Defining A Soul Mate

This is the one term I am sure I will spend the rest of my life trying to explore, digest and decipher. I do not know if I will ever stumble upon the correct definition, and I do not know if I will ever feel every inch of the ground that the word spreads itself upon. What I do know, is that I do not know. And with that said, I would like to share the bit of what I think I know.

People will be what they are the best way they know how to be. Like life, they will evolve; they will change. But throughout the years, the lessons, the mistakes, the laughs and accompanying tears, they will be the unique individuals a small part of them painted into their innermost cells of self. Their souls will be their maps, despite what words and wisdom they gained from sources outside their own bodies.

They will not go to the Metropolitan Opera because of their undying passion for classical music. They will not go to impress the cloud of pretentious faces in their ball gowns, their bow-ties and skin glistening with sweat and diamonds. They will go because there will be something in that theater that calls to them. Something in that Opening Night advertisement that speaks to them. Something in Cecilia Bartoli’s voice that grabs them by the throats and allows for no satisfying breath until they step foot into that theater. It will not be a simple pleasure or want or even need. It will be a natural inclination to answer a call.

But who will be placing that call?

That is the question which I do not know the answer to. Maybe it is fate that points its light in the right direction, or a spirit that displays for us the paths on which we need to embark. Or maybe, a ghost. Maybe it is nature. Maybe it is something in the water we drink. I do not know. What I do know, what I am absolutely sure of, is that it exists. And with its existence, we are endowed with the obligation to follow the paths that it, whatever it is, displayed for us.

And sometimes a sign will point to a slight left, onto a road that dances with sunlight and good intentions. But you won’t take that road. Nor will you take the road on the right, or the road straight ahead. Sometimes there will be a small path just an inch away from all the visible paths and the seemingly obvious directions. Maybe it will be a direction all on its own, without hiding under the signatures of North, South, East or West. It will be overlooked and it will seem hidden, but some sort of savage in you will seek a duel with your fate and you will head down that road into the darkness that blankets the unknown, simply because you just know you’re not supposed to be on it.

But you are.

It is in those instances where you’ll think you are flirting with the dangers of your own destiny. But in reality, that destiny, fate, ghost, water – whatever it is – put that path there. It may have been hidden. It may have been overlooked. But it was there. And that is all it could have done; to just have been. The way you just are. No questions. No justifications.

So in recognizing that there is something guiding us, what significance do soul mates hold? Who the hell are they and where can I find mine at my quickest convenience? I haven’t gained any knowledge since beginning this essay, so my answer is still “I do not know.” But I think that our soul mates are very real, and that they are just being the way they are, the same way we are trying to just be. I do not know the process in which a soul mate is welcomed into our lives. I do not know how love works. I do not know how it operates and why it displays for us the tragedies and majesties that it does, all in such a compressed time frame. I cannot say that a man who makes you laugh so hard and so full of heart is the same man who can bear the title of your soul’s mate. I cannot say that that same man, who is able to exhale your breath without losing his own, can be deemed the man that destiny welcomed into the world for you. I do not know how it works.

But what I do think, what I truly believe, is that if for a moment you experience something you cannot put into words; if that man upon his first meeting you is able to strike a nerve or a chord that you didn’t know you harbored in your skin, listen to it. Hold onto it. If when laying in his arms you feel a warmth you would have never dreamt in even your coldest nightmares, cherish it. Because he may very well be your soul mate. He will not come with the packaging or the embellishments or a “Soul Mate” sticker on his forehead. He will not know what he is to you. You might not know what he is to you, or the full extent of what he means to you. But you will know that he is something important; something truly, very special. He will just be, and you will just be, and together you’ll just be who you are, bettered by what you both have been. It is simple and its simplicity will make it complex. It will be beautiful and sometimes it will be tragic. It’ll be dangerous and disgusting and stimulating and vibrating with all the extravagance and pureness of a simple touch: Love.

Deep down, I truly believe these people that gift us with these unforgettable feelings and moments are unforgettable all on their own. Do I think there is one soul mate for everyone? Do I think there will only be one person out there that will take you outside of your skin just to feel your own heart? Maybe. I do not know. If we just are, and they just are, and life just is, there really cannot be an answer for how we are, how we operate, and (the most painful question) why we are. Maybe my destiny is not his, maybe your fate is not mine. Maybe your ghost is my water and his future is my past. Maybe there is no answer and there will never be one and this essay is nothing but a bruise on all brilliant minds. Water to quench a fool’s thirst. Solace to the hopeless romantics drowning in a stranger’s comforting words on a lonely, Friday night. I still, really, do not know. I do not know anything.

Ending note:

I think soul mates are real and few. The way we are and the way we love will one day, somehow, connect with the way someone else is and how they love. And if those two fates interlace and love and bed and share meals and kids and remote controls; then that is beautiful. And if it does not turn out that way, it is still beautiful. I think the existence and the thought of that one person is a marvelous justification all on its own. How we go about thinking about them, imagining them, finding them, keeping them, or letting them go, is not a matter of defining a “soul mate.” We call that a love story. Life gives birth to our blessings, our fortunes, and the people who can provide them for us. We simply return the generosity by giving life our stories.

Q&A: How the New Science of Adult Attachment Can Improve Your Love Life

People tend to think of “attachment” and “bonding” as the subjects of child psychology, but in fact, these factors are just as important to adult health and happiness. So what defines the healthy adult relationship — is there such a thing as too “clingy” or “dependent?” — and can people change in order to find lasting love?

With studies showing again and again that our relationships are critical to our long-term mental and physical health, researchers are increasingly turning their attention to the nature of adult connections. In their new book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and co-author Rachel Heller explore the topic. And just in time for Valentine’s Day, they offer a new perspective on how to find the right partner.

What are attachment styles and what characterizes them?

There are three major attachment styles: anxious, avoidant and secure. [To find out yours or your partner's style, take this quiz.] Around 20% of people are anxiously attached. Anxious people need to be close; they love to be intimate. They are very preoccupied with relationships, and very sensitive to small cues of threat in a relationship. Let’s say their partner is going to the airport — it’s anxiety provoking for the relationship. They would start to worry if they didn’t hear from their partner soon. It’s almost like they have a very sensitive alarm system.

What about avoidant?

About 25% of people are avoidant. Avoidant people want to be in relationships — because we’re all programmed to get attached to other people — but something strange happens when they get close to a person. They are uncomfortable with too much closeness. They keep their partners at arm’s length and constantly try to negotiate intimacy and closeness. They see it as something that interferes with their independence.

And secure?

They make up 54%, the majority, of the population. Securely attached people are warm and loving and love to be close, but they don’t have a sensitive alarm system. They don’t get preoccupied with the relationship; they don’t mind things so much. They have a talent for being in relationships. If they’re going to the airport and you’re anxious, they would call you before you even think about calling them.

The avoidant person would hit ignore and think, “Oh, she’s calling again,” and you end up yelling at each other. You can see what kind of a different life you would have with someone secure.

[By knowing about attachment styles], you actually have way to go about finding the right person.

Isn’t there one more style?

There’s also disorganized, or anxious/avoidant. That’s much more rare. When children have this, it is linked to trauma.

Therapists often tell people that you can’t be loved until you are able to love yourself, and suggest that people take time to work on themselves before getting into a relationship. But there’s no data to support that, and in fact, the research shows that you need to be loved before you can love. Why do we have this cultural misunderstanding about relationships?

[People say it] because there’s a kernel of truth to it, but that’s one of the reasons we wrote this book. [In it, we describe] someone we know who is well-rounded and functional in every aspect of life, and clearly very much loves herself and her life. But she went into a relationship with someone who was very avoidant, and then became very anxious to the point that she almost lost her job.

It’s funny because one of most amazing things that this theory teaches is that if you are anxious or avoidant, and you meet someone who is secure, there are huge healing powers [in that relationship]. You become more secure. You don’t even have to work hard, it just happens. Sometimes, magic can happen. The science breaks it down, it really challenges your perception and ideas and beliefs about relationships in a good way, and you change [in ways] that would be very hard to do on your own.

You can do [some of that] in therapy but it’s so powerful when you do it in a relationship. When we get attached, powerful forces [are involved]. People think about psychological aspects but it’s also very much physiological. Your partner starts to control your blood pressure and autonomic nervous system. It has huge implications for physical health.

Anxious people are often stigmatized as clingy and needy and desperate.

It really isn’t that. You are only as needy and clingy as your unmet needs. [If your needs are met, you can just relax.]. If kids feel safe, they don’t cling to their mothers, they play with their toys. It’s the same with adults.

You have a chapter titled “Dependency Is Not a Bad Word” Yet the common wisdom about codependency suggests that caring too much can be a disease.

We stigmatize dependence. Our society is avoidant, in a way. We really put emphasis on independence. But dependence is a biological fact. Once we become attached, we’re dependent whether we want to be or not.

I understand why, in the context of addiction, some people say it’s a bad thing. It’s really only bad because there’s no good treatment [for addiction]. In that context, you can see why you sometimes have to withdraw support from the person — but even there, it’s problematic. I’ve seen enough cases where the family withdrew and then something [awful happened to the addict].

And in other areas, it really doesn’t hold water — as if you have a disease if you help someone? 

Do two avoidant people ever get together?

We looked through the literature. It hardly ever happens, obviously. They can get together, but they tend to lack the glue that keeps people together.

You write that avoidant people are overrepresented in the dating pool.

When you go to a therapist and your relationships haven’t worked out, they may tell you that you have a pattern of always finding the wrong person. That may be right — some people do get addicted to the highs and lows of tumultuous anxious/avoidant relationships — but [the problem may not be] all about them.

There are some social forces. What happens with someone avoidant is that they tend to stay in relationships less. They are more likely to divorce. They tend to circulate back into the dating pool more often than anxious or secure people.

Anxious attachment sounds stereotypically female: is it more common in women or is this a myth?

The good news is that the majority of men and women are secure. But there are some stereotypes we have about men and women — Mars and Venus. The idea that men don’t like to communicate, for example — that’s more descriptive of avoidant men. The majority of men can be close and communicate; they want to get married and have kids. They’re the silent majority. We don’t hear much about them because there’s very little drama.

There is a slight excess of men who are avoidant, but a lot of women are avoidant, too. [The same is true with a slight excess of anxious women, but the majority are secure.]

The original tests of attachment were done in very young children, looking at how they responded when they were left alone by their mothers. Does your infant attachment style stay with you into adulthood?

If there is a correlation, it’s weak at best, which is good news because it means that we can change our attachment style. Adult attachment styles are stable but plastic. When [researchers] looked at a group over four years, 25% had changed their attachment style. It can happen in several ways, for example when someone anxious or avoidant gets into a relationship with someone secure.

So what can you do to change your attachment style if you are not secure?

First of all, by understanding your relationship from an attachment perspective, you can work to identify insecure patterns and learn how you can change them to become more secure.

We have examples in the book. One couple moved in together. One of them was very avoidant; he had a hard time and got to the point where he was thinking about breaking up. But he was also able to say how he was having hard time letting her in, and to think about how lonely he was before and how he really longed to share his life. A transition occurred when he was able to see his role in what was going on and take step back and not feel like he was being pushed into a corner.

[I also worked with a] 40-year-old woman. She was dating and was sick of it and wanted a man and kids. She started to just say, I want to get married and have kids as soon as possible. She was able to do two things there, express that need and be authentic, which correlates very highly with satisfaction and happy relationships. A lot of people were scared off, but that way she didn’t waste her time. And the way she did it, it can come from place of strength, it doesn’t have to come from place of weakness.

Couples Therapy Can Help PTSD and Improve Relationships

The distress of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) hurts not only the victims of trauma, but their loved ones as well, particularly their spouses or partners. Now a study suggests that a new type of couples therapy may help.


PTSD has been particularly devastating for veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars — suicide, which is commonly linked with the disorder, is now killing more U.S. soldiers than combat itself. But even for those who don’t take their own lives, the combination of PTSD and traumatic brain injury (TBI), caused by repeated concussions during battle — both signature wounds of today’s wars — is profoundly disabling, as columnist Nick Kristof described in a harrowing article in the New York Times last Sunday. Because these brain wounds are not visible, unlike a lost limb, they often go unacknowledged by the sufferer, undiagnosed and untreated.

“If you want to understand how America is failing its soldiers and veterans, honoring them with lip service and ceremonies but breaking faith with them on all that matters most,” Kristof wrote, you should consider the story of Maj. Ben Richards, a rising star in the U.S. Army, who was eventually diagnosed with both TBI and PTSD and nearly lost his marriage to his wife, Farrah:

A once boisterous dad who loved to roughhouse with his children — now there are four, ages 1 to 14 — Ben no longer seemed to know how to play with them. He often suffered incapacitating headaches, overwhelming fatigue and constant insomnia. Especially when dozing, he was on a hair trigger. If Farrah rose at night, she sometimes didn’t return to bed for fear that her husband might think she was an enemy and attack her. Instead, she’d spend the rest of the night on the couch.

For a woman who had been functioning as a single mom and was now eager to resume her former married life, all this was devastating. And it got worse. Farrah would tell her husband things, and then he would repeatedly forget — and reproach her for not telling him. He was distracted, withdrawn and unhelpful, and he repeatedly let her down.
“Our marriage was at real risk at this point,” Richards says. “We got to a point where we thought about separating.”

The hair-trigger nerves, irritability, inability to concentrate, insomnia and emotional withdrawal are all classic symptoms of PTSD, particularly when it is combined with brain injury. The Richards family is still struggling to get appropriate treatment.

Currently, counseling for PTSD focuses only on the individual with the disorder — and it does help. But while it improves patients’ psychological and social functioning, those improvements typically don’t occur in the context of their relationships with spouses or partners. What’s more, even when patients receive high-quality treatment for PTSD, research shows they are less likely to get better if their marital problems go unaddressed.

Although previous studies have suggested that couples counseling can help such patients improve both their PTSD symptoms and their relationship satisfaction, those studies have usually been small and lacking a control group. So, the new research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, sought to test the theory more rigorously. The trial involved 40 heterosexual and same-sex couples, half of whom were treated in an outpatient VA hospital clinic in Boston, and the other half who were treated at a university research center in Toronto, Canada.

The couples were randomly assigned either to receive a treatment called “cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy” or to put their names on a waiting list for treatment. The therapy itself began by teaching both members of the couple about the symptoms of PTSD, how the disorder affects their relationship and vice versa, and helping couples to feel safe talking about the disorder with each other. The first phase of treatment emphasized positive communication to break the cycle of negativity that often accompanies PTSD, which tends to lead both partners to become increasingly critical of each other. The authors noted that at the end of the first session, “the couple is instructed to catch each other doing nice things to promote positivity in their relationship and decrease selective attention to negativity.”

Over 15 sessions, the couples learned more about the impact of the particular trauma on their relationship and on the affected partner, including how PTSD can change the brain’s responses in ways that increase impulsivity, social withdrawal and aggression. The pairs were also instructed to try not to avoid circumstances — people, places, situations or feelings — that might trigger PTSD symptoms because that only reinforces the sufferer’s fear. Instead, they learned to push through the fear while making each other feel safe, such as by attending previously avoided social events together and learning that they can be pleasurable and fun, once their fear was overcome.

Compared with the couples who were waitlisted, the partner with PTSD in couples who underwent therapy showed a three times larger decrease in severity of PTSD symptoms. And the couples also reported four times more relationship satisfaction after therapy, compared with the control group. Indeed, after treatment, 81% of those in the treatment group no longer met the criteria for PTSD, compared with 63% of those on the waiting list. Three months later, the treatment group continued to do better than the controls.

The authors concluded that the treatment “produced improvements in clinician-rated PTSD symptoms…as well as patient-rated relationship satisfaction.” But because it’s still possible that the positive results were due simply to the fact that people in treatment got more therapeutic attention than those on the waiting list, couples therapy must be compared to another type of treatment to see exactly how effective it really is.

Still, the study’s findings fall in line with a wide range of research showing that social support from close relationships improves mental and physical health. They also suggest that a non-drug approach could improve PTSD, which is often difficult to treat.

“There is increasing recognition that intimate relationships play a potent role in recovery from PTSD,” the study authors write, and if their research is replicated, specialized couples therapy could be made available to veterans and others who struggle, along with their partners, with this often-invisible but devastating disorder.