Do you believe in soulmates?

[_MetalSlasher]

Do you believe there's someone we are meant to find and fall in love with, or do you think there's multiple people we could make a wonderful marriage and life work, and we just happen to find one of those people?

[_moksha]

The Church position is that you can be happy enough with almost anyone and that romantic ideas of a perfect someone might result in a delayed marriage or no marriage at all. The production of future tithe payers must be paramount over all other considerations.

The message is clear from the 3rd stage interpreters at Kirton McConkie: The tithe must flow.

[_grindael]

No. *Shudder* I think people just get lucky, or really, really work at their marriages.

[_MetalSlasher]

The Church position is that you can be happy enough with almost anyone and that romantic ideas of a perfect someone might result in a delayed marriage or no marriage at all. The production of future tithe payers must be paramount over all other considerations.

The message is clear from the 3rd stage interpreters at Kirton McConkie: The tithe must flow.

I wasn't aware the church had that position.

[_MetalSlasher]

No. *Shudder* I think people just get lucky, or really, really work at their marriages.

I can agree with that. People get lucky.

[_Jersey Girl]

Do you believe there's someone we are meant to find and fall in love with, or do you think there's multiple people we could make a wonderful marriage and life work, and we just happen to find one of those people?

Oh god no.

Yes, I think you could have a soul mate. Whether or not they'd make a good marriage partner is a different question entirely.

I'd love to know what you mean by "wonderful marriage". I'm not sure that there is such a thing and let me tell you why. When two people marry they drag their childhood along with them. That may/may not be a positive influence, In any case, you'll take all of your life experiences that have made you "you" and combine the 2, and go forward to encounter new experiences together. Those may/may not be positive experiences. Some certainly would be joy filled, some sorrow filled, and some just damn hard to navigate. Hang on, I'm going somewhere with this.

I'll tell you that I've been married longer than you and some others here have been alive. Somewhere between the lines* of the list that I'm going put in front of you, are our real life events. I won't give more details than I'm giving.

[snip]

In my view, you don't need a soul mate to get through those things. You need two people who are combat ready and who somehow have the ability to come out on the same side. In between that, I think you can have a wonderful life.


*I lied. Those ARE some of our real life events and that's not the whole list. :-)

[_Jersey Girl]

I guess if your soul mate knows how to dig in his/her heels. You've pretty much got it made.

;-)

[_Maksutov]

No.

[Guest]

Yes, because I've had two in my lifetime.

I knew when I met each one of them we had known and loved before in a previous lifetime or lifetimes. I had the deja vu awakening with each one.

No one else in my lifetime except those two men. I was 15 when I met the first one. And 20 when I met the 2nd. Both of them died one year apart when I was 21 and 22.

It was the second one who was my true soulmate. I dreamt of him the night before we met we were on our third honeymoon, standing at an airport terminal waiting for our plane. He had glistening blonde hair, a beret cap, and spoke in a distinctive bass voice. I wondered all the next day why I would dream about someone I hadn't met? And then that night I went to my very first meeting as a volunteer for Big Sisters. There he was, on the board of volunteers, getting up to announce the guest speaker. And his voice was the same deep bass voice. And his hair the glistening blonde as in my dream, and he was tall and handsome. He looked a lot like Keith Carradine. :) (I wrote a song for him called "The Golden Haired Boy of my Dreams," but never got to sing it for him.)

I dreamt after he died but before I knew he was deceased we were married in heaven. I have no doubt we are destined to meet again.

The message of our being on a third honeymoon in my first dream I interpreted to mean it was our third beginning, as in a third lifetime. Maybe the next lifetime we meet again I'll have another dream we'll be on our "fourth honeymoon?"

Be careful what you wish for. I had been praying that God would direct me to my soulmate when I dreamt of him before we met. And there he was, until he was taken away too soon. I even dreamt of his dying several months before he did. I chalked it up to a terrible dream, until it came true. He was only 29 when he died, and a senior scientist for Westinghouse, a nuclear scientist.

Neither man was LDS or particularly religious. One had been raised a Catholic. The other Protestant.

[Guest]

No, I do not believe in soulmates. I think one is lucky if he or she takes the time to sift through dozens of possible mates before choosing one that will be compatible.

It was until I apostatized a repeated GA theme in devotional talks at BYU that there is not "the one" and that we as BYU students were to find a mate, marry in the temple and start a family, that it was just fantasy and not "god's plan" to think that we have soulmates and need to find them before marrying.

Imagine that. Even to this day I agree with that LDS concept--the part about no soulmates, that is.