I know that most of you are romantics. Whether you admit it or not, you undoubtedly cling to the clichés and hopes that Kate Winslet and Taylor Swift prepared you for. There’s nothing wrong with this, no shame in it. For as cynical as I am I too fall victim to the trappings of the type of life rom-coms promised me. But I think I stumbled upon a lapse in logic.

So you say you believe in soul mates. You believe that there is one person to there in the world that’s meant for you. And with this person your life is given meaning. I’m sure there are a decent number of those reading this that feel they’ve already found this person. And how interesting it is that, in a world of eight-billionish people, you found them in your twenties. And you even speak the same language!

So let’s say you find or have found this person. You’re entirely convinced that you were made for each other. Without this person you are incomplete. And then they leave you. Or you leave them. For whatever reason it just doesn’t work out and you two have to split. This is where it gets interesting.

You have two options. You can either reconcile with the loss of someone you considered perfect for you and move on. Your justification could be that if it didn’t last then obviously you weren’t destined for each other.

Your other option is to understand that you believe in soul mates and that you have already met yours and it’s now over. Realizing that they gave your life meaning and you’d be incomplete without them. So, logically, you have to kill yourself. How else could a romantic like yourself go on living in a world without the one person who you felt completed you? It would be unending devastation.

The odds are that you won’t kill yourself. You’ll stick with the first option because you’ll shift your definitions of love and revise your preconceived notions about your view of the world until enough time has passed that you’ve forgotten about all this and you stumble upon someone else that makes you feel equally warm and fuzzy inside.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But wouldn’t it be easier to just rethink the way you feel about love now? Before you have to suffer the slings and arrows of not getting hitched at 18? Life is nothing like the movies, at least not the romantic ones. The large majority of hopes and wishes go unnoticed and all of the subtleties and nuance that you feel your bringing to a conversation aren’t nearly as cute or conducive for communication as you think. At best we’re all secondary characters in someone else’s story. You can probably think of who these people are off the top of your head. They’re good looking, but not overtly, they’re endearing because of a seemingly goofy hobby they have that they’re talented in, they’re friendly and educated and you know they’ll end up with an ending worth watching.

It’s okay to not be the DiCaprios and Depps and McAdams’ and so on. If we were all living out movie-like lives the world would be a disgustingly positive place and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, look around, we’re far from it. So don’t be upset that the one who seemed perfect got away. The truth is that they aren’t perfect and there are at least a million other people who are exactly the same in almost every way. They, just like you, are nothing special. To me, that’s liberating. Seize the day average people. We’ve got the interesting people outnumbered.