Do you believe in True Love?? One Soul Mate??

In My Humble Opinion
21

Uh-huh. Looks like we got both parties of the OP in here now.

No I don’t believe in “true love” (anymore). There are different types and levels of love that you will reach with any number of people. None of them are more or less true than any others.

Finding true love would be like finding Noah’s Ark in your backyard (pure dumb luck and highly unlikely). It’s much more likely that your love for a person will grow as your relationship develops. The familiarity will foster even deeper feelings, much like a close friendship except with romance and sexual endeavors.

I don’t believe in soul mates either (though I used to). At the exact instant a person is most compatible with you it’s very unlikely that you’ll be in close proximity. As time goes on that person (and yourself) grow and become more mature and experienced. You will continue to change, as will they, until you may not be as compatible as you once were. No two people are made for each other; most people have soft pliable edges that can be made to fit a number of other puzzle pieces. Don’t harden your edges and you can fit in nearly any part of the big picture.

22

Please let us know how things turn out. I would love a happy story in love for once.

23

I think that we can have multiple soul mates. Also, sometimes a person will come into your life so that you can help each other for that era; then you move on. There’s nothing wrong with that either.

My first gf and I were definitely soul mates, but our relationship was not meant to last. My wife and I now are true soul mates, and I know we’ll be together tddup.

24

one true love? as in no one else that could fit the bill? I can’t say I am sure that is the case, but there are definitly different levels of compatibility.
I had been in love several tme before I met my wife. Each was very special and unique in its way but none can hope to compare with the depth of feeling and sense of “rightness” that I experience with my wife.
The feelings we seem to have for each other go well beyond anything that I have ever been able to feel for anyone else, even my own child.
When you truly, And I mean TRULY feel that you would lay down your life for someone else, when you would unhesitantly take the worst torture and pain to spare someone else. THEN will you know what a true love is.
Is that true love the only one that could possibly exist for a particular person? Probably not. But in the heat of passion, the depths of need, and the imperative of desperate danger, it hardly matters.

25

zydecatsgirl, for a while, about 10 years ago, I came close to believing in soul mates and one true love, and I thought I’d found him. We were engaged, and life was beautiful. It was, I thought, clear-eyed love – I could see his faults, had an idea of what he would become, and I was willing to put up with them because of what he was. I loved that man with all my heart, all my soul, and all my body.

Then things happened and life changed. I won’t go into the details, in part because I don’t know all of them, but he hasn’t been part of my life for 5 years or so now. I will probably never see him again, although if I find myself back in Hawaii, I will be tempted to. I did not, in those days believe in sex outside of marriage, and I thought the vows we swore to each other were as binding as marriage vows. I had to do some major re-thinking and rationalization. I thought I had driven my One True Love away or let him slip away, and I was worried I’d done something immoral.

Now, there have been times in my life when, forget issues, I’ve had full subscriptions! :wink: This means when it comes to personal matters, I can be incredibly slow on the uptake. In the intervening years, I’ve had offers of more than friendship, some of which were tempting. I don’t believe in One True Love anymore, although I know a few people who I suspect are soulmates. I also hope I might have more than one out there. I’m older, wiser, more battle-scarred, and saner than I was in my 20’s, so it will be different next time, but I would like to fall in love again, and I suspect I can if I let myself.

Back when I was a teenager, I wrote a poem which had a chorus which has lingered in my memory long after the rest of it faded:

I don’t know all that’s going on in your love life, but you may want to repeat that to yourself a few times. Even love between soul mates takes work – just ask my parents (married over 40 years), two of my best friends (married over 20 years), or another two of my best friends (took them over 10 years to get married – long story with more subscriptions). I do believe if it’s worth having it’s worth fighting for and you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff once the two of you have worked out what is and is not “small stuff.”

Oh, and one piece of practical advice from an old feminist. Don’t define yourself as someone’s girl – that’s doing both of you a disservice. Define yourself as someone in your own right so that you can stand beside him in your own right. Hyper-dependency is what sunk my One True Love experience and what has stopped me from approaching guys who might become hyperdependent on me. “You are my life, my world, my all!” may sound very romantic, but it places a very large burden on the person you’re saying it to.

Good luck,
CJ

26

Yes I believe in true love and soul mates and all that stuff but I don’t believe there is one and only one candidate. If that was the truth you’d be stuck with staying in the geographic location of your “soul mate” and I can’t believe life is that lame.

27

I didn’t but I do now. Since I met Emofkuniv my life has changed completely and I honestly cannot imagine a day without him. I cannot imagine a life without him. So yes, there is one true love, one soulmate… certainly was for me (and him!).

28

I believe in both. I believe that there is onely one person out there who you can match perfectly and I believe I’ve found him :p…I believe a soul mate is someone you can understand perfectly and who can understand you in the same way. It’s as if you’re meant to be. I get that feeling often when thinking of the one I believe to be my “true love”.:slight_smile:

29

I agree with you more than most other posts, I think. Particularly that people may come into your life and be perfect at that time.

I was married for nineteen years, to an amazing man – but we grew apart and at different rates. He’s still one of my best friends, but my primary partner now is much more suited to who and what I’ve grown up and into – and even my ex recognizes that fact.

I have a half-formed theory that each person has a number of potential “soul mates,” with whom they can live happily and reach their optimally best nature – but each of those soul mates will bring out a slightly different best. Then there are a larger number of people with whom one is anywhere from “quite compatible” to “extremely compatible.”

And it depends on what the person wants. I, for example, seem to have a lot of energy to focus on relationships, so my ideal partners are those who want to build a really solid home life between us. Someone who is more career-/vocation-driven might be a very good partner for me in many ways (and we’d be richer – what a novel concept), but accepting that would be to put aside some of that essential part of me that wants to focus on us/home. You have to figure out what matters most to you, and how you want to balance that with what your partners desire.

30

". . . True love is the greatest thing in the world. . . .

Except for a nice MLT,

a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich,

where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe."

31

Personally, I do believe that there’s such a thing as true love and soul mates, but, by the wording of the above post, I get the instinctual feeling that you’re still going through the emotional upheavals of adolescence. That said, there are more opportunities in life for you to experience, and, as you grow older, you may discover someone with whom you have a more mature love than with this last one. To be honest, I’ve found in some cases where I thought I loved someone and then realized that it really wasn’t anything more than infatuation.

Good luck, go have fun with your friends, experience life as a single person, and make sure you realize that you’re just as good with or without an SO.

32

I guess I’m somewhat of a cynic, because I don’t really believe in soul mates. I’m married and I love my wife very much, and I believe that she loves me very much as well, but if she and I had never met, I believe I would be happy in a relationship with someone else.

I believe that there are people with whom we are compatible, and with whom it is possible to have a good fulfilling relationship.

I am not sure what True Love is and how it is distinguished from Untrue Love. Either you love somebody, or you don’t.

33

No.

I used to believe in true love, but my heart has been trashed far too many times at this point for me to give any credence to the idea.
:frowning:

34

Yeah, they’re so perky, I love that!

35

<(Never loved before)
But I believe that there are many people that one person could fall in love with (on account of similar personality traits and interests).

But even if this true love did an unforgiveable task… (cheat, kill someone…), that love could break.

36

<(will never believe in love again)
I believe love is a sexual response to unfulfilled desires. Lonliness, insecurity, oedipus, monetary, vanity, children, all these things are selfish reasons to want someone to live with, have sex with, have children with. I believe love is just a selfish endeavor to fulfill oneself. When people change and grow different, their needs become different, and they believe it is ok to desert the union. Then find someone else to fill the new needs. There is no mystery, no spiritual bonding. Just a selfish response to another person who can give them what they want in exchange for something they don’t mind paying for it.

37

I don’t believe that there is Only One True Mate for a person.

Like others have said upthread, there are different people with differing degrees of compatibility to each person. Even if someone is such an oddity that only one person in a million is truly compatible with them, that still means that there are roughly six thousand people in the world that they’d get along well with. :slight_smile:

38

Do believe in love- not sure about true love. Certainly everyone has people with whom they’re more compatible than others. Don’t believe in soul mates.

I love my husband very much, but we’d both be okay without each other, at least after the grieving process. And yes, everyone has flaws and gaps in their character, but I don’t think anyone can wholly ‘complete’ someone else.

39

I have a soul mate, but I am not in love with him. That probably doesn’t make any sense at all to people. He is my friend, we have a bond that I can’t even describe. I love him more than I love my family somedays. But I am not IN love with him. Yep, now it doesn’t make sense to me. I am off to drink my sorrow away :eek:

40

My friend once told told me the same thing, that her soulmate was a friend of ours (who she wasn’t in love with). Even though she had a boyfriend at the time!