The Soulmate Situation

Thank you, Hollywood 

When people (and by people, I mean mostly women) talk about relationships, they tend to bring up the word “soulmate.” Your soulmate is supposed to be the person with whom you strongly connect on many levels (spiritual, mental, emotional, sexual, etc.). Some argue that there is only one soulmate for each person and others argue that there can be many soulmates.

Before I delve into my opinions on this “soulmate” situation, I would like to take a step back and give some background on where this notion of soulmates may have originated. The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes presented the mythology of soulmates in Plato’s Symposium.  According to legend, humans once had four arms, four legs and one head with two faces. Since Zeus feared that humans would become too powerful, he sliced them in half with his lightning bolts and fated them to wander the world searching for their other halves for the rest of eternity. He also threatened that if they posed any threats to him in the future, he would split them in half once more and they would hop on only one leg.

I was in a long-term relationship. An extremely loving and supportive one, I might add. It took me a long time, but I somehow mustered up the courage to let it go. Something was obviously missing and at the time, I just didn’t know what.  All I knew was that I needed time. Time to reflect.  Time to devote to myself and only myself.

At first, single life was difficult. I missed all the good things that came with the “relationship package.” But when I discovered the missing puzzle piece, single life became the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. The only thing missing was the ability to fully love myself and be happy independent of someone else.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an island, entire of myself. A wise friend once told me that the best type of relationship is one in which both partners are already happy by his/herself and don't necessarily need another person in the equation to complete him/her.  When those two people come together, the relationship is a more stable and long-lasting one. No person has to “carry” the other one in anyway. No person has to act as the other one’s crutch or make up for the other one’s short comings.  The two can grow together in a dynamic environment of complete equal partnership.  That’s what I want.

As a kid in biology class, I favored reading about the symbiotic relationships in nature over parasitic or commensalitic ones. Why wouldn’t two organisms want to equally benefit from the relationship as opposed to one benefits and the other harmed or one benefits and other is indifferently affected?

Why do you need someone else to complete you? Don’t you love yourself to know that you are enough? Let’s go back to our little Greek mythology. Maybe the other half we are looking for is just ourselves. Weren’t we after all, just split up from ourselves?

No "You complete me" lines for this girl. I complete me. I am my own soulmate.