Photo Credit | Lakshanyaa Ganesh
By: Lakshanyaa Ganesh and Oishee Misra
The idea of a soulmate is magical. Only one person in the entire world who is meant just for you, one person who is the day to your night, the right to your left, the Prince Charming to your inner Cinderella — we’ll stop right there.
We’ll stop because the idea of a soulmate, just like the idea of magic’s existence, is frankly ridiculous 一 or at least the classic romantic example of a soulmate is. Society has a way of romanticizing romance and constantly shoving the idea of “the one” down our throats. From the day we’re born, the idea of romantic love is ingrained into our DNA as we watch Ariel fall in love with Prince Eric on screen and read about Snow White finding her Prince Charming. We’ve grown up with the concept — and want — of having one true, perfect love or soulmate, without examining the importance of other relationships in our lives.
Don’t get us wrong — we’re not saying soulmates don’t exist — we’re just saying that they don’t exist in the way we think they do. Romance doesn’t need to be the overarching prerequisite for leading a successful life — soulmates can be a friend, a sibling, a parent. In short, any relationship can fall under the label of a soulmate if two people are compatible, even platonically. They can be the people we click with on another level, people who understand us more than we understand ourselves, people who support us as much as we support them and the people who love us as we are without wanting to change a thing.
We get caught up in trying to find the perfect person for us without realizing that maybe the “right” people are all around us. Another side effect of only viewing our romantic partners as our soulmate is the tendency to be extremely reliant on only one other person. As hard as it is to accept, sometimes significant others don’t last forever. Breakups happen, and the people we rely on to get over these breakups are our friends and family members, who will ultimately stay in our lives much longer.
As crude as it may sound, friends are lower maintenance than romantic lovers. Long distance friendships? No problem. Long distance relationships? A whole plethora of issues. Friendships and other relationships don’t require the same level of commitment as romantic ones. Obviously, a mutual feeling of love and support is needed and necessary for all kinds of relationships, romantic or otherwise. However, with friendships, there can be a mutual understanding that both people have busy lives and may not be able to spend time with each other every single day. With romantic relationships, the physical closeness and intimacy aspects are important as well, which makes long distance relationships that much more difficult.
We are not condemning romantic love by any means. On the contrary, we believe that finding someone to spend the rest of your life with — your very own Disney prince or princess — is magical. We just believe that soulmates can be more than romance, and romance, contrary to society’s opinion, need not be a prerequisite for happiness.