Soul Mates

The one. The person you were always meant to find, who will be with you until death, and who will make you whole the moment you meet. That is the version the films sell.

A soul mate is much more than that. The connection is not limited to being a life partner, and it carries no promise that you will be with that person until death.

The same twenty or so souls

We travel through lifetimes with the same twenty to twenty five souls. Each time, we often change what our connection to each other is, depending on what each of us wants to learn.

So it can be said that they are all your soul mates. If that word has too much romance stuck to it, call them your soul friends. It is a simpler way of saying it.

The Soul Groups page goes into that group of souls in full. On this page I want to stay with what it means for the person you have been calling your soul mate, or hoping to find.

Any role at all

Sometimes a soul mate is a lover. Sometimes a friend. Sometimes a parent, a child, a brother, a boss, a neighbour. They can be any relationship to you at all, blood or not.

And sometimes a soul mate is an enemy.

That one takes a bit of sitting with. It tends to make more sense in hindsight, and hindsight is greasy walls: you can see clearly looking back, and you can never climb back up to where you were standing.

It is also possible to have more than one soul mate as a partner across a lifetime. Even at the same time. It all depends on the lessons you came here to experience.

The play

The best way I have found to understand it is to imagine you are an actor in a play.

There are twenty to twenty five other actors in the play with you. You all have different roles to accomplish, and you interact with each other as characters who have been created just for this play. One of them plays your husband. One plays your rival. One plays the stranger who says the one line you needed to hear in the second act.

In your head you know none of it is real. In your heart you play it as if it is, because the drama, the tragedy, the love and the laughter are what you came for.

At the end of the play you all meet backstage and talk about how great it was. Each of you learned something from the others.

You are also an audience member, watching yourself on stage. That is your higher self. It knows the play is a play, and it watches the whole of it, including the scenes you would rather forget.

Understanding all of that makes it easier to understand some of the complexities life gives us.

What the films get wrong

The biggest one is a line I remember from a movie: "You complete me."

On the surface it sounds gushy and romantic. In practice it describes two half circles clinging together, each trying to be the master of the circle they have made. One wins and holds the power. The other loses and is dominated.

A soul mate cannot complete you. Nobody can. You complete your own circle, and then you meet another complete one, and the two of you complement each other instead of competing for control. The Full Circle and Half Circle Relationships page is about that work.

The second thing the films get wrong is the ending. The film stops the moment the two of them find each other, and life keeps going, with a lesson attached. Even a soul mate has a message for you, as every person who comes into your life does, and it could be as simple as learning that love of that depth exists. The A Reason, a Season or a Lifetime page covers that idea in more detail.

The familiar feeling

When you meet one of your soul friends, the connection resonates. They feel familiar. In each lifetime the souls in your group take a different role in each other's lives, so the familiar feeling tells you they belong to your group. It does not tell you which part they have come to play this time.

In a new relationship you might get a gut feeling about a person and choose to ignore it, because you are seeing them through rose coloured glasses. The Life Lessons page in The Inner Work area explains why we so often choose to ignore it.

When a soul mate dies

A soul mate is not promised to you until death, and some of them leave far earlier than you would choose.

I had a childhood friend, Ian, who was like a brother to me, and he was taken when we were still teenagers. Being able to say he was my soul brother, and that I loved him, has been cathartic. The spirit being inside you understands the agreement that was made, even when the human in you does not like it, and you will be reunited when you make your own crossing. The Taken Too Soon page tells the rest of it.

Something to sit with

Make a short list of the people who have felt like soul mates to you. Lovers, friends, family, and at least one person you would rather not have on the list.

What role did each of them play in your play this time? And what did you learn from the one you least wanted to include?

You will know the answers better than I could. All I have done is hand you the script.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.