Soulmate

A friend wrote me an email in response to my last two blog entries.  He was particularly taken by my comments regarding my relationship with Marcia. His wife passed away a few years prior to Marcia's passing. He had spent 40 years with the same woman. He addressed her as his soulmate.

I never addressed Marcia as my soulmate. Why not, you might wonder? Before Marcia I had been in several relationships and during one of those relationships the term soulmate had been bandied around by both parties. Eventually I broke off the relationship. You broke off the relationship with your soulmate? Yes I did and then had questions in my mind regarding what constitutes a soulmate? If I was in a relationship with my soulmate then why would I want to end the relationship?

The obvious answer to the last question is you were not really soulmates. But why would one refer to their mate as their soulmate if there is a chance one is wrong? I believe the answer lies in what constitutes a soulmate.

A soulmate, in my humble opinion, is someone whom you love deeply. Life is more complete. One feels whole, feels completed by the mate. The first syllable of the term implies a deeper connection, a vibrant connection of two souls.

My ability to feel a 'vibrant connection' was stunted due to my own hangups about what love really is. One cannot casually bandy around the term soulmate with whomever they are having a relationship. I had enough sense to realize casual use of a term undermines its true meaning, thus why I did not drop the term into conversations with Marcia. And Marcia never dropped soulmate into our conversations.

The other reality for me is I never comprehended the true meaning of 'soulmate' unless one cites the above mentioned 'humble opinion.' The above stated opinion may be more due to life experience and how life's experiences can whup you up side the head until the lesson the universe, or God, wants us to learn finally takes. My head is a veritable pile of lumps from all the lessons I needed to learn. And I'm still being 'whupped up side the head.' Dang, life never seems to stop teaching.

Coming back, full circle, to my friend's comments, I speculate why his departed beloved was his soulmate. He entered into a monogamous 40 year relationship. There were no other relationships to bandy around the term soulmate. All healthy relationships grow, mature, roll with the changes life presents(resilience) and provide fertile ground to grow and mature. Roots are established. New growth is created every springtime of our lives. And when the winter of our lives approaches the fertile ground is prepared and we can deal with the changes.

We may not anticipate the final separation from our loved one, but I firmly believe the relationship work accomplished prepares us for the future.