-- Question for John --
What if you lose your soulmate? I thought I was with my soulmate but after a great beginning we broke up. That was six years ago and I haven’t met anyone like him since. Have I lost the one and only true love of my life? If so, then what is a soulmate? I thought that was the one who you were predestined to be with for the rest of your life.
-- Answer from John --
We do not believe that being soulmates is a mystical thing or any kind of predestiny. We have met many people who have told us a story like yours. Often they are wondering if that was it, their one true love gone forever. We don’t think there is only one soulmate. In fact, there are many kinds of soulmates aside from romantic partners.
Let me define what we mean by soulmate. In the honeymoon you can feel like soulmates. But the relationship has not yet been tested enough to know if you are solidly with a soulmate. It’s like being a candidate vs. getting elected.
Here’s our definition of soulmate: You know you are with a soulmate if you are doing your soulwork together. You cannot tell this by the honeymoon stage of relationship.
Soulwork is when you face big interpersonal challenges, issues, upsets, problems, difficulties and differences… and instead of shutting down, getting defensive or offensive, blaming the other person, or all those “normal” reactions… you open your heart and mind and learn to grow and expand who you are.
Soulwork involves taking full responsibility for your part in making a situation how it is, owning all your emotions and seeing the consequences of your behavior. Normally, couples with problems begin to blame each other rather than accept and face the challenge as an opportunity to heal, grow, change, learn, expand.
This is an ego defense that keeps us small, keeps our souls limited by past conditioning and unconscious reactivity. We hold onto our past patterns and react in our own predictable ways. The result of soulwork is to open, heal and expand the realm of the soul and to overcome the tendencies of the ego to try to control things.
Soulwork requires “unnormal” courage to open because in the presence of a big challenge the tendency is to close. So soulwork also involves discovering, owning and facing the underlying fears and discomfort that “normally” keep us limited.
This is what soulmates do when the honeymoon is over and the challenges come up that will destroy relationships where there is not that commitment to do soulwork together.
