I am not a romantic. I don't believe half of my soul is lingering in a guy somewhere and when we meet it will be clear to both of us we that we are destined to be.
Yeah....no, I believe in compatibility and chance. I believe there's hundreds of people each person could come to love and sustain a relationship with, if given the right opportunities. Of those hundreds, maybe you're lucky to meet one or two of them in your entire life. Some people seem to meet a lot more, and others even less.
That being said, it seems to be a lot of kids (albeit mostly girls) are spending their youth, dare I say prime, searching for a soulmate, whether they want to admit it or not. They complain about hook-up culture and fantasize about dating and being in a serious relationship, but why?
If you are looking for your soulmate, the one person you want to spend your entire life with, why on earth do you want to find them at 18? 19? 20? 21? 22? (it goes on for me...). Let's say you even just withstood soul-searching for your college career, and you make it to live to 100, which I think is doable these days, you can still find and give someone nearly 80 years of your devotion. That's already 4 times the amount of time you've spent on this earth. The odds are, you haven't even been single for your whole life. Even if you have, you've devoted more time than you'd like to admit thinking about, hoping for, or pawning after someone else.
The controversial thing is, so much force is being put into a romantic and supposedly natural concept. People are searching and stalking and hinting and putting way too much effort into it, when it's supposed to happen by chance. Gabriel García Márquez, an author who sadly died just last year, once said, "Never stop smiling not even when you're sad, someone might fall in love with your smile." I would like to apply that to modern day now:
Never stop dancing, not even when you see him getting a drink at the bar, someone might fall in love with your stanky leg.
If you're what society deems lucky, you'll get married well before you're 30, and then 4/5 of your life would be in blissful union with your soulmate. You never have to be alone again.
I'd argue finding a partner for life will be the easier of two searches, as during this first fifth of our life we have a harder task at hand. Now is this time we find friends.
We've had friends our whole lives, they're fairly easy to make and if you withstand a few fights, easy to keep. If you changed schools for High School, you got a taste of what it's like to first shed friends. Anyone who you could live without, you never had that much in common with, or didn't find yourself missing, they start to shed. One by one you starts to lose contact with people who aren't in your life anymore; it's natural.
The same thing occurs when you go away to college, that's when most people first experience it to a shocking degree. The second semester of college, it happens again. This time, however it happens to people you're seeing every day. You realize certain people you were only friends with because you knew no one else and liked to go out....but everyone has that in common. So slowly you weed out 'friends' who you knew nothing of depth about and at the end of the day couldn't count on. It sounds sad, but it allows you to find the hidden gems.
These are the people you should be searching for. They're the soulmate(s) I've been looking for my whole life and I'm very lucky to have found a few so far. It's about finding the people you wish to be a part of your life forever, and knowing that they will be. It's hard to find these people, but once you do, you'll notice you redefine your expectations and understanding of friendships, true friendships.
Whenever I've been sad or angry or tired it's these people who cheer me up, listen to me, and force me to go out. It's these people who will have your best interest at heart, who genuinely get happy for your happiness, and distraught over your tragedies.
To clarify, there is absolutely nothing wrong with relationships, to anyone who is not currently single. If you're lucky enough to be in a healthy, supportive, and happy relationship, that is extremely fortunate. However, to the single romantics: calm it down, focus on the other relationships in your life, and consider leaving some things to chance.
