A good part of my adult life has been lived in the blissful belief in and unfaltering appreciation of soul mates, those rare and magical individuals with whom we feel a feverish, intimate connection — a knowing, a twinkle in the eye, a deep smile of the heart, a co-mingling of passion.
"A soul mate," says author Thomas Moore, "is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace. This kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious in life," he says."
Matters of the Heart
According to Erich Fromme, "The desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man (sic). It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, the society. Without love, humanity could not exist for a day."
While Moore contends that "romantic love is an illusion," he bids us to keep the Latin connotation of the word "love" in mind rather than the English version, which for years has represented hallucination, mockery, or deception. In ludere, or "in play," suggests that illusion can have a frolicsome manner. "To be in love," adds Moore, "is to be in play, to be taken by illusions."
From at least one cosmological perspective, belief in a soul mate implies a belief in reincarnation. In such an instance a soul mate would be a person with whom you’ve been working for numerous centuries on some parallel development of soul. It is also believed that while there could be a tremendous bond and attraction between soul mates — including very happy marriages — the bond is most often part of a sister/brother relationship. Yet the "twin flame" or "perfect love" is the most profound relationship, the couple born of pure Spirit.
Of course all of this is an outright rejection of the "bio-logic" and "exchange" theories of courtship behavior. According to bio-logic, men look for women with physical characteristics that are indicative of being in their "peak of child-bearing years," while women look for the "alpha" males who supposedly have a greater chance of ensuring family group survival. The logic behind this theory is as clear as its flaws. In the exchange theory of social psychology, we are said to select partners who are mostly our equals. We tally up physical appearance, financial stability, social ladder position, and numerous personality traits such as kindness ratio, humor quota, and creativity. If the score card shows us a decent total, we’re more likely to allow the romantic attraction to take us away. But a witty, bright, tender person can transcend low social status.
C.G. Jung discussed yet another possibility known as the "persona" theory. In this scenario, it is proposed that a key aspect in partner selection is how she improves our self-esteem. Since we all wear a persona, or mask, that we show to the world, our mate is selected on how much he or she will "enhance" this mask.
While numerous theories may help to touch on some components of romantic love, they’re hardly answers to the mystery of passionate intensity and romantic love. Neither do they explain how and why we seem to join up with partners who share complementary traits. And what theory can account for the shattering devastation felt by those who face a breakup?
It is here that many psychologists believe the unconscious mind plays a significant role; some even say we fall in love because the unconscious believes it has found the partner that will finally "make up for the psychological and emotional damage" we experienced as children and thus will make us whole again. Dr. Harville Hendrix reminds us that from day one, we’re born as complicated, dependent beings who continue to have an eternal circuit of needs.
Freud, he notes, rightly labeled humans "’insatiable beings’Šand no parents, no matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all of these changing needs."
Love as a drug
Psychopharmacologists point out that lovers are genuinely "high on drugs — natural hormones and chemicals that flood the body with a sense of well-being." When we experience romantic attraction, our brains discharge norepinephrine and dopamine, two of our system’s numerous neurotransmitters. These are at least partially responsible for our cheery outlook, quickened pulse, pumped up energy, and "heightened perception." During this period of romantic bliss, our brains increase the production of natural narcotics, endorphins, and enkephalins, which cause us to feel a warm, fuzzy level of being comfortable and secure.
Research Associate Helen Fisher of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University offers a viewpoint that speaks to both the pharmacological theory and the "bio-logic" theory of romantic love. In her essay The Nature and Evolution of Romantic Love, Fisher theorizes and concludes that "the fundamental components of romantic love — attraction and attachment — are primary, panhuman emotions much like fear, anger, joy, sadness, surprise; that these feelings are based in brain physiology, as are other primary emotions; that human romantic love stems from mammalian biochemical systems designed to coordinate each specie’s specific breeding cycle; and that human cyclical attraction and attachment evolved some four million years ago in conjunction with the primary human reproductive strategy, serial pairbondings, to rear successive altricial [helpless upon birth thus requiring parental care] young through their periods of infancy."
But even a pharmacological theory cannot scientifically explain what triggers the unleashing of these powerful chemicals, or what causes them to decrease in production.
Attachment, Detachment, & Soulful Relationship
To understand the depths of attachment and intimacy in a soul mate relationship, we must first understand something of the soul within us. And that’s exactly where it starts: within each of us. Moore says that being a friend to ourselves isn’t merely a metaphor or a sentimental thought. It’s the bedrock of relationship because it’s essential to "recognition of soul."
"The soul is a wide, spacious area in which fate plays a great role, and in which family, society, and history — personal and cultural — are major influences" writes Moore in Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship. "It has its own reasons, which may be only dimly apparent to consciousness. [It] lives in the realm of imagination, and influences the direction and quality of life through a kind of poetics, a language of image and symbol. [It] doesn’t have to know what is going on in life. It doesn’t need interpretations, explanations, or conclusions, but it does require musing, reverie, consideration, wonder, and exploration. Soul is really the deep seat of relationship.
"One ancient image of the sou — the night sky filled with planets and stars — portrays our subjectivity and interiority infinitely more accurately than all our twentieth century images of the human being as a complex machine, an object of conditioning, or an ingenious arrangement of chemicals.
"Soul is individual, vernacular, cyclic, eternal. When I say that soul is vernacular, I mean that it is located in some place — in one person’s life, in a neighborhood or a region, in a specific culture or community. To say that soul is vernacular is a variation on James Hillman’s statement that the soul is always connected to actual life and to Jung’s view that anima, or soul, is the archetype of life, or, as he says, it is "earth, nature, fertility, everything that flourishes under the damp light of the moon."
"The soul," continues Moore, "has a strong desire and need for intimacy...[it] doesn’t thrive on grand schemes of salvation or on smooth, uncluttered principles, nor does it thrive on theories and creeds...."
He suggests that the soul manifests its leanings toward attachment to individuals, locations, and incidents by having a particular affinity for the past and a insubordination to change. Hillman describes the soul as the life of the psyche, "the present mess it is in, its discontent, dishonesty, and thrilling illusions." Moore adds that for proper care of the soul, we must honor these paradoxical slants.
Some psychologists attribute extreme euphoria and a relentless need for or dependence on another individual to codependence, rather than soul mating. Yet the definition of codependent is an individual who has allowed another individual’s behavior to deeply affect him and who becomes obsessed with how to control the behavior of the other individual. Yet control may sometimes be an accidental corollary to intimacy, but it is never a requirement.
The soul yearns for intimacy and attachment. Yet we also long for seclusion, independence, and detachment. So while we teeter on the edge of one end of the spectrum to establish and maintain a rooted romantic partnership, we may also find ourselves drifting in a fervent covenant in which we suddenly experience a contradictory urge for independence to associate with other individuals. That’s natural, says Moore. "We may have to look for concrete ways to give life to both sides of the spectrum, enjoying both our intimacies and our solitude," says Moore.
There’s yet another less-than-perfect component that can descend on a relationship: the onset of cold, disinterest, a gap, and a slow "numbing" of connection and feeling. Does it mean you were mistaken? No, says Moore.
"The heart is not all warm and flowing," he says. "It has its frigid currents and its areas of ice." A difficulty in a relationship, he continues, "may be like the piece of marble Michelangelo confronted with his hammer and chisel: the inner figure waiting to be sculpted out is not easy to perceive and is certainly invisible except to a poetic eye." Perhaps rather than questioning what might be happening to them, couples experiencing such a wave might consider asking what these "flat and cool moods" are asking of them. "Numbness," adds Moore, "is a path, a rather perverse way toward a deeper and possibly more honest participation in life."
"With our focus on the soul," he adds, "we won’t feel the impossible burden of‘doing’ relationship right, as though we had full control over the intimacies that develop between people." Fortunately, the soul isn’t obsessed with perfection. Or, if it is, it is a perfection with limitless features, facets we can’t quite comprehend. The best approach to finding your soul mate seems to be fiding your own soul. And the best way to keep your love alive is to grow it like a living thing. "A soulful relationship is not a simple gift; it asks for concentrated cultivation," says Moore.
To believe or not to believe
Is it too much to ask of our imaginations to think that our yearning for wholeness can stem from Plato’s account of our man/woman predecessors being split into two unfilled halves? Can we allow ourselves the openness to consider the possibility of having an innate need to go back to the wholeness we knew while residing in our mother’s womb unaware of our own individuality separate from hers?
Can we fathom our insatiable needy nature and thus desperate craving for love as explained through the teachings of Jung, Freud, Fromme, Hendrix, and Moore?
Do we dare observe the messages of the unconscious without judgement or force — learn to be in tune with it and the focused conscious?
I believe in the beauty, the mystery, and the chaos of a soul mate.I’ve had the privilege of encountering and loving a few in my lifetime. They’ve come in all shapes and sizes. Men. Women. Children. Fuzzy, four-legged critters.I vote for daring to believe in a soul mate and for allowing ourselves to listen to its loud, unabashed presence. I vote for art, for music, for words, for laughter, and for every attempt we can make to cultivate intimacy in a creative, loving way. Won’t you give it a try?