Do you believe in soul-mates?
In sociologist Mark Regnerus’s book, “Premarital Sex in America: How Young Adults Meet, Mate, and Think about Marriage,” he indicates that there has been a fundamental shift in the way that young adults think about marriage. The over-arching tendency amongst young adults today is to search for a soul-mate. Indeed, in a survey, he cites that 94% of young adults want their marriage partner to be first and foremost a “soul-mate”. According to Wikipedia, the term soul-mate is defined as:
A soulmate or soul mate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality, and/or compatibility.
We are intrigued by these trends and would like to get some feedback from our readers. Please take a moment to participate in our poll! If you do not find the answer listed below, feel free to fill in the blank with your own thoughts.
Sound off! What do you think?
(Answers are anonymous.)
i think this is a really telling idea — the generation brought up by Disney and divorce is looking for ONE soul mate. I think this view can be rather detrimental — in this case… what if the person you marry isn’t your one proverbial soul mate?
I think that there are many people with whom we are compatible, with whom we could make a good life, and very well be called to in marriage. We are only called to marry one person (if we are called to marriage at all), so in that respect of course there is “one” person with whom we are meant to spend our lives. But this does not mean that if our marriages are rocky or things get hard that our spouse is not the “ONE soul mate” that we should be with.
I also think that getting caught up in false ideas of love is really detrimental — love is, first and foremostly, an act of the will; it is an act of sacrifice and a desire to lead the other to Heaven. I don’t think the Disney-promulgated idea of that ONE soul mate and the picture-perfect love story really touches on the sacrifice that it takes to make a marriage work. The idea of a soul mate gives people a cop out when they think they might have married someone who is not their “soul mate.” The one you marry is, indeed, the one with whom you should have discerned the call to your vocation of marriage, and therefore you make the choice that they be your practical “soul mate.”
Yes! I believe in soul mates.
I believe that just as the book of Jeremiah states, God has a plan for me. He knew me before I was in my mother’s womb. He has a plan for prosperity and happiness for me.
His first plan for me ( my vocation) is for holiness, so that I can be in union with Him in heaven.
His second plan for me (my Vocation) is marriage – and it is through that marriage that I will be refined into a being of holiness. (So the purpose of my spouse is to help me to become holy; the purpose of marriage is to draw me closer to my union with God.)
Now, even though I had the gift of free will and married the WRONG man because at the time I was more interested in MY will being done, rather than God’s will be done, God wrote straight with my crooked lines. I was granted an annulment and through much pain and perseverance, God lead me to my soul mate – the spouse that God intended me to have.
In the simplest form, our spouse IS our soul mate because, through the spiritual union on the altar, our souls are literally made one. Our souls are literally mated to one another. For me, to deny existence of soul mates is to deny that we have souls and to deny that through sacramental marriage we are united spiritually with our spouse.
We are mind, body and soul. We are not just intellectual mobile collection of cells and flesh. We are all three. Those three things, mind, body (through the kiss – and more completely on the honeymoon), and soul are united on the altar.
I believe that God designs us a certain way – with a certain personality – and that our Vocation (marriage, religious life, or priesthood) suits that personality- and assists us in our first vocation of holiness. Likewise, I believe that if God designs us to be predisposed to marriage then God would also design a corresponding mate for us who is likewise designed for marriage and designed to be a compliment to our personality. There is a purpose to the complementarity – to our design. God would not intend us for marriage and then leave us hanging by not even creating a mate for us.
I will attest to the fact that my spouse is miraculously a perfect mate for me. He’s not exactly what I envisioned my spouse to look like, but every day I am more and more convinced that God designed him with me in mind, and vice versa.
We do have a free will – and we may marry whomever we choose. And just because we marry someone, it doesn’t mean that they are who God intended us to be with. God respects our choice and allows our souls to be united to whomever we choose. That is why there is no such thing as divorce in God’s eyes. When the souls are united, they can only be separated by death – when the soul goes to heaven (via purgatory etc.).
So- don’t settle for someone who you “get along with” or who you’ve been dating for 3 years so you figure that the next step is marriage. Get as close as you can to God and He will lead you to your soul mate. He wants you to be with Him in heaven – so He will give you the way- the path to do that. Don’t settle for less- God wouldn’t want you to!
[...] 41 percent of you, who voted in our recent poll, don’t. But why? It’s a question worth asking since a previously conducted study showed that 88 [...]