Soul Mate

This post was shared on my FB today, and caught my eye (catchy title: “my husband is not my soul mate” lol). It’s actually the second blog I’ve read recently about soul mates, so the idea of soul mates has been on my mind. The world is sending me signs, apparently!

I do not believe in soul mates. I’ve never felt that there was only one special person for me out there, only one person that I could live happily ever after with. I think there are many people that I could be compatible with. I think that I could be happily married to a man other than my husband.

With that being said, that does not mean that I want to divorce my husband or that I do not love him and will pass him up when someone else “compatible” comes along.

What makes Jeremy my “soul mate” is that I stopped looking when I met him. We are compatible and in love, therefore I chose to marry him and everyday I chose to love him and commit to him again. And I plan to do so for the rest of our lives.

So if one of my other potential “soul mates” comes along, they are out of luck, because I have chosen my life partner already.

I don’t believe that marriage and love is not our of our control, that we are “fated” to end up with a certain person who we have no choice over. I think when people view love as some magical unstoppable force, they take away personal responsibility. This author explains it perfectly:

But what happens to these people when the unstoppable and uncontrollable force that prompted them to start loving, lets them stop loving, or love someone else?

What happens is a world where most marriages end in divorce, and even those that don’t are often unhappy.

My marriage is not based on a set of choices over which I had no control. It is based on a daily choice to love this man, this husband that I chose out of many people that I could have chosen to love.

I like it better this way, with the pressure on me and not on fate, cosmos, or divinity. I will not fall out of love, cannot fall out of love, because I willingly dived in and I’m choosing daily to stay in. This is my joyous task, my daily decision. This is my marriage.

“Maybe that’s what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.”