The Never-Ending Search for a Soul Mate
Why do we keep looking for a heart to stay by our side
The never-ending search for a soul mate, that unique person we want to keep by our side for eternity, until death, and even into the ethereal realm that lies beyond. Friendship is not enough, we want more, more and more. Something deeper and shared, that reciprocal understanding that does not require words but a single glaze.
Why do we seek so vehemently, for our whole life, even though in many cases we aren’t even able to reach that dream? What do we really desire? What is love in our opinion? A different concept for everyone, without doubt. But what unites it in each of its fragmented variations? Eternity.
We don’t want to be alone
We fear loneliness like a child fears its own shadow. We fear a kind of chronic and incurable type of loneliness. We fear the future as we turn our gaze, and our heart, to the past. After all, the pleasure of romantic passion derives mostly from the idealization of the idyllic past and the daydreaming future rather than from the concreteness of the present instant.
The main purpose of a fixed and stable relationship would therefore be to capture every present moment and make it eternal. The fear of losing those feelings that we would like to last forever in the folds of time. All originating from fear, dissatisfaction, lack of faith in tomorrow. We ourselves are the main cause of this abysmal emptiness that devours us inside. The flame of passion is nothing but fear.
The future cannot be controlled by anyone
It lives wild and free and severely punishes anyone who dares to try to trap it. Whether a fleeting love or a lasting relationship, it does not change the course of events in any way, which always have the romantic feeling of love as their origin.
On one hand there is total surrender to fate, but on the other hand lies the self-deception of our heart. Fear of the unknown and lack of control is the worst. We would always like everything to be secured, managed with care either by us or by someone competent. We would even be willing to accept the presence of a divine or metaphysical force such as god or fate in order to satisfy this desire for control. That apparent refuge from the storms of life, in which love nestles, is precisely what we call a relationship.
Since love is one of the feelings that we most value and jealously guard, we can’t accept it to be total victim of chance. We have no idea how to keep love alive because when we try to understand what love actually is, we are left without a valid explanation. We know what we feel, how it makes us feel, how important it is, but never what is at its origin and what fuels it. This lack of knowledge is what drives us to capture it by any means necessary, even the most desperate.
We are left in a limbo of emotions
Whatever we do turns out to be wrong and risky. Keeping everything as it is makes us feel trapped in a vortex with no exit, where nothing moves and the utopian dream of romantic fulfillment remains as distant and incomplete. Risking a confession is an even bigger risk, especially if the person who lies in our heart is special and unique to the point that we would never want to lose them, at any cost.
Sometimes we just want to be sure is those moments of magic to last forever. Nothing else, nothing more simple. Everything would be possible to solve with a simple word, which however inevitably risks to break the spell and make the dream vanish definitively. We are jealous of that future we wish we had but we still feel as if it doesn’t include us.
We live with the destructive power of our true feelings
But the only way to get close to it, or at least make ourselves believe it, is to cross that point of no return that lies in the most utter honesty of our true feelings, which may be capable of being so destructive to leave us with nothing, more empty than we could ever be, thus making us understand, now too late, that friendship would have been sufficient even if unknown for its duration.
Fear of rejection on the one hand, but also fear of losing everything in the blink of an eye, just for a word said at the wrong time. Because if love is true, we would never want to lose that someone special to us. We would prefer to keep love hidden in our soul, safe from ourselves, and live with it in order to keep our secret beloved close to us.
