Shaun Cassidy, pop crooner and TV’s sexiest Hardy Boy, was definitely my Soulmate. I was a 13 year old girl with a room plastered with Tiger Beat magazine photos of my one true love, waiting for Shaun to come spirit me away from my math homework and take me to Beverly Hills where we would live
Happily
Ever
After.
It turns out Shaun was not my soulmate.
Yet that passionate, obsessive attraction to a boy I never met felt very, very real. What’s more, echoes of that craving to be loved deeply and completely and to feel special and safe forever in the arms of “the one” continued to cast shadows over the very real lovers waiting for me in the future.
Do you remember your first crush? I’ve asked thousands of couples this question and invariably they share the crazy-in-love feelings that alternately lit them up and tormented them.
We are not teenagers any more. And yet many adults still long for that one perfect person who can complete them. Unfortunately, this unexamined belief can lead to some real relationship problems when the initial flush of passion starts to fade and real life – and love – begins. How we think about our partner as we navigate the various stages of long term love can help us redefine what a soulmate means to us.
What is a soulmate?
The soulmate concept is often incorrectly attributed to Plato, but it was the playwright Aristophanes who wrote that humans are born with half a soul, doomed to a life of longing and despair unless they found the missing half of their soul in another person.
This is clearly not a recipe for psychological well being, or for a healthy adult relationship. It takes work, commitment and patience to build a sound relationship house – and if you believe you purchased this house with the wrong person, you may lose the motivation to renovate.
In my work with couples struggling to regain the love they’ve lost I ask them to examine their subconscious soulmate template. They discover an unrealistic list of qualities they expect their partner to have.
Sadly, no mere mortal can ever live up to the perfect partner in your head. So let’s rewrite your soulmate template to reflect the ups and downs of real long term relationships.
Types of Soulmates
We know that the main ingredients of a long term relationship ebb and flow. These include trust, loyalty, commitment, emotional connection, a sense of security, excitement, thrill, affection, sexual attraction, erotic excitement, understanding, cooperation, companionship, parenting, and many more. And none of these feelings or experiences are consistent.
Soulmate relationships can also be expected to ebb and flow when the various pieces of the kaleidoscope of love are rearranged by both external and internal changes of life, be that the loss of a parent or an evolution in our personal priorities.
So I’d like to propose Three Types of Soulmates, each with qualities that reflect the various stages of development in long term love.
THE INFATUATION PHASE – “I FOUND my soulmate!”
Don’t you love falling in love? The heady cocktail of biochemistry, neurology, excitement, hopes and dreams feels both fantastic and unique. No wonder we think we’ve found The One.
When it comes to valid psychological research on whether someone is our soulmate there is pretty much no empirical evidence. But the prairie vole – who pair bonds for life – may give us a clue. Rodent love appears to be meditated by smell. Neuroscientist Amir Levine proposes that humans also have the neuro-circuitry to experience a human bond through smell. In the infamous tee shirt sniffing study, women were more attracted to the scent of a male whose genetics were different from their own. For people in a committed relationship, smelling your partner’s scent has been shown to improve sleep quality.
While this is interesting, it’s fairly flimsy evidence that our half soul actually exists (or that we are statistically likely to get close enough to get a sniff). More importantly, it doesn’t explain why the deep connection and sexual attraction of infatuation only seems to last about 18 – 24 months. Once novelty wears off we may look at our erstwhile soulmate with new eyes and begin to wonder if we made a mistake, no matter how good they smell.
THE MARRIAGE INC PHASE – “You’re NOT my soulmate”
Let me ask – how long did your infatuation phase last? Once the flush of love settles down and a couple enters into the building phase of their relationship, things change. I call this phase Marriage (or Relationship) Inc. This is when the couple moves from exciting dates, great sex, and fun adventures to buying a home, having kids and climbing the career ladder. These are wonderful aspects of a life well lived. But…where are the two of YOU in all that? The romance and delight can get lost in the halls of a marital house that has become a cluttered family home with a leaky bathtub.
Marriage Inc is when you are running your relationship more like a business than a love affair. Every couple who joins my three-month online program has their own variation of Marriage Inc, and most of them are unhappy, lonely, or even on the verge of breaking up. Over 30% are in a sexless relationship and they report no attraction to the person they could barely keep their hands off during the infatuation phase. This is when a little demon thought might arise…niggling at the back of your mind…”Maybe you’re not my soulmate? Did I make a mistake?”
Marriage Inc can last a few years or a lifetime. And that makes me sad. So few couples do what you are doing right now as you read this – choose to invest time and effort into their romantic relationship so they can learn the skills needed to reconnect and reignite. I call this practicing the Three Keys to Passion. And it takes work.
THE INSPIRED LOVE phase – “We’ve BECOME Soulmates”
If you do the work, you can become one of the few couples who attain the rare and wonderful phase of inspired love. This is where you grow in love together with the perfectly imperfect person you chose all those years ago. You understand they are not the only one for you, nor are they the answer to your happiness, for happiness is an inside job. Together you’ve been through the challenges of life, the losses, and the joys – from holding your infant daughter to bankruptcy.
Inspired love is experienced when we stop expecting our partner to fill us up, and instead we seek to fill them up. We move from an “Me” focus to a “We” focus, and we navigate life for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, together.
This love bears little resemblance to the desperate Shaun Cassidy-type feelings of longing for your missing half. Yet this person with whom you’ve co-created inspired love may indeed become your actual soulmate.
In the video above I share the story of my first date with my now husband, when we entered the infatuation phase. I then contrast that date with the date we were actually on when I recorded this for you – a date crafted from inspired love. Listen to the differences, and then take a look at your own relationship these days. Where can you improve your efforts to be a great mate?
My husband is not my soulmate. But he sees my soul, he knows my flaws and vulnerabilities, and he loves me anyway, as I do him.
You see, it IS possible to fall in love, all over again, with the one you are already with.
