Soulmates: Fact or Fiction?

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With Valentine’s Day around the corner, love is on the brain. When people think about love, they tend to envision the cliché components of love: long walks on the beach, chocolates and teddy bears, watching movies with your significant other. The list goes on and on. 

However, I think there’s a more important aspect of our romantic ideals that needs an in depth analysis: Soulmates. The concept of soulmates has been around for centuries, and the amount of movies, TV shows and books that portray soulmates are as vast as the day is long. There are many unexplained things about soulmates: How do you know when you find yours? What are the chances of you meeting yours? And, the biggest question of all, are soulmates real?

Many people are divided on this topic. Some say that there’s a soulmate for everyone, while others say that soulmates are a hoax. Well, according to the New Oxford Dictionary, the definition of a soulmate is “a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or a romantic partner.” By these standards, soulmates are real, because people do gravitate towards one group of people more than others. However,  to piggyback on this definition, you could say anyone is your soulmate just because you get along with them better than others. Some people also think that there is one soulmate for everyone, and if you blow it with your soulmate, you’ll never really find true love again. I disagree with this outlook because if someone was really your soulmate, how can you blow it with them?

In some studies, it was proven that if you look at your relationship through the “soulmate” lens, you view your problems to be a bigger deal than they actually are, and think that you’re not meant to be with that person. In other studies, the results can be divided. According to NASA mathematician Randall Munroe, it is mathematically nearly impossible to find your soulmate within your lifetime. In another study, soulmates are proven to be a real thing, stating that soulmates contain hyper specific energy waves. However, the concept of soulmates, I feel, is not defined by numbers or energy waves. It is more about the deep emotional bond you can share with another individual.

“There is a 100% chance of finding your soulmate,” states Mrs. Morgan Bane, an English teacher at Carolina Forest High School. “If you truly believe that your soulmate is out there, then some higher power has to put them in your path eventually, and it has to come to fruition.”

To close, I feel that soulmates are what you make of it. If you love someone (platonically or romantically) enough to call him/her your soulmate, then you have your soulmate. If you believe someone is your one true love and that they will be your “end all, be all” who will follow you into the afterlife The Notebook style, then that’s what you believe them to be. There is no way to define who your soulmate is or why they’re your soulmate. Whether you call this mystical person a “soulmate,” “star crossed lover,” or “one true love,” and/or whether you believe that soulmates are a hoax or that they are the purest form of love, it truly is something that needs to be experienced to know if it is real.