Sometimes, people confuse the nature of a relationship with a significant other.
When two people are in a romantic relationship, you will often hear the couple proclaiming that they are "soulmates," when in fact they are really "life mates."
A soulmate is different from a life mate. A soulmate is someone with whom you have a deep, and usually very passionate, relationship. There are all kinds of little "in-synch" moments with a soulmate, intuitive moments when you know what your partner is thinking, when you finish each other's sentences, and have a deep sense of his or her mood, concerns, even his or her health. Soulmates exhibit the same kind of behaviour as twins do. Soulmates have some kind of paranormal, almost telepathic connection.
A life mate is someone to whom you are attracted, both physically and emotionally. What life mates lack is that extraordinary connection of soulmates. Communication replaces intuition. Life mates need to talk things out in ways that soulmates do not. Often life mates begin their relationships as best friends, and this then blossoms into something more intense, more romantic. When life mates commit to one another, it is a commitment based on a logical and reasonable assumption that they "belong" together.
Since soulmates have the more intense relationship, their intimacy is also more fragile and can easily flounder. Their close emotional connection sometimes surpasses their ability to manage the many complexities of any relationship. Their romantic moments often have to endure great highs and lows, and it is these swings that can cause anxiety, distrust and jealousy. It is very rare for soulmates to have anything but a brief affair of the heart. Once reality sets in, once the prospect of marriage, children, financial dependency, and everything else that makes a couple a couple, soulmates find themselves disillusioned with the mundane practicality of preserving their relationship. After all, a relationship built on soaring emotions and extreme passion never likes to take a fall and certainly never wants to live a life of compromises.
Life mates have a better chance at maintaining a successful relationship. Accepting someone as a life mate is usually based on a kind of pragmatism, a sense that he or she is a worthy, if not the best possible, choice for a partner. In terms of romantic and sexual intimacy, a life mate relationship can be as intense and as rewarding as any soulmate relationship. The difference is that each of the life mate partners involved have survival skills beyond just the thrill of passion. For life mates, it is not all about the excess and ecstasy of love and romance. Life mates plan for the future in ways that soulmates do not. Life mates are human, of course, and life mates may therefore feel pangs of anxiety, distrust and jealousy equal to their counterparts. However, instead of an "all or nothing" attitude toward love and relationships, life mates make the necessary compromises to succeed, as a couple, beyond the quasi-obsessive need to be together in an ongoing intense manner that is typical of soulmate relationships.
Whether one is seeking a soulmate or a life mate will depend on what stage of the relationship game one is immersed. If someone want a few months of extreme passion, fabulous sex and impossible promises, then that person needs to seek out a soulmate. If someone is looking for a more stable relationship, with the prospect of sharing a life together, then that person will want to seek out a life mate.
All relationships, of any kind, have the potential for failure. If either type of relationship does fail, one should not think that each of us has only one soulmate or one life mate. From my experience, a person's soulmate will have many different faces. As you grow in age and experience, your awareness of what makes someone your soulmate will change as well. As a result, a soulmate is never singular in nature, never just one man or woman. It's a myth to believe that, once you feel that special "soulmate" connection, you will never feel it again. You will, if you are open to that intensity again.
The same is true for life mates. Sometimes, these relationships falter and come to a staggering end. Still, there are probably many other life mates out there for any one of us. It's just a matter of understanding what went wrong in the past and making your next connection with a life mate more stable.
Love is never easy. We learn to love more deeply by being in love. Those worrisome individuals, who rebuke love forever after a single falling out, are denying themselves a chance to be happy, and more importantly, a chance to make someone else happy as well.
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