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- I Don't Believe in Soul Mates
Welcome to everyone who’s joined in the last week! I’m on the home stretch of Write of Passage and it’s been quite the journey. This piece was particularly grueling to write and hopefully, you’ll see why.
Getting the Box Out
Adrenaline shot through my veins as I struggled to keep my hands under control. I reached into my pocket as my fingers shook like a massage gun. What should’ve been an easy motion took forever.
I couldn’t get the box out.
I didn’t realize I was already on one knee, my body had moved without my consent.
My brain went into autopilot as I mentally blacked out.
Somewhere in this process, I asked,
“Will you marry me?”
Tears sprung to my eyes as I felt the culmination of a lifetime of fear and insecurity focused on a single question. The four most vulnerable words I have ever uttered left my lips and were now floating in the ether, waiting for a response that could pierce this stoic shell of a body.
“Yes”
I felt myself enveloped in a hug that comforted my soul. With tears in her eyes, she said “Yes” as I fumbled around with the ring, almost putting it on her finger backward. The excitement, joy, and pure anxiety had formulated themselves into pure ecstasy, transporting me to another dimension without any pills.
And there it was - my first girlfriend since my 8th-grade girlfriend dumped me was now my fiance. How in the world did I come to this?
A (Brief) History of Love
For most of history, it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates based on something as fragile and irrational as love and then focus all their sexual, intimate, and altruistic desires on the resulting marriage... People have always fallen in love, and throughout the ages, many couples have loved each other deeply. But only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married.
For most of human history, we didn’t marry because of love. From the Middle East to China, to Ancient Greece, every culture has its own opinions about “love.” Love is so ethereal, how could anyone make such an important decision based on love? Marriage was reserved for keeping the order of the society.
People married others of similar backgrounds, whether from a nearby town or socioeconomic standing. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, it was commonplace for you only to meet a few hundred people. But amongst these tribes or another tribe was your life partner.
In some cultures, it is normal to have an arranged marriage. In our modern, American viewpoint, this seems blasphemous. How in the world could anyone marry for anything besides love? How could an outside party make the biggest decision of one’s life?
Nowadays, we’re given absolute freedom to whomever we want to marry. These choices allow us to make decisions to be the happiest we can be.
Modern Dating
But if that’s the case, why is everyone so unhappy with modern dating? Even though we live in the most connected world in history, that has changed the process of how we meet our mates. There are over 8 billion people in the world - how in the world can anyone get connected with their soulmate?
This beautiful chart was put together by Reddit user, alwaysstaysthesame. After just over a year of her time on Tinder, swiping almost 34,000 times, she had gone on a total of 5 dates with one resulting in a long-term dating relationship.
This sheer mind-boggling amount of people she could now meet is beyond what anyone a generation ago would have imagined. There are dozens of dating apps and services to be able to meet anyone around the world.
With this technology of connection, it’s common to want to find the best person out there. But this relentless desire to pursue the “best fit” comes at a cost. There’s a constant pressure we put to date the best person we can, otherwise, how could we live with ourselves?
This is the paradox of choice - a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz. Autonomy and freedom are crucial to our well-being, we need to feel like we’re in control. So the modern American should be the freest (and happiest) person in the world, right?
Wrong. The paradox of choice means that we’re always afraid to make the wrong choice. With so many people in the world to date, there has to be someone better out there for you.
But this seems impossible to picture for us. We fuss over the thought that there’s a “soulmate” out there for us. I don’t believe it.
True Perfection
So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
What is perfection anyway? Does it contribute anything to our lives if it’s such a lofty ideal, disconnected from any basis in reality? What does it mean to be perfect? In the oldest sense of the word, it means to be complete. If seeking to be complete is perfection, then my fiance is perfect for me.
By asking her to marry me, I’m cutting myself off from any other romantic relationship. I’m making a conscious decision, yes there may be other women - But I want to be with her. From the flood of 8 billion people in the world, I want her to be my life partner.
She’s a short, loud Russian woman who surprises me after a long week with a homemade candle and a handwritten card that she wax-sealed herself. She patiently listens to my rants about the modern construction industry and obsesses over the latest K-drama.
None of these things would’ve ever been on my radar to put in a bio of a dating app. How could I? These are the tiniest parts of what makes her perfect for me.
We obsess over finding our soul mate. But in a world of over 8 billion people, it’d be impossible to truly find that person. That forces us to take a step back and evaluate our thoughts and expectations. Divorcing myself from the impossible expectations led me to be a teary mess on a beach, asking my best friend to marry me.
My fiance, as we spent the day in an aquarium
Thanks to Steven Foster, Mohammad Khan, Alex Exum, and Dylan Kurt for the conversation and feedback