Do you guys at the SDMB believe in fate when it comes to meeting that somebody special? Do you really believe that there is a perfect match for everyone?
I mean, there’s got to be, right? Somebody that, if not perfectly, you are best suited to be with?
But what are the chances that you find that person? I mean, they could be on the other side of the world. You’d have to cross oceans to find them. How do you ever know ?
I’d also like to ask people who are in relationships (where they think/believe that they are with thier soulmates) to stop and consider what thier lives would be like if they had not met the person they are with. Does that ever make you wonder? Do you feel like you’re special/lucky?
And the not-so-fortunate others who aren’t (in relationships). How do you go on about your lives? Do you keep searching? Do you still believe?
I don’t mean to put a downer on anyone’s mood. I just feel like I need a bunch of people to talk me through this one. If you’re in a happy relationship, just remember how truly lucky you are.
If there is only one perfect person for you, statistically you’ll never find them! Suppose you met a million people of your preferred gender in your lifetime. That would leave some two billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million that you didn’t check out. Not so great. That’s why I think this “soulmate” business is pretty silly. I do think that a good relationship with anyone takes a little luck and a lot of work.
There’s a quote from one of famous song-writers, Maybe Ira Gershwin, about how this belief, as reflected in many, many songs, kept the song-writers solvent.
I took one look at you
That’s all I had to do
And then the earth stood still.
There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
Why couldn’t he
Turn out to be
Someone to watch over me?
Sitting with the One Love
Sighing sigh after sigh
Nice work if you can get it
And, you can get it if you try.
I agree with Mighty Maximino. I had to travel to the Northern Hemisphere to meet my husband. But I have friends who grew up with the man they married. Are you going to tell me that those friends were lucky enough to just happen to live near their soulmate?
I guess its entirely possible that there IS a man out there who would be a better match for me than my husband. But I don’t care. My husband is great, I love him very much, and I am more than satisfied with him. I’m not going to scour the globe trying to find my perfect match, hoping to find him (or realising that hubby was him) before I die.
Unless part of their perfection is that they will eventually bump into you somewhere.
But seriously, I agree Mighty Maximino; it’s daft and possibly irresponsible to think that the perfect relationship will just ‘happen’ because you are made for each other.
I’m not sure if I believe that there is a “Soul Mate” for every one of us, but with just a little effort I think we all can find somebody that loves us and we feel the same way about!
No, I don’t believe in a perfect complement to my self, despite the fact that I like to think so when I’m feeling lonely.
You see, perfection is impossible, like reaching infinity and finding pi to the last digit. It’s possible, though, to get very close to the ideal, but it’s not good to worry about these things.
I think like most other posters. There’s certainly a perfect match for everybody out there. Actually, there are probably many perfect matches. But you’ll most probably never meet any of them.
But I think one can find a really great mate, with whom he/she will be very happy if he/she really wants to (can be easier to some than to others) and has a bit of luck. But don’t count on “fate” to help you.
And of course, a lot of little details change your life forever at any moment (I can think of two movies based on this idea, both depicting two totally different stories with only an insignificant difference at the beginning. In one case a woman smoke a cigarette or not, in the other a man miss a train or not).
I remember a friend of mine who was (and still is) totally in love with the woman he was living with. I made them meet, and once he thanked me for that. I told him he should thanks too the guy who founded the club where we both meet, the publisher of the magazine where I read about the club, my parents who put me in the high school where I originally met the girl he was in love with, etc…In other words his great love story was a consequence of an extremely unlikely chain of events. That’s for the “luck” part.
But on the other hand, he was available, wanted to settle down, was actively searching a partner, had exigences about this potential partner, did his best to seduce her when he found her…So, if he had never met this particular woman, most likely he would have meet another one with whom he would hopefully be living a great love story too. That’s for the “will/work” part.
Sometimes, the luck part depress me a little, because I think there are so much extraordinary people out there I’ll never have a chance to know. But then, I feel the same with the wondeful musics I will never hear, the wonderful places I will never see,etc…so…I guess what I actually regret is not being immortal…
I’ve always felt that I could form a passable relationship with one in ten women, a happy relationship with one in a hundred, a blissful relationship with one in a thousand, and perfect spiritual union with one in a million.
clairobscur , I *soooo * dig what you are saying. And that’s what I’m so depressed about.
It’s making me wonder. How many details have I missed? How many bus-stops away was I from making the right move? A lot of the time I seem to be doing things that I would normally never do, such as walk back a second time to a specific place - just in case she may be there. Four weeks ago I couldn’t care less. Why should I? Then why can’t I get this thought out of my head?
I have the same problem. Only I’m just not as calm about it. Why do some people “hook up” and not others? Is it really this:
So you think that everyone has to have a will to do it? You don’t think that people get together by “chance”? Is it okay to go “looking” for it?
:)
Please expand on this. It’s more on what I wanna hear. You think it’s possible - or does “luck” once again play an inevitable part?
I really believe that the concept of “soulmates” is death to a relationship. The core of my whole philosophy of sucessful relationships is that they are the result of two adults continuing to choose each other every single day. The problem with the "soulmate: idea is that people decide early on, in the first rush of amazing discovery and emotion, that they are “soulmates”, and after that, the relationship is not about choice, it’s about obligation: this persoin is yoursoulmate, yourone and only, the person you are destined to be with. And so you can’t leave, no matter what: they are the only one you will ever have, your one chance at happiness.
This is bad for two reasons: one, the more obvious and less common, is that I have seen people stay with other people who were truely abusive. “We’re soulmantes, what can I do? This was meant to be”
The other, more common reason, that this is bad is that if we forget we choose to be in a relationship, it is easier to have resentments build up: “soulmate” people also seem to be (in my strictly anecdotal experience) the people that bitch the most about their mates: being with their mate is not a thing they celebrate, it is just a thing that is: that relationship is like their relatoinship with their mother: this immutable fact of the universe, and so it can’t be altered, only bitched about.
Ultimitly, I think it is much more romantic when two people realize they could be happy with other people or on their own, but choose, every day, to be happy together. **
I am going to answer Xavier’s questions for clairobscur because I love these kinds of threads and want to jump in: I am not trying to preempt clairobscur, who probably has very different (and equally valid) answers.
Yeah? What about the time you didn’t go up to that kid in elementary school and so avoided picking up the germ that would have given you fatal pnumonia? Or the times you went back in the house to make sure the over was off, and so avoided getting T-boned by the teenager running a red light? Or the time you got up and went to the restroom right as an Amway salesman was decending on you, so you missed a life of bounceing between various multi-level marketing scams? The “could-have-been” that could have been could have been the “could have been” where you got hit by a truck.
After considerable soul-searching, I have decided that some people are just easier matches than other people. There is no value attached to this: it dosen’t make anyone better or worse or “average” or “normal” or anything like that. It’s just some people really, truly enjoy the company of lots and lots of different types of people, and happen to have personalities that many different types of people enjoy being around. They meet more potential partners, and so hook up more. It’s just the way it is. But even the “diffucult fits” usually meet people eventually.
Depends on what you mean by “go looking for it”. Neediness is unattractive and will drive people off. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with putting yourself in siituations where you are more likely to meet new potential partners: do different activities, join clubs and groups, go back to college. More so than any of that, though, the best investment of your time is doing things that you enjoy and which make you happier with yourself, and this makes you someone who can choose to be with someone else (remember, it’s romantic to chose!), not someone so desperate that they must go with whoever will give them love and affection.
My standard piece of advice here is to look at people, not a whole gender. Focusing on a whole gender as a unit is useless. Be interested in individuals and think in terms of individuals, and things will work out.
she was one in a million
so there’s five more just in new south wales
-the whitlams
also, isn’t they might be giants’ana ng about two people who are perfect for each other, but live on opposite sides of the world?
If by ‘perfect match’, you mean one person with a groinal region that complements that of another, then yes.
Love is friendship with fucking. People fall in love, think they’ve found the greatest person ever, then they break up and it wasn’t really ‘the one’ after all. ‘The one’ is the person whom you haven’t broken up with yet.
I mean, we’re made to want to fuck, right? If we didn’t have our brains fooling us into believing that this person we’re fucking is the only person we ever want to fuck again, then we could never trick ourselves into thinking that fucking is meaningful, which would fuck things right up. Fuck.
Fall in love all you want. Maybe it will even last. But don’t pretend it’s fate or destiny or the perfect person for you, aren’t you lucky you found her?
[no responsibility taken for hyperbole, nihilism or idiocy contained within this post]
[moody lonely single Sparc]
At first there was me and the people that made me and then came all the people that defined me and then those that described me, after which came the ones that lived me, whereupon I was stuck with the ones that could accept me and then those left and all there was were those that could truly love me and I looked around and there was… only me.
[/moody lonely single Sparc]
Of course there is a Mr. or Mrs. Perfect out there for all of us, or rather a few I’d say. And with some hard work it can it can last if we find someone that we can accept and love for who they are and graces us with the same commitment and desire AND that this happens at a time when we accept and love ourselves. OTOH thus far I found it twice and we blew it both times. Then again I am hard to live with even for myself.
I don’t think true love just falls in your lap. Even if it turns out to be someone who works in your building, you have to make it known that you’re available, and you have to make yourself interesting enough to pursue. By that I mean having interests that go beyond “falling in love”. Something to talk about that you feel some sort of passion for.
There are many, many “Mr/Ms Rights” for each of us.
I found the right man when I was 16 years old. Twist one was that he didn’t know I was the right woman, so after 3 years of trying to have a relationship I gave up, met someone else had a really good relationship with them for about 4 years. I still kept in touch with the first guy. Twist two was when I finally hooked up with guy #1 lived together for 15 years. The only reason we’re not together now is because he died 4 1/2 years ago. Was it fate ? I’m not really sure . I do know I’d rather have had this experience of love and the pain of loss than never have had the experience at all.
No, no such thing as a perfect match. Even if you could find the optimal person, you would still have problems. Everyone has a different agenda and no matter who you’re with you’re going to have to make compromises.
Is it possible that there is someone out there somewhere on planet Earth or beyond that might be a better match for me? Of course. However, I’m unwilling to surrender my mate, who is so much better than I deserve.
I think the key is to find someone you love and respect, do the work to make it work and don’t worry too much about if there might be someone better for you out there.
