You gave yourself passionately and eternally to your soulmate—only to find out later that he was really the man-from-hell.
I’ve known plenty of women who have fallen instantly and hopelessly in love with their soulmates—myself included. We gave ourselves passionately and eternally to our soulmates—only to find out later that he is really the man-from-hell.
Women (and men) often believe that a “soulmate” means they have found their ultimate romantic partner. They meet a man with compatible emotional traits merged with harmonious, combustible pheromones and kaboom!—soulmates are born. The problem with this theory is: not all soulmates are emotionally healthy individuals.
You’ve met soulmate. You’ve never felt such an overwhelmingly emotional, intellectual and sexual affinity. He feels like your husband, your lover, your father and your best friend all rolled into one person. It’s as if you had known him in another life and fate has reunited you. He “completes” you, you say. The emotional bond is spiritual. The physical intimacy is rapturous. It feels too good to be true.
Your soulmate tells you that he has never met anyone like you before; that you are the most wonderful, beautiful woman that has ever been in his life and that he will love you until the day he dies. Six months later, maybe a year, an abusive, lying, raging alien emerges from the body of the sweetest, most loving man you’ve ever known. It seems like a bad dream. You discover that your soulmate is philandering with women online. His evening cocktails have turned into belligerent drinking episodes and he criticizes and ridicules you in front of others. Or maybe he’s stopped having sex with you and he withholds emotional intimacy. So abrupt is his transformation, it’s as if you went to bed one night and awoke the next morning with a total stranger.
How can this be? How can a man who pledges his consummate, undying devotion to you treat you so badly?
Listen! A soulmate does not mean he is capable of a long-term loving, supportive, honest relationship. He may be a generous provider and the greatest communicator that’s ever crossed your path. He may curl your toes in the bedroom. He may tell you that if he ever lost you he would never get over you—that’s why it’s so hard to comprehend how he can hyper-criticize you, cheat on you, blame and manipulate you, verbally abuse you, and even physically assault you.
Soulmates are magnetically drawn together because of similar emotional patterns. (That’s not always a good thing!)
Not all soulmates are stable individuals. A person’s dysfunctional upbringing and hurtful past experiences mold them into maladjusted adults. Corrupt soulmates subconsciously seek a partner whose flawed mentality jives with their warped behavior. It’s a unique emotional attraction. A misogynist is drawn to a woman who represents his hypercritical, controlling mother. A codependent woman will bond to a man who personifies her emotionally detached, abusive, alcoholic father. A narcissistic man will instinctively seek out naive, insecure woman who will tolerate his alcoholism, infidelity and verbal and physical abuse. Emotionally handicapped soulmates intuitively understand each other flaws and they are oddly comfortable with a partner’s unhealthy and destructive behavior. A woman, who witnessed her father verbally and physically abuse her mother, may innately know that her boyfriend’s or husband’s abuse is wrong, but his behavior is familiar and quasi-acceptable to her.
