Finding Your Soul Mate
It is amazing how little advice is available, especially to young people, on choosing your soul mate or your spouse for life. On the other hand, there is a massive publishing industry built around resolving marital conflict, dealing with separation and divorce, keeping the love alive and so on.
Most of my married friends (and me included) consider there was a large amount of good fortune in their choice of our spouse. The reason is because none of us realized at the time what exactly we were agreeing to and how long “forever” really is! Neither did we realize how little we really knew about our spouses or ourselves on our wedding day! Of course some of our friends were not so fortunate and they are no longer together.
In fact a sad statistic is over one third of marriages end in divorce. I suspect de-facto relationships have an even worse record.
My wife and I have been married for 17 years and I am delighted I decided to spend my life with her. In fact, I can honestly say I have not met anyone before or since that I would rather be married to. However, much of the reason for that is the blessing of God and good fortune.
Getting it right at the very start of a long-term relationship is critical if you want the best chance to avoid pain and frustration later on.
Here are the key factors in giving yourself the best chance of finding and staying with a soul-mate and life partner:
1. Understand Yourself
You cannot hope to find the right person if you don’t know who you are and where you are heading. Invest time in finding out what really makes you excited and holds your attention. Work out what you believe and why. Until you get to that point, don’t dream of making a life-long commitment to someone else!
I have a friend who was always attracted to “victims” i.e. people who were broken in some way and needed help. This woman started to date these types of men. I told her I believed that one of her gifts was to reach out to broken people and to help them, but she shouldn’t necessarily look for brokenness in a life partner. She did end up marrying someone who needed help, and yes he is a lucky guy. But it is not an ideal situation for her, and I believe it has compromised her ability to use her gift. Had she married a strong, well-centered man, they would have had a life that would have allowed her to fully utilize her gift. As it is, they lead quite separate lives, and many of her early dreams of helping others have been suffocated.
2. Understand Your Partner
It is so easy in the beginning to see all the similarities you share. Someone likes you and you like them. Their voice sounds like beautiful music, and their smile lights up the room. You daydream about them all day long and you start writing poetry! But STOP! That isn’t enough to base a lifetime commitment on. You need to really and truly get to know and understand that person. Anyone can pretend to be anything they want to be for a few months and both parties are always on their best behaviour for the first few months.
You need to ask your partner the big questions of life, their dreams and aspirations. You should get them to read your favourite books and you should read theirs. Attend seminars together. Don’t ignore or gloss over differences and annoyances. Small problems in relationships tend to become monsters after you get married!
3. Influences
Everyone is the average of the five people they spend the most time with. Who are their closest friends? Who are their role-models? Who are their heroes or heroines? That is what they are really like and what they are gravitating towards.
4. Your Partner’s Parents
There is no avoiding that your partner is genetically 50% of each of his/her parents. Not only that, but they have also been shaped and socialized by those parents. The more you get to know your partner the more you will realize that in a huge number of ways they are a half-twin of each of their parents. The practical reality is that you had better really like your partner’s parents because your partner is going to strongly resemble them when they are that age!
5. Similarity Breeds Content
It is simple but it is true, the more you have in common the happier and more content you will be. The psychology literature and research agrees. For example
“greater similarity between partner was associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction” (Journal of Personality, Volume 74(5), 2006, p1401).
If you write down your core beliefs and core values and favourite pastimes and most important activities, these must be broadly the same as those of your partner. Even non-critical issues can be very important. If for example you like to exercise in your spare time, and your partner likes to eat junk food in front of the TV, you will make new exercise friends and start to move in a different direction to your partner. More importantly you should understand your partner’s views on money before you have a joint bank account. You should find out their ideas on parenthood before you become parents.
If you find you really don’t have much in common when it comes to the important things in life, it is much better to walk away now rather than be trapped with someone you have no common ground with.
6. Beauty is Skin Deep
Okay it is important that you are “hot” for your partner, and you think they are beautiful and sexy. But that on its own is not enough. In fact in the first few months it can get in the way of really finding out about your partner. Their beauty can blind you to their faults or make you gloss-over the attributes you don’t like. Make sure you don’t make a life-long commitment to someone when you are in this space.
Take a step back and imagine they are very plain looking. Beauty is only skin deep and it becomes irrelevant if you don’t also love the person inside.
Practical Steps
If you have not already found your soul mate here are some powerful practical steps to enable you to find the right person:
1. Write a List of Wants
Get a new exercise book and write down all of the wants and must-haves of the person you are looking for. Be as specific as possible. Give as much detail as possible. Imagine your perfect match and write down everything about them. It is a good idea to add pictures into your book, not only of what they look like but pictures of your future life together.
2. Write a list of Must Notes
Then write a list of all of the things your soul mate must not be. All of the habits, attributes, and attitudes you don’t want them to have. Once again give details and be specific. If you can’t stand people who answer their mobile phone during dinner, write it down!
3. Most Important
Once you have completed points one and two, in a separate part of the exercise book write down a detailed answer to the following question:
What do I have to do and be in order to attract that person into my life?
Let’s be honest for a minute. If you have just described a near perfect human being with a sparkling personality and every wonderful gift, are they going to be interested in you? If you settle for mediocrity, don’t care much about your appearance, have a host of bad habits are you going to attract your dream soul mate?
The most important part of this exercise is to ensure you are worthy of the soul mate of your dreams. If you are not there yet, it is time for you to go to work on you.
4. Pray
It is impossible to over emphasise how important it is to find the right spouse. They will be the other parent to your children, your friend, your intimate lover, your support and so on. Regardless of your theology I thoroughly recommend you pray, meditate and then listen to God and to your own heart before making a lifelong commitment. When friends ask me for advice in this area I always tell them to fast and pray and listen for three full days. It is too important a decision to leave to your emotions and your hopes.
5. Reading and Courses
There are a lot of good books and courses on relationships. Two I have found especially good are:
• The book “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” by John Gray.
• The CD and DVD series by Tony and Sage Robbins “Love and Passion Ultimate Relationship Program”.