These Tips Can Help You to Find Your Soul Mate
“Don't look for a soul mate. Make one -- out of the complex fabric of the human being already with you.” - Vera Nazarian
It’s hard to resist the idea of a soul mate. That somewhere out there is our double, our twin, the person who will both challenge us to grow and love us unconditionally.
It’s an intoxicating thought. The very idea can be addicting.
And there is a lot of advice about what it will be like when we finally find him or her. We’ll be able to feel them vibrate on the other side of the world. Deep down we’ll just know this is it, the real, genuine soul mate experience.And maybe it’s true, at least for a night or a week or a year.
But what happens when you come home to find your soul mate in bed with your best friend? Or she steals from you? Or he wrecks your car with absolutely no remorse?
Does it mean you were wrong? He or she wasn’t really your soul mate after all? Time to heal the wounds and move on to find the real mate for your soul?
By the time I was 27 I was sure I had met my soul mate at least a dozen times.
The signs were all there. Magnetic energy. Bad timing.
That feeling of melding into one totally new being.
I’ve loved wildly and recklessly with an intensity that bordered on madness. I spent years trying to convince myself I’d married my soul mate because the relationship was so painful, I couldn’t explain it any other way.
But I can’t honestly say today whether or not any of these were really soul mate encounters. I’m not sure I know what that is, and I’ve learned that sometimes what I felt was a soul mate was nothing more than my own projections.
I was so in love with love and the idea of finding my perfect partner that I kept falling in love with men who not only weren’t right for me, they often didn’t treat me well either.
I believed the soul mate relationship should feel a certain way. It should be powerful and rock my world, and sometimes it did do that. Some of these relationships I came through feeling like I was waking up from a drugged sleep.
Relationships can feel magical and profound while we’re caught up in the energy of discovering a new person and a new passion. I wouldn’t trade those experiences.
But down the road, at least for me, the loves that have been life changing and I’ve really learned from are the ones that have helped me grow and change slowly over time.
A few years ago I received a Fulbright scholarship and went to India for six months. My cottage was part of a Catholic university in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, and while there I became friends with Sister Sima, who lived next door as the chaperone in the girl’s dormitory. Sister Sima didn’t approve of divorce and was free with her advice.
One evening over tea we talked about love.
“You learn to love,” she told me. “That’s why parents arrange their children’s marriages. Who knows you better than they do? Your parents have your best interest at heart. They’ll want someone who will treat you well. And over time you will come to love each other. If you had done that, you would still be married today.”
While I would not have taken or wanted my parents’ advice on marriage, she had a point.
Maybe a soul mate isn’t the one that blindsides you like a fast train on an empty track. Maybe a soul mate is the one who is there for you after the intensity wears off.
This doesn’t mean I think you should stay in a bad relationship and try to make it work. Sometimes the best thing you can do for both of you is to move on.
But what if you’re with a person who is good, who helps you grow but maybe just not quite perfect?
Here are five tips to help you recognize your soul mate in the person you are already with.
1.Focus more on acting right than being right. Have you ever known someone who needs to one up you no matter what you say? Maybe you’re that person.
One day, early in my current relationship, I found myself disagreeing with my partner about spiritual beliefs no less. After I ranted for a while I noticed he wasn’t saying anything. He was listening, attentive, and when I finally shut my mouth, he smiled and said, “I’m sure you’re right.”
No debate. No argument. And I learned a lot from that one interaction about my own behaviour.
2. Don’t be afraid to dig down to the roots. Have you thought you met your soul mate only to have him or her betray or lie to you? We may fall in love with the wrong person because our own ideas of love have been warped or twisted when we were children. If you were abused, abandoned or hurt, your ideas of love might be all wrapped up in pain.
Children are naturally loving and trusting and when that love has been violated, it can take a long time to get it all straightened out. Be patient with yourself and the person you’re with.
3. Create your own version of love. Love looks different to everyone.
I love a man who is good, kind and gentle. I moved to the high desert so I could be closer to him, but I don’t live with him and I don’t plan to. I’ve found solace in living alone that I never knew living with someone else.
4. A soul mate doesn’t have to be human. Face it. Some of us have been broken by life.
But we’ve survived and many of us have learned to love again through animals. Sometimes I think my true soul mate is every cat in the world.
5. Love your self first. Soul mates come and go. In the end, it’s you that you have to love waking up to every morning.
