There is a novel romantic Idea that has floated around since the invention of romance (at least I suppose it is that old) of one random person out there being your Soulmate. Nothing feels better than to hear someone say that you are their one soulmate, but is that really plausible? Is it really a possibility that there is only one person in the approximately 6.8 billon people that are on the earth that is the only viable mate for you? Before we really dive into the meat of the argument, I must say, I am a romantic person. I enjoy the entire premise of romance from the pursuit of a desired mate, to little things that show your desire to a romantic partner, to ensuring the romance never dies. However, I am also a pragmatist and a logical thinker. So let’s get started before one of you decides to point out that I am attempting to rationally explain the irrational behavior of human beings driven by emotions.

First off, we must assume that all soulmates are assigned at birth, where each person has no idea of whom or where their soulmate may be. To lessen the direness of the situation I have limited the scope to only those currently living at the time of this writing. If I didn’t the outlook would be so bleak it would not warrant any more explanation than the fact that if we take all humans that have and are living that leaves us 1 in approximately 100 billion people that is our one and only soulmate, meaning, that since there are only approximately 7 billion people on the Earth right now, 93% of your potential soulmates no longer exist, leaving you only a 7% chance that your soulmate is even among the living. This does nothing include the unknown number of humans yet to be born in the future.

Second, to remove the creepiness factor we will limit them to around the same age as you, so we say a 40 year old and a 30 year old could be soulmates, but no if they were to have met say 15 years earlier. So given that caveat, that leave half a billion (500,000,000) people that could be your potential soulmate. We will ignore sexual orientation/preference and make the assumption that you and your soulmate have compatible preferences (i.e. if you are heterosexual, your soulmate would not be someone who is homosexual).

Third, we make the assumption that you and your soulmate when know when you meet the moment your eyes meet. Say a conservative estimate is that you lock eyes with about 25 strangers on a given day. If ten percent of those people are close to your age that is 100,000 people, which means you have a 1 in 5,000 lifetimes (0.02%) chance of finding your soulmate. Given that numerous people already have a hard time find any spare moments for romance in life it would reduce the pool even further, which makes for a world that is a very lonely place.

Additionally, what happens if the relationship between you and your soulmate ends? Be it by death or some other unforeseen circumstance? Divorce and break-ups can easily be countered as the other party was not truly being your soulmate and one or both of you were deceived. In the event of a death of your soulmate, you would be screwed. You would live out the rest of your days, however many, alone and lost without the one person the fates had chosen for you.

A better (and healthier) perspective might be to look at the world as containing a pool of compatible mates for you. This prevents the bleakness brought on by the idea that there is only one person out in the world for you. With several acceptable people that could fill the role of being a life partner, it allows for the eventualities explained above. It means that you could find someone that seems like a soulmate and lose them to dissolution of the union by choice or death, and you’d not be left with a life bereft of love and someone to share your remaining days. It also allows for those who may have terminal illness to have someone to spend their remaining days without a guilt hanging over them surrounding what will happen to their partner once the time comes that death takes hold. It allows people to live with the ability to have the love of a lifetime without the dread of not having one for an entire lifetime. It would free us to love as we wish to be loved, with full hearts and reckless abandon in regard to our partner. It would let us pour all we have into forming a great romance that satisfies the needs of both partners without fear of letting the other one down. It removes the pressure of the stigmata of perfections. It allows us to make mistakes, and to realize there may come a time when one or both of you have to say goodbye.

So I would say that while the idea of one true soulmate is a novel and feel good romantic idea, it may do more damage to us as dating individuals and as a society as a whole. Instead of looking at someone as the only soulmate, see others as kindred spirits and do not be bound by the stifling and strangling idea of one perfect person in the world.