Stop looking for your soulmate, says study
Is the concept of soulmates old-fashioned?
For decades, people have been told that the only kind of true love that exists is when it is shared between soulmates.
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A soulmate is "someone with whom you share immense compatibility. It is possible that your true love—your spouse or romantic partner—is your soulmate, but you can have another or a different soulmate, like a best friend, mentor, or professional partner."
In the modern day, the term 'soulmate' is being used in more than just the romantic context.
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But because the idea of 'the soulmate' has been ingrained in society for so long, it's difficult for people looking for romantic love to let go of the thought that they have to find this person who is their perfect match in every way.
A researcher from the University of Alberta has decided to look into soulmates, 'the one' and these types of love to see if there's any truth to it.
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Adam Galovan is a family scientist in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences and co-author of a new research report in which he says that trying to find 'the one' is an unrealistic quest.
The idea of having one soulmate in a world of eight billion people can be daunting, and that can make people hesitant to get into or commit to a relationship because they might feel there’s a better match out there. On the flip side, if things aren’t going well in a relationship and you have a ‘soulmate’ mentality, you might believe you simply chose the wrong person. That can be used as an excuse to not work as hard on a relationship and call it quits.
In research conducted by Galovan, he worked with 615 couples from Canada and the USA with the aim to challenge "the notion that loving and lasting relationships are founded on the idea of a soulmate love".
According to his research, soulmates aren't found, they are made.
People may think their choices don’t matter, what they do doesn’t matter, that they have no sense of control, so they may not try to work at the relationship. When the relationship changes from being passionate to having to work harder to maintain it, that’s when some people think maybe this person isn’t their soulmate and move on. But that means you might be giving up on some real opportunities to have a lasting connection. You don’t allow the relationship enough time to get to know the other person much more deeply.
Galovan has also recently presented further data that couples who were flourishing reported that their relationship was good for 61.4 percent of the time in their day-to-day lives.
Like many things in life, no relationship will ever be perfect.
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Main image courtesy of iStock/David-Prado