Secrets of a Soul Mate
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[0 Comment]Are you married to your "soul mate"?
Katie didn't think she was. The day she walked into my counseling office she believed that little fact was her ticket out of a passionless marriage. All she really wanted from me was confirmation that Scott was not her soul mate. Since God wanted her to "be happy" in marriage, she wanted me to bless the idea that her happiness would be found when she was freed from her current spouse to find her one, true soul mate.
"I don't love Scott," she told me.
"Well, what about your three children?" I asked.
"The kids will be fine," she said confidently.
I had my work cut out for me. How could I help her see that she already had a soul mate? She just needed to redefine her understanding of what a "soul mate" is.
There's a lot of discussion about soul mates these days. It's splashed across romance novels, the main story line in movies, and all the rage among celebrities—even some Christian ones.
For many, the idea of having and being a soul mate conjures notions of God bringing together two lost hearts who experience the end to their loneliness and realize complete compatibility in all the deepest longings of their being. They experience conflict-free conversations, sometimes even without talking, discover reams and reams of shared interests, hobbies, and passions, and finally (of course), spend days upon days of heart-stopping, hand-clinching romantic walks on the beach. No hardships, no struggles, just starry-eyed wonder—for the next 80 years together!
I must admit, that does sound pretty enticing, especially the beach part; my wife and I love walks on the beach. I also fully buy into the idea of God's miracle of marriage and its God-designed intention to bring an end to loneliness. But frankly, the rest of that description sounds like something else—and that something else is just plain impossible—with anybody.
Defining "soul mate"
The philosopher Plato is often credited with the "soul mate theory." He believed that prior to birth a perfect soul was split into "male and female," and that to be complete they must find each other and "reunite their souls." That explanation fosters the notion that there's only one person in the world who can truly be my "soul mate." Furthermore, it implies that there's only one person in the whole world I could be happily married to, and therefore only one person with whom I can be "truly happy."
Thus, in the movie Jerry Maguire, we watch Tom Cruise say to Renee Zellweger, "You complete me."
And that's what Katie believed. In the midst of her career, her husband's career, three kids, multiple church activities, and a fast-paced life that had no time for the marriage, they definitely suffered a loss of passion. They had grown apart. They weren't feeling in love. No wonder they were not experiencing a "soul mate" marriage.
Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2005, Spring, Page 24
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