I've been single for awhile. My mom keeps telling me that my person is out there, and I'll find him (she is convinced this person is a male). I'm not so sure— that this person is a male, or that this person exists at all.
Our culture tells us that everyone has a soulmate. There is someone for you who will fulfill your heart's deepest desires. They won't be perfect; they will be human. But they will complete you. They will be loyal to you. You will know, without a doubt, that they are the one.
That's what we're told since birth and so we all go searching for our hidden, mysterious one, wading through a turbulent sea of mistakes until, at long last, we come upon them, beckoning to us like an island oasis.
I have come to understand this as a myth. It must be a myth and not an inevitability.
I do not believe that everybody finds the one. And I do not even believe there is one person for all of us. Some of us find the mythical one, sure. There are some people who are really, truly, happily in love for all of their lives.
But not all of us.
Am I devastatingly cynical? Perhaps. Don't I believe in the magic of true love? Sure; I know without a doubt that love is a magical experience, and that it can happen in real life. But I am not convinced that finding true love is life's only conquest. I am not convinced that the reason we are all here is to find our soulmate. Life can be full and beautiful and meaningful without having a romantic partner by your side. In some cases, romantic partners distract from more important missions.
Do we live in a universe where it is written in the stars that each individual soul belongs to another individual soul, and both souls will exist at the same time, and they will find each other?
No. I think lasting love is a rarity that few are blessed to behold. I do not believe in predetermination; I don't think a divine force pairs us off, two-by-two, like some sort of cosmic Noah's Ark, to weather the storm of life.
John O'Donohue describes love as ancient recognition. I understand what he means by this, and I feel this way about some of my friends and family members. When we first met, we just got along so well. Our vibrations were in sync. Our silences were comfortable. This type of relationship is one of the very best parts of being alive, and I feel incredibly blessed to have several people I feel this way about. If I found that in a romantic partner, it would be an incredible experience, and a welcome one.
Yet, I think we all need to be more careful about who we fall in "love" with.
Charles Bukowski said, “Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it." Charles Bukowski was kind of an asshole. And he was definitely more cynical than I am. But he has a point.
The institution of marriage is carved so deeply into our society that we are beat over the head with it from the moment we start consuming media like movies and books. We are taught that we must find our person and we must begin a family. Most people, in my experience, don't question this. Of course, everyone wants to be known and loved, and to know and love others. But so much emphasis is put on marriage that we rush into them, and then we struggle out of them, burned and brokenhearted.
Some people have truly happy and love-filled marriages, absolutely. But here's what I think happens more often than anyone cares to admit: People grow up knowing that the expectation is to get married. They meet someone and they tolerate each other, and they spend a lot of time together, and they date, and they like the role the other person is filling, and they imagine a lot of things about the other person and make them up partly in their head (I believe we do a LOT of presupposing / assuming / constructing of our partner in romantic relationships). Time passes and their biological clocks are ticking, so they decide to get married. They may call what they have "love," and they may declare that it's love to the whole world, but it isn't, really. It's relief. Relief that they're not alone. Relief that they accomplished the biggest item on life's checklist. They were determined to be worthy of a life partner. And their marriage proves that they were. They found what life is all about.
But what they really did was settle! There may have been a grand, breathtaking, ancient recognition type of love for them to be found elsewhere, but they won't find it, because they settled out of fear of being alone. Or, just as importantly, they may have trampled all over a different destiny, one that did not involve a romantic partner. The energy devoted toward pretending to love their partner could have been put to better use devoted to solving world problems, or creating art, or nurturing their own soul. Something real! Something authentic! But instead, they settled, to fit the mold.
Why are we so afraid of being alone?!
I was so terrified of being alone after my serious relationship ended that I delayed ending it for a year. I put all my energy into that relationship and my other relationships with friends and family were starving. I thought no one would care about me if we broke up. I thought I'd be all alone. I thought no one would ever find me interesting or attractive or worthy ever again, and my current partner tolerated me, so that fed my ego enough to keep him around. Thankfully, I started putting more energy into my other relationships, and started attending to my hobbies and interests more, so that I wouldn't feel completely empty when I left him. When I did leave him, I was petrified, but there were things to do. People to see. I kept busy.
Now, I've been single for a long time, and I'm happy. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to say that I truly don't need a romantic partner in this life. I am happy. I am fulfilled. I laugh easily and am typically joyful. I am self-sufficient and financially independent. I don't need romance. I am free!
If I do find someone who I want to spend the rest of my life with, they won't be used to fill a hole. My chosen person will instead be more like a ladder; someone I can grow with. Learn from. Be comfortably silent with in the warm embers of our ancient recognition. Being human, and being a person who loves people, I hope that I do find a person someday who I seem to have a mystical connection to. I do hope for a soulmate in a life partner.
But I am not attached to that potential outcome. I made a promise to myself that I will not settle. If I have doubts about someone, I will not spend my life with them. That's my deal with myself. If you ever see me marrying someone, know that I am surrendering to my ancient recognition. I am not forcing anything. I am in sync with the universe. Anything less, it ain't happening.
If my life is a series of me falling in and out of love with different people, I accept that. I have been in love once before, and it was breathtaking while it lasted. But if I never fall in love again, maybe my lot in this life was to just be in love once. If that's the case, I accept that. I consider myself lucky to have had that experience. Maybe my luck has run out. Maybe I will be alone for the rest of my life. If this happens, there will be disappointment to work through (and I will also have to make sure my ego isn't preventing me from recognizing true love). But, I will be OK.
I hope you will be OK, too, whoever you are. If you're in an unfulfilling relationship, I hope this essay has inspired you to dump their ass. (Just kidding).
In closing, here are some Bright Eyes lyrics that articulate many of my main points here better than I could. TLDR? Well here:
"The last few months I've been living with this couple
Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles
Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle
I love their love and I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us
And still do me; I'm sick, lonely
No laurel tree, just green envy
Will my number come up eventually?
Like love's some kind of lottery
Where you scratch and see what's underneath
It's sorry
Just one cherry
I'll play again, get lucky." - Bright Eyes, "Waste of Paint"
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