Love

Is Looking For A Soul Mate Keeping You Single?

Woman on bench looking forlornly

I remember being a little girl and hearing my mother use the term "soul mates." Watch: Seeking Your Soulmate? Use The Secret

"What is 'soul mates'?" I asked.

"It's beshert," she said.

"Be-what?"

"It's meant to be," she explained.

Beshert is a Yiddish term that expresses how soul mates are "meant to be together." Building on my family's unwavering faith in this beshert thingy—my parents met when they were 17 and my grandparents when they were 16—I assumed that I, too, would be welcomed into the warm, loving arms of this soul mate phenomenon. I vowed to keep my eyes peeled for my one and only perfect, dream lover—the man who would sweep me off my feet and love me as no one else ever had, my soul mate Read: Soul Mate Myths.

When I was 13, I thought my first boyfriend Jeremy, the guitar-strumming pothead, was my soul mate. "Run away with me and let's get married, dude," he pleaded during one of our marathon phone conversations.

"But I don't have a ride to your place," I said. When he cheated on me later that month with a girl that lived in his neighborhood, I knew he was NOT "the one."

When I was 15, I was sure my soul mate was Rob, the artist with the Doc Martens and the Sonic Youth t-shirt.  At 19, I was betting it was John, the intellectual DJ who could quote Foucault and Wu-Tang Clan all in one breath. By 22, I was fairly certain it was my long-term, live-in boyfriend Jeff, until I unexpectedly met and fell in love with Jason when I was 25. This time I was positive that Jason was "the one." Jason and I were laying in bed one night and he turned to me clearly panicked and asked, "You seem so sure about us, how do you know it's meant to be?"

"Beshert," I said confidently. Two weeks later, he dumped me. Okay…f**k beshert.

Finish reading this article at The Frisky.

Written by Ami Angelowicz for The Frisky.

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