I have good news and bad news for you.  The bad news is that it doesn’t work like that most of the time and when it does, it doesn’t always have a happy ending.  The good news is that even when things end badly, we can still make our own happy ending.  The other good news is that there’s more than one soulmate for each of us.  To understand this, you’ll need a better understanding of what a soulmate really is.

Soulmates are individuals who incarnate together for the purpose of growing in love.  They make agreements with each other to help teach the life lessons each wants to learn.  Then they incarnate at more or less the same time as a soul family.  The members of a soul family are soulmates.  Soulmates are kindred spirits, but they are not necessarily romantic partners.  Your best friend is a soulmate, and one, sometimes both of your parents are soulmates.  Anyone with whom you’ve been in a significant romantic relationship is a soulmate.

When I say significant romantic relationship, I mean one that has impacted you on a deeply emotional level.  Soulmates give you a chance to see yourself more clearly.  Any significant relationship that teaches you something about yourself is a relationship with a soulmate.

It doesn’t have to be a long term relationship.  It doesn’t even have to be a relationship that had a positive outcome.  Some of our soulmates agree to act as the villain in our life to help us learn something important about ourselves.  For example, a partner who cheated on you may not seem like a soulmate, but if that experience helps you grow in self-respect, then that person has given you a gift.  You may not appreciate the wrapping, but once you’re on the other side of the experience, you will appreciate the gift.

We all come into the world as perfect, radiant beings.  We deeply trust that we will be loved and cared for.  We look at the world with eyes of unconditional love and we expect that love to be reflected back to us.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out like that.  At some point in our young lives, we discover that our needs will not always be met.  We cry and are left unattended.  We’re hungry and we don’t get fed right away.  We have a dirty diaper and are left to sit in it.  As we grow, we fall down and hurt ourselves.  We misbehave and a parent takes away our favorite toy.  We eat crayons and get yelled at.  We throw food and get a smack on the hand.  Each experience creates an impression in the psyche.

Even if your childhood was idyllic, you were still wounded.  No matter how wonderful your parents were, there were times when you felt alone, abandoned and unloved as an infant or young child.  A seemingly simple thing like being left to cry in a playpen for a few minutes can create a lasting impact on the psyche.  Even if your parents were wonderful, loving beings, you may have had a teacher or a babysitter who gave you a message that led you to hide your light.    It is a normal, natural part of the process of being human.

I believe that we come into the world to play a game.  The game is to hide our light and try to find it again; a game of Cosmic Hide and Seek.  Our soulmates are the other players in the game.  We are all divine beings, pretending to be mere mortals.  We have veils, called maya (illusion) in Sanskrit, that make us forget that we are powerful co-creators of our reality and that we each have a spark of the Divine within.  We choose our parents for the ways they will help us forget that our true nature is unconditional love, and then we spend most, if not all, of our adult lives trying to find our way back to that unconditional love.

All the reasons we look for and attract a romantic partner come down to one thing:  we have been wounded as small children and our soul, our heart, deeply desires to be whole again.  It’s always looking for those missing pieces to put back into the puzzle that is you. It’s also always looking for a “do-over”; a way to replay the times your parents wounded you and heal from them by creating a more loving outcome.  Our romantic partners and other members of our soul family agree to help us put the pieces back together.

      As soon as the honeymoon is over, the power struggle begins.  The power struggle can last a few months, or it can last the rest of their lives, depending on how each person deals with it. 

     The power struggle has five stages, and they are the same stages that a person goes through when faced with death.  The five stages are shock, denial, betrayal, bargaining and acceptance.  In this case, the death is not a person, but it’s the death of your romantic illusions.  It’s the death of the happily ever after fairy tale.  And it’s every bit as painful as if it were a real person dying.

     The first stage is shock.  You can not believe that your beloved is acting this way.  Where’s the guy who brought you flowers every Friday night?  Where’s the woman who cooked your favorite meal on Sunday?  Who is this new person and what did they do to your beloved?  If you’re like me, you move very quickly into the second stage.

     The second stage is denial.  Maybe if you pretend you didn’t see (or hear) the way your partner is behaving, it will go away.  Denial can go on for a long time.  In fact, I believe that a lot of older couples who’ve been together for a long time live in a permanent state of denial.  One thing that happens during the denial stage is that you begin to make excuses for your partner’s behavior.  Another hallmark of the denial stage is ignoring your partner’s behavior.

     The third stage is betrayal.  If you’re willing to move beyond denial and take an honest look at your relationship, you’ll move into this stage.  You’ll feel like you’ve been duped.  Your partner was obviously lying to you in the beginning and hiding their real self from you.  Most couples break up during this stage.  During this stage, you might blame yourself for not seeing their true character.  You might also believe that they weren’t originally like this and blame some outside influence on changing them.

     The fourth stage is bargaining.  If you make it through the feelings of anger brought up by the betrayal, you move into this stage.  You make deals with yourself, “If he spends more time with the kids, I’ll make dinner more often,” or “If he takes me away for the weekend, I’ll try to enjoy sex more.”  You try to hang onto small morsels of hope to keep you going.  Unfortunately, a lot of couples therapists feed into this by suggesting each partner make concessions in the relationship.  By doing this without getting to the root of the problems, they just prolong the cycle.

     The fifth stage is acceptance.  You decide that things will never get better, no matter what you do or don’t do.  It’s time to decide whether to leave, or stay and set up a parallel existence.  With a parallel existence, each partner looks for happiness outside the relationship.  Some couples consciously create a parallel existence (usually for the sake of the children), and others just fall into it.  It’s better than fighting, but everyone deserves better than that.

     If you’re one of those intrepid souls, you might decide that acceptance is not enough and enter into the beginnings of a conscious relationship.  Both partners have to be willing to try, and each should understand that they’ve only just begun the journey.  The rules are completely different in conscious relationships, and you will need to learn the new rules in order to create a lasting, loving union.

Your imago is the composite of all the important positive and negative traits of your primary caregivers when you were a child.  He or she will appear to be the perfect match for you when you first meet; you’ll feel like you’ve known each other forever, sexual sparks will fly even as you feel very comfortable with them.  Over time, they’ll be able to push all the buttons leading to “I’m unlovable” and “I’m no good”.  They seem so familiar at first because they share primary traits with your parents (or whoever raised you).  You’ll recognize the positive traits at first, then after awhile you’ll tease out the negative traits as well.

It’s helpful to understand your imago, whether or not you’re currently in a relationship.  If you are in a relationship, you might be able to create new dynamics that are supportive and nurturing.  If you aren’t in a relationship, you’ll have a better idea of what you’re really looking for and why.  This will hopefully prevent you from going through more heartbreak as “the One” becomes your worst nightmare.

Take a piece of paper and draw a circle on it.  Leave some space at the bottom of the page to write a few sentences.  Draw a line across the center of the circle.  On the top half of the circle, write all the positive traits you can think of about your parents and anyone who influenced you as a child.  Circle the traits that had the most impact on you growing up.  As you do this, think back to what they were like when you were a child, not what they’re like now.

On the bottom half of the circle, list the negative traits of these key people from your childhood.  It’s not necessary to write their names with the traits, just write out everything that pops into your head.  Again, circle the traits you thing affected you the most.

This list represents your imago.  Does it seem familiar?

Underneath the circle, write and complete this sentence: “What I wanted most as a child and didn’t get was…”

Next, write and complete this sentence: “As a child, I had these negative feelings over and over again: ….”

Completing these two sentences will help you understand the needs you try to get your imago to fill for you, and the ways you sabotage yourself in relationships with limited (negative) thoughts.  You can use a coach or a therapist to help you turn the negative thoughts to positive ones and to help you get your needs met on your own.

(exercise taken from Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.)