and built a life together, and the rest was history. One day, as they were driving down Flood Street, my mom casually pointed to her old house. “I used to live there,” she said. “I sat on that porch every day.”

“That’s funny,” my dad said. “I used to drive by and wave to a girl sitting out there.”

“In a maroon truck?” my mom asked.

They put two and two together, and there it was. She insisted he was lying; he swore he wasn’t. They were both stunned. It was written in the stars! Or something like that. 

My mom grew up hearing about her own parents—how my grandfather first saw my grandmother across a room in the early ’50s and declared to his friend, “That’s the gal I’m gonna marry.”

Then there’s my twin sister, Sophie, who met her now-husband at eighteen—on Tinder, no less. He was in town for the weekend, swiped right, and there she was. They spent the whole day together, and that night, she came home and announced (to my mother’s horror), “I just met the guy I’m going to marry.” Of course, she did marry him. All glory to the algorithm and to proving your mother wrong!

How could I not believe in soulmates when the evidence was right there in my own family tree? I wanted that for myself—a love that felt destined, perfectly timed, and perfectly certain.

While there’s no scientific evidence that soulmates exist, some psychologists suggest that people who consider each other “soulmates” might actually just be exceptionally good at communicating. Psychologist Mary C. Lamia, Ph.D., notes that self-ascribed “soulmates” often share intuitive connections through facial expressions and body language.

While I haven’t quite experienced this sort of intuitive communication romantically, I’ve experienced it firsthand in other dynamics. Ask anyone who’s had an all-consuming, fiercely close female friendship in high school and they’ll tell you: it exists. Or ask an identical twin, for that matter.

At times, my twin sister and I are so in tune with each other’s unspoken cues that many things are left unsaid. I don’t doubt this could be experienced in a romantic relationship, and why that would lead one to believe they’ve met their mirror.

From my childish first crush to my clumsy first kiss to my devastating first love, I convinced myself each time that this was it. My teenage journals are filled with desperate optimism, half self-aware enough to admit that finding my soulmate at 15 was a long shot, but still clinging to the hope that I’d beaten the odds.

But the trouble is, when you believe every connection could be “the one,” every relationship turns into a test you either pass or fail.

There’s no room for a casual romance fueled by nothing but youth and pheromones, no room for the beautiful girl who plays piano for you in the empty arts building but has to hide your relationship from everyone she loves, and certainly no room for the guy who’s kinder than anyone you’ve known but can’t keep his shit together to save his life.

If pop culture is any indication, the concept of a soulmate has deeply rooted itself within us—and it’s messing with our heads. It shows up as archetypal figures embodying the kind of love we’re told to yearn for, or as page-turning characters we discreetly fantasize about on our Kindles while in public. There’s Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Jack and Rose, Edward and Bella, Feyre and…(iykyk)—all fueling the idea that true love should be dramatic, all-consuming, fated.

While there’s certainly a challenge in accepting a relationship isn’t “the one,” I’ve found an equally difficult challenge when you believe that it is. It becomes all too easy to convince yourself that, flaws and all, the relationship has to be worth it—because this must be it, right? 

You search for signs, read into things that hardly matter, and hold on when you should let go. I spent three years in a relationship like that, convincing myself that maybe this is just what true love feels like—arduous, unsteady, and complicated.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned: if they really are your “soulmate,” you probably won’t have to wonder if they like you.

Whenever I hear friends wrestling over whether to end a doomed relationship now or wait for better timing, I think of a Marie Phillips quote I heard on This American Life: “If you broke up, someone that loves you could be with you, and someone who loves your husband or wife could be with them. Just think how much happier all of you would be! Instead, there’s some poor single person on Hinge, desperately looking through profiles, who’d be perfect for you, but you’re not on Hinge because you’re too busy fighting with your wife.”

After a long-overdue split early last year, I made a promise to myself: I’d settle for nothing less than the kind of love my parents had—a love I could be completely sure of, without hesitation or doubt. I wanted sparks! Romance! The whole shebang! I didn’t care how long it took; I just held on to the belief that someday it’d happen, even if I was old and gray by the time it finally found me.

Within mere months, I was finally the gal calling her mother to let her know she’d met the person of her dreams. In my guide on surviving a breakup, I wrote about how defining what I wanted most in a partner prepared me to dive in headfirst when they finally arrived (complete with a storybook meeting that I’ll save for another time).

While I won’t claim to know if soulmates are real or not, I do believe there are many people we’re meant to meet. My friendships have taught me this—each one offering a kind of healing, a lesson, or simply the rare and necessary experience of seeing another person and being seen right back. I think if deep in your bones, a connection feels fortuitous, easy, and right, you’ve found yourself on one of life’s little elevators straight to goodness, going up.

Perhaps we’re all connected by red threads, tangled up and waiting for the right moment, timeline, or universe to make sense of it. Maybe in this life, you’re tied to a beetle; in the next, you’re stones in a river, side by side. In another, you’re the best of friends, and in the next, you kiss on the mouth.

Maybe that’s a little too woo-woo, even for me. But I’d like to think that love and connection, in all its tangled, bewildering forms, are meant for us in some way.

And if, somewhere down the line, we find someone—beetle, friend, lover, or stone—who makes us feel like we’ve known them all our lives, well, isn’t that enough?

more on the matter…

I really enjoyed this essay on soulmates by Luisa via All Over the Place. I read it after having shelved the beginnings of this essay for a couple months, and it inspired me to break it back out and finish it up. I agree with her concluding sentiment that ‘the one’ is something that is built.

soulmates aren't real

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I loved every second of this podcast from This American Life, titled “Math or Magic?”

“When it comes to finding love, there seems to be two schools of thought on the best way to go about it. One says, wait for that lightning-strike magic. The other says, make a calculation and choose the best option available. Who has it right?”

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the song of the hour…