Is there scientific proof that soulmates exist

7/20/2018 Is There Scientific Proof That Soulmates Exist?
https://www.bustle.com/articles/133430-is-there-scientific-proof-that-soulmates-exist 1/9
Is There Scienti c Proof That Soulmates Exist?
By BIBI DEITZ Jan 26 2016

There's been much debate in regard to whether each person just has one soulmate, or if each
person has plenty of soulmates, or if, in fact, soulmates are a silly and frivolous notion
altogether. If you search for it, there is some somewhat dubious scienti c proof that
soulmates are real, but before we go down that rabbit hole, I think it's worth de ning and
denoting which type of soulmate I mean.
According to New Oxford American, a soulmate is just "a person ideally suited to another as a
close friend or romantic partner." By that meaning, soulmates obviously exist — there are
de nitely some people who are more ideally suited together than others. But a soulmate, in
the more metaphysical sense of the term, has a deeper, more profound connotation. This
type of soulmate is something based in a more spiritual plane — and historically has been
associated with just one person. In other words, each person has just one soulmate out there,
and if you blow it with them, that's it.
I don't believe that. I do, however, believe in soulmates in the dictionary de nition of the word
— as in, some people are truly suited for each other, and some are not, no matter how hard
they try or how good they look on paper or even how much they love each other. But don't
take my word for it. Here's what science has to say about soulmates.

It's May Be A Bad Idea To Think Of Your Partner As
Your "Soulmate"
Thinking of a partner as your soulmate is the wrong way to look at a relationship. Or so says
one study, titled "When It Hurts to Think We Were Made for Each Other," which asked
participants to pick between phrases and images that either suggested that their take on love
was was a one-time, soulmate-y thing, or whether it was more of a warty, bumpy, realistic
journey. Unsurprisingly, the soulmate group was way more negative in regard to problems in
their relationships than the more realistic group.
“People who view themselves as soulmates tend to be less satis ed when they think of the
con icts in their relationships,” says Spike W.S. Lee (not to be confused with Spike Lee) of the
University of Toronto, who coauthored the study with Norbert Schwarz of the University of
Southern California. “It’s inevitable. In the soulmate frame, con icts are bad. People think,
'Well, maybe we’re not the perfect t.'”
Math Says Soulmates Are Impossible

In the book What If?: Serious Scienti c Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, one-time
NASA roboticist Randall Munroe tries to answer the question, "What if everyone actually had
only one soulmate, a random person somewhere in the world?" Munroe crunches numbers
and nds that, mathematically speaking, the chances of nding your soulmate — if there's
just one out there for you — are slim to none. For his purposes, he de nes a soulmate as
someone who is in the same age range as you, which means each person has about 500
million potential candidates.
“Let’s suppose you lock eyes with an average of a few dozen new strangers each day," writes
Munroe. "If 10 percent of them are close to your age, that’s around 50,000 people in a
lifetime. Given that you have 500,000,000 potential soul mates, it means you’ll only nd true
love in one lifetime out of 10,000.”
If it's just boiled down to math, the probability of nding your one true soulmate is pretty
lousy. Then again, the whole idea of soulmates is kind of allergic to math. It's a much more

ephemeral, diaphanous concept. So maybe the fact that numbers "prove" that soulmates are
next to impossible to nd is just a bunch of baloney in and of itself, because even if you do
have to nd your soulmate in the midst of half a billion other people, maybe that's just the
point — that your soulmate will nd you, if you are open to it and look for it, against the odds.
Because the odds are irrelevant. Because we're talking about a metaphysical concept.
Energy Studies Say Soulmates Are Real
As the very out-there website The Science of Soulmates reports, soulmates are, indeed, real,
and can be proven by science. But once you read through the lengthy, wordy site, you nd that
the theories listed on the site that are "scienti cally proven" to show that soulmates are real
are pretty woo-woo.

TLDR: Soulmates are, apparently, one manifestation of energy patterns inherent to all things
in the universe. According to the site, "scienti c instruments recorded evidence of a
fundamental energy pattern that reveals the source of existence and the source of the
phenomenon of soulmates."
Though this "evidence" is convoluted and hard to follow, it appears that some believe that
soulmates can be proven by studying energy patterns. I'm open to this idea — I was raised in
a nontraditional household, and I'm open to many transcendental concepts — but I'm not sure
this site actually provides much real proof that soulmates exist, at least according to science.
So — back to the drawing board.
Psychology Argues Yes For Soulmates, With A Twist

If science can't de nitively prove soulmates exist, what about psychology? "While I do not
believe there is such a thing as ' nding your perfectly matched soulmate,' I’ve seen plenty of
evidence that we can become each other’s soul mates as the result of a deep and lasting love
relationship," writes Shauna H Springer, a licensed psychologist and relationship and lifestyle
researcher. She argues that, although two people may not start out as "soulmates" in the
classic sense of the word, it's possible to become someone else's soulmate simply by virtue
of being a fantastic partner.
A relationship might not start out with a one-way ticket to soulmateville, but it can eventually
wind up there over time, she says. Over time, in such a relationship, "the partnership has
become so multifaceted and the compatibilities so intricately dovetailed that one's spouse
could never be replaced by anyone else," she writes. "Two individuals who have become
perfect for and irreplaceable to each other have become soulmates. In this way, soulmates
become each other’s 'one in a billion perfect match.'”
So — Do Soulmates Exist?

Who's right? Does math win, making it near-impossible to meet your soulmate, even if such a
thing exists? Are the dubitable facts of The Science of Soulmates enough to make a case? Or
is it psychology that makes the most sense, with the idea that soulmates are not given, but
earned? Hard to say.
If soulmates really are a thing, I think science, math and psychology all take a backseat to
transcendental phenomena. And in the case of the spiritual, I think it's less feasible to explain
it — instead, it has to experienced.
Want more of Bustle's Sex and Relationships coverage? Check out our new podcast, I Want It
That Way, which delves into the di cult and downright dirty parts of a relationship, and nd
more on our Soundcloud page.

Images: Fotolia; Wi eGif (5)
Cookie policy

Is there scientific proof that soulmates exist

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Featured

Featured (20)

Is there scientific proof that soulmates exist