Soulmates are just a romantic invention.

Do you believe in the fairy tale of the soulmate? You're among the average number of women and men (nearly 60 percent, according to statistics) who believe that true love is born from an encounter, often a fortunate one, with a person almost predestined for us, where the chemistry between a couple is reduced to a winning shot at the casino of human relationships. We don't want to undermine your belief, which has solid roots in literature, cinema, and theater, where the encounter between two soulmates has always been celebrated as a life-changing dream. Long before Hollywood narratives and the Great Novel of the 19th century, the sage Plato described in his Symposium The underlying idea of ​​the soulmate: humans were originally "split in half," and spent their lives searching for their missing part. Plato was neither a psychologist nor a relationship specialist, but with the search for the soulmate, he had created a philosophical myth about love and human desire. A myth, indeed, far removed from reality.

Letting yourself go, waiting for the "right person at the right time," is truly dangerous, and carries the risk of wasting the essence and vital uncertainties of love. By constantly searching for your soulmate, you can end up on the dead-end track ofexpectation Infinite. Pay attention, and take a look at the people close to you: those who most seek a life partner, based on affinity and compatibility, the so-called "right person" (and who awards this certification?), are the ones who continually experience disappointments. They have very high expectations, which fuel the human illusion of perfect love, and they don't stop even after several negative experiences. They remain trapped in the illusion of a soulmate. Field experience, by which each of us can measure our steps, tells us that love, even when it has the flash of lightning strikeIt's always a bumpy road, where sometimes you have to settle for not stumbling, and other times you have to help the other person not to fall. It takes time, patience, steadinessAnd it also requires the ability, even after a long cohabitation, to rekindle the fire of emotions dulled by the burdens of everyday life. True love, over time, also strengthens because it transforms, becoming complicity, caring for the other, acknowledging diversity. These are all emotions that the wait, or the search, for a soulmate can erase.

Believing in romantic destiny can play tricks on you, even when you're a well-established couple. You're so sure you know the other person's traits that you feel less responsible for them, and when conflict arises, it becomes difficult to manage because it's too unexpected ("You know me too well not to know how much this might bother me"). And at that point, the rift becomes even more irreparable, precisely because it was never factored in, not part of the expectations of a life together between two soulmates. Maximum freedom combined with maximum responsibility, the cornerstone of a long-lasting couple, isn't based on romantic destiny, but on a clear understanding of the uncertainty that lurks in the depths of human relationships, especially the most intimate ones. Choices are ours, not random, and waiting for fate, in the hope of permanent and definitive emotional satisfaction, is another wishful thinking that leaves us open to bitter disappointments.

Romantic love is beautiful precisely in its precariousness, in its illusionistic magic, in the doubt it leaves us with even when we feel we're experiencing it with the right intensity. Beware of cultivating the certainty of a presumed stability, in the name of elective affinities that might not last very long. Of all the feelings we know, love is perhaps the one most likely to transform into a long-lasting adventure, without getting lost in the search for an unlikely soulmate.