by Jed Eane

Created on: April 08, 2007   Last Updated: November 05, 2011

I don't believe there is such a thing as a soul mate, just those people in life we get on better with than others. I may sound a little cynical, but I have to ask how, given the billions of people in the world, it often works out that someone's soul mate grew up a few streets from where they did, went to the same school as they did, and their dads worked together. That's a little too much like coincidence for me! Soul mates is a very wide expression, and perhaps we need to get the concept into perspective and accept that friendship or love stand up on their own without being given labels that make people question the authenticity of the "soul mate" aspect of their relationships. The whole concept of "soul mates" can lead us to perhaps consider that our relationship is lacking in some way or not complete unless we're twinned with our soul mate. Relationships work for a number of reasons. Just because you don't consider your other half to be our soul mate, shouldn't mean that your relationship has any less chance of succeeding than if you do.

The term soul mate is subjective. What it means to one person, it means something entirely different to another. The notion of soul mates is another person that completes us and makes us a whole person. It might be related to the idea that we ran in tribes millions of years ago and in this life we are forever searching for someone from "our tribe" and think that our soul mate is that person, but you've got to consider yourself pretty lucky if that person just happens to be the brother of your best friend!

Perhaps we like the idea of soul mates because it takes love out of our hands and places it in the hands of someone or something "higher" than us mere mortals for both good and bad. It, in some ways, maybe absolves us of responsibility for our relationships, or aspects of it: "he's my soul mate, I don't need to explain anything to him, he understands me completely." But then what happens when you neglect to communicate something important and your soul mate fails to understand you completely?

This is a subject that's entirely personal and I can only smile upon those who believe they've found their soul mate - for all I know, they may very well have done. It may be my concept which is skewed as a result of having found love without the attachment of the soul mate concept, love that is complete, wholesome, and nourished on a day to day basis with both of us considering ourselves as complete people who met and fell in love, rather than two people who instantly "recognized" each other from a past life and continue living together because it's fate's will.

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