Bruce, do you have a “soulmate”? The short answer is “no.”
First, I don’t don’t have a “soul” and neither does Polly, my partner of forty-seven years. There’s no evidence for the existence of the soul, and without one, I can’t have a “soulmate” and neither can Polly.
Second, there are millions of females on planet Earth I could have married and been happy with. Am I really expected to believe that Polly was the only person for me; that if I had never married her, I wouldn’t be happy? This is absurd, to say the least.
That said, I am happily married. By all accounts, we have a good marriage, and we get along with each other 98.9% of the time. All I am saying is that had I met a different woman and married her, it is possible we could have been happily married too. Of course, we also could have had the marriage from hell. Life is a crapshoot, and that includes marriage.
Do you have a soulmate? How do you know that person is the only person out of eight billion people just for you? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I feel the same way. But I sure do love my husband and he’s #1.
This take is exactly what I have long thought. We see the life we have and can’t seriously consider it happening any other way. How many times do we hear people say ‘just think, if I hadn’t been at such and such a place at such and such a time we never would have met’. In reality, there is a near infinite set of circumstances that might have directed our lives down another path, one in which we would be saying the same thing about different ‘soulmates’ and friends.
I will play the “what if” game now and again. I’ve had so many traumatic moments in my life. These moments changed my path in life. Had I lived in one community and attended the same school, I suspect my life would have been different. Alas, I will never know. Life is what it is. I’m grateful for the life I’ve been given. Sure, I wish I wasn’t sick or in pain, but that aside, life is good.
I don’t believe in souls or soul mates. Relationships are about choices, communication, compromise, commitment.