Bachelor soulmate boyfriend bed pillow

According to a 2011 Marist poll, 73% of Americans believe that they are destined to find their one, true soulmate. The percentage is higher for men (74%) than women (71%). The belief is also higher among younger individuals, with 80% of those under 30 believing in soulmates (as opposed to 65% of those over 60).  I am defining a soulmate as that one person that you are destined for, meant for, supposed to marry and spend the rest of your life with.

We do not have one person on this earth who is designed to be our soulmate.

This might be bad news at first but I think it is actually good news.  We are not on a wild goose chase.  We don’t have that pressure to find the one.  We can choose our spouse and use the right criteria to do so, not just hope for that unbelievable, compelling connection.

4 Reasons why we don’t have a soulmate

  1. People are fallible. People make mistakes.  If soulmates existed, that would mean if you didn’t discern who it was correctly, and married the “non-soulmate”, this would be disastrous.  You would have a second best marriage, and therefore second best children.  Really a second best life.  This can’t be the case.  I think there are many other factors like timing, maturity, stage of life, circumstances, effort, past, etc. that influence who and when we marry and if they are the “right” person.
  2. We always marry the wrong person. (from Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage-thanks Anneke!)
    1. Everyone, because they are imperfect and sinful, are the wrong person to marry.
    2. Sorry, you are not meant for one specific person. The good news: Neither is anybody else. We are all not capable of “completing” someone.  “You complete me” was a fallacy.
    3. Some people are really, really the wrong person to marry. Everyone else is still incompatible.
  3. This would mean the majority of people in the world have not married their soulmate. For every arranged marriage (which is a huge part of the world for a big part of history) it is unlikely that someone’s parents, in their insightful wisdom about their child’s love interest, picked the soulmate.  Just an FYI—most arranged marriages boast better “ratings” than freedom of choice marriages.  Would you ever divorce your soulmate?  (if it was meant to be).  But with the prevalence of divorce in the world, that would mean that most people did not marry their soulmate. (stay tuned next week for some scientific data!)
  4. When we marry someone, it changes us, and them. So we end up with someone that is different than the person we dated.
    1. “We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change.”  — Stanley Hauerwas

We don’t have that one person.  Next week:  3 more reasons that we don’t have a soulmate. (and these might be even more compelling)

p.s. I added a couple more talks from Jim Rayburn to the podcast page.  Check them out HERE.

 

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