I Thought I Found My Soulmate—Then I Realized There’s No Such Thing

I thought I met the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. We were on the same wavelength about pretty much everything and I was so convinced that I found my soulmate. I was wrong. In fact, I don’t even think such a thing exists.

1. There are billions of people on the planet—how could only one be right for me? Billions—can you even fathom a number that big? I sure couldn’t, and that’s how I realized that having one soulmate isn’t really feasible. After all, what if your soulmate is a random person across the country that you never actually meet? There’s no way that my soulmate just happened to be someone that I saw across the bar one night.
2. People change. And that’s totally cool! Change is a good thing. However, it also kind of made me realize that the person that I thought was my soulmate could (and did) become someone totally different. It’s not that they were a worse person but they weren’t the person that I fell in love with. If they weren’t the same person, they couldn’t very well be my soulmate, could they?
3. I definitely changed. My personality, my values, my thoughts, my opinions—they were all constantly evolving and pretty soon I wasn’t the same person that my partner fell in love with either. It’s pretty obvious that if we become different people then the love can’t carry over and “soulmates” is a BS concept.
4. I met so many people that I liked and connected with. After ending it with my not-soulmate, I found so many more people that I connected with on that same intimate level. How could I possibly have found my soulmate in one person when I was able to connect with so many others in that same way? It really showed me that “soulmates” are more about communication and how well you get along with other people.
5. Who says soulmates have to be romantic? I realized pretty quickly that there was very little difference between the connection I felt for my partner and the connection I felt for my best friend. Except, you know, the physical attraction part. It made me think long and hard about what a “soulmate” really is.
6. I didn’t need someone to complete me. The idea of a soulmate means that there is one person out there that completes us, but I was a complete person to begin with. I didn’t need someone else to show me how to be a whole person. Being in love and having a partner was fun but it didn’t change who I was. There was no reason to look for someone to make me whole.
7. Loving people rules. Sometimes that means loving a lot of people throughout your life. Being in love and loving people is one of life’s greatest joys—seriously, it is! If I was stuck loving one person for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be able to love all of the people that I’ve loved in my life. That’s like eating the same food over and over again. Boring!
8. I didn’t need to be tied down. There was so much I wanted to do in my life and being tied down with someone for the rest of it didn’t seem like something I wanted to do. Just having that thought proved to me that there’s no such thing as a soulmate. If there were, I would want to have this person in my life forever.
9. I learned to love myself. Being preoccupied with finding a soulmate for so long made me forget that I’m totally awesome. I needed to love myself and I neglected that for too long. Once I learned a little self-love, I figured out that I don’t need someone else to validate me! I’m perfectly capable of loving myself.
10. People are so different and individual. There’s no way to tell if someone is your soulmate because each individual person has their own feelings, opinions, values, and ideas. You’re not going to agree on everything. If you go in thinking that you’re soulmates, you’re going to be pretty disappointed when those values and opinions don’t always line up.