Soul Mates

Maybe The One is out there. You know, your soul mate.

A lovelorn soul today has a dating pool in the millions¹. In 1950 your dating pool would have been your local community.

This wealth of options is certainly a Good Thing. I met my wife on Tinder while we were 9,000 kilometers apart. There is absolutely no hope in hell that we would have met had we been born in my grandad’s era.

However, it is well established that - at least for some people - more choice isn’t always better. People like having lots of options to choose from, but spend longer choosing and are less satisfied with their chosen option. Aren’t people silly?

Back to my lovely wife (she reads this blog so I have to say nice things about her). In a stroke of cliche, when we met she was the type to consider “thinking things through” as the sure road to making terrible decisions and generally a bad idea. On the other hand, I was a robot wearing a flesh suit who had somehow managed to convince people that my beeps and boops were English sentences. This, among other issues (cultural differences being another big one), led to us breaking up (multiple times).

We got back together, though (multiple times). Now - 6 years on from our last, and hopefully final, breakup - I’ve come to depend on the things that used to bother me. The constant need for emotional validation, the chaotic outbursts, chattering through movies. It’s like they make use of mental muscles that were sedentary before, but now get restless if they aren’t exercised. I can connect with other people emotionally now. I’m learning to get out of my head and enjoy things without being “totally theoretically corrupted”. I’m even starting to get the hang of comforting people when they’re down instead of laughing at them (still working on that one). Also she’s learned that you’re allowed to have two connected thoughts sometimes.

Maybe The One is out there. Maybe not. Maybe if you keep swiping long enough, you’ll find them. I don’t know anyone who’s found their soul mate. I think that’s because soul mates are made, not found.

- omegastick