When you're trying to find your soulmate, you might go through periods of despair.
Maybe you've been in bad relationships before or maybe you've never really let anyone close. It could be that all the potential partners you have met simply seemed incapable of truly understanding you in a deep way.
This might leave you with the choice of either resigning yourself to an unfulfilling relationship or just giving up on relationships altogether. Either way, you don't experience the special connection you truly want from a soulmate and maybe feel alone, regardless of how well things might be going for you in your life.
To help you understand why your search for your soulmate might not have been successful so far and what to do instead, let's first look at the things you might have already tried to find that special someone.
To deal with the challenge of finding love,
you might have tried various things—online dating, friends playing the matchmaker, focusing on other areas of your life (such as your career or your friendships), lowering your expectations, reading books about relationships, or simply hoping that the issue would somehow resolve itself.
The reason why these approaches might not have given you the results you wanted is that you likely were focused on "finding" the right person to be with. But, as Vironika Tugaleva points out, "a soul mate is not found. A soul mate is recognized."
That's how it was for me. While I was searching for the right person, my soul mate was already in my life. I just didn't realize it. It took me years to recognize that one of my acquaintances - a friend of friends - was my ideal partner.
Perhaps that's not surprising, given the nonsense our culture teaches us about soulmates: they're a perfect person and our reason for existing, we will fall in love with them at first sight, and then live happily ever after. In real life, things look different. Let me share a more realistic way of thinking about soulmates.
What is a soulmate?
For the longest time, I didn’t quite get what it meant, despite
being married to a soul mate (I believe people have more than just one soulmate who could be a potential partner for life).
Then I had an epiphany!
I realized that the second part of the term “soulmate” doesn’t matter. We could replace “mate” with something else, without changing the meaning of the term “soulmate.” For instance, the German language uses the term “soul relative” (Seelenverwandter) instead.
Clearly, it’s not about the “mate” element. No, the true significance of the term lies in the word “soul.”
If we tried to replace the word “soul,” we would change the term’s meaning. Thus, to understand what we’re getting ourselves into when we meet our soul mate, we need to slow down and focus on the soul aspect.
How do you recognize and find your soulmate?
By definition, it's impossible to find someone who qualifies as a soulmate without getting more strongly in touch with our own soul in the process. If someone doesn't want to get into deeper contact with their own soul (as is the case for most protagonists in romantic movies and books), what they are really looking for is something that I call "egomate."
This may sound like a trivial insight. Needing to get more in contact with our soul may seem like a small price to pay for a beautiful relationship with our ideal partner.
But people often aren't even aware of the rift that exist between their soul and their ego, and getting in touch with one's soul may be uncomfortable and truly confronting to the ego's security and safety.
The clash between the desire of people's souls and their ego may show up in many areas of their lives. For instance, while a person's ego may want to have a fancy house and car, their soul's most important life goal may be to be of service in the world. Thus, the question of who gets to call the shots - soul or ego? - has practical consequences for your entire life.
Your soul and your ego exist in different realities. Unless these two aspects of yourself are in complete harmony, the distinction between an egomate and a soulmate has large ramifications for your life.
How to tell if someone is your egomate
To recognize your soulmate, you first need to be able to identify if someone is your "egomate."
While that term might sound harsh and judge-y, I intend it as a neutral description. Some forms of spirituality shame the ego or try to transcend it. However, our ego is not the enemy. It is part of what makes us who we are and helps us function in the world.
What I mean by egomate is simply someone whom your ego approves of and finds attractive. Realizing that someone is your egomate is not a judgment on them as a person. It only describes the role they fulfill in relation to you. Your egomate may be someone else's soulmate and vice versa.
An ego mate does not fundamentally threaten our current way of being in the world by getting us in touch with deeper aspects of ourselves. A relationship with an egomate is more superficial, which makes it easier for people to get involved with them.
When people are in a relationship with an egomate, they may find that they don't grow spiritually and emotionally. As a result of this, the relationship may become stale after the initial infatuation wears off.
That said, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be in an egomate relationship. Finding an egomate allows someone to enjoy the company of another person without going through an intense transformation that they might not want at this point.
How to tell if someone is your soulmate
A soulmate is someone who gets you more into contact with your soul.
Since almost everyone experiences at least some (conscious or unconscious) conflict between the desires of their soul and those of their ego, this is not as romantic as it sounds.
Unlike our ego, our soul can take intense growth and transformation. Being in a long-lasting relationship with a true soulmate tends to give us exactly that. While this is ultimately for our best, the transformation it unleashes can be terrifying.
Often, a romantic interest who gets someone in contact with their soul brings up more resistance than an egomate. This could be because people intuit the "danger" that a soulmate represents to their sense of identity and their established way of being.
This has certainly been my experience. While my previous relationships didn't turn me into a fundamentally different person, my marriage to my soulmate sure did.
Depending on where you are in your life and in your own journey, you may not wish to embark on that type of relationship right now. And that is perfectly okay. A soulmate might be the wrong person for you right now. If you realize that you're not ready for the transformation they would bring, that's a good thing! It shows that you are honest with yourself.
But what if you wish to get ready? Well, to find (or recognize) your soul mate, find your soul.
7 practices that can help you find your soulmate
If you wish to find your soulmate, you can prepare yourself by getting more in touch with your soul, for instance by
- doing things that "light you up" and feel like play to you,
- meditating or doing other things that get you in touch with your inner stillness,
- journaling about who you are,
- striving to express your authentic self as much as possible,
- having deep conversations with people who are open to that,
- getting clear on what you most desire in life, and
- disengaging from the ego, for instance by questioning your conditioning, trying something new, and embracing deep change.
All of these practices help you connect more with your soul. And that matters because, as Charles F. Glassman so accurately put it: "Before you find your soul mate, you must first discover your soul."
A version of this article was first published on elephant journal here.
If you want additional help with recognizing your soulmate, check out these free resources here:
