Finding your soul mate is basically finding that one person (arguably one of several) who has the right traits – traits that are relevant to you as an individual. In other words: You have to find a person whom you can put up with and who, more importantly, can put up with you.
Plus all that lovey-dovey stuff, of course. If love isn’t much more than the way that you perceive a person, then you need to find someone who you can perceive as being amazing for as long as you live. Just as importantly, you need to find a person who can put up with all of your sh*t.
Because, let’s be honest, we all have a lot of sh*t that our soul mates will need to put up with. Here are 10 traits that your soul mates should have and that, ipso facto, you should have in his or her eyes:
1. Your soul mate should be very attractive (to you).
Call me shallow, but if you don’t want to sleep with your partner then why the hell do you keep that person around? Sure, there are plenty of other reasons to love someone, but sex is definitely one of the more important ones. Does this mean that your partner needs to live up to the supermodel standard?
I hope not because then 99 percent of the world will be very lonely. What you find attractive is your preference – just make sure that he or she has a face that you’ll be happy seeing every morning for the rest of your life.
2. Your soul mate should share similar likes and beliefs, but not on all fronts.
Having things in common is essential to a loving and caring relationship. For one, it minimizes the amount of arguments, which is very useful in a relationship, and it makes life more enjoyable for both parties. You don’t want to always be doing the things that you hate because your partner loves them.
Sure, you won’t be able to mediate your interests all the time, but having things you like in common definitely helps. At the same time, you don’t want to be too similar; that gets boring. The right person will bring the right balance of new and familiar to the table.
3. Your soul mate should open you up to a new side of life – show you a new reality.
A great life is a life filled with discovery. Discovering new things is exciting and gives you new experiences to look forward to. More than that, the ideal soul mate will show you a better side of life – a side that you didn’t even know existed. Chances are that the person you will end up with is the person who introduces you to a better way of living.
4. Your soul mate has to love you regardless of your flaws and imperfections.
We’re all flawed – we’re human. Loving someone doesn’t mean loving that person because he or she is perfect, but rather because he or she is perfect for you. Many will do their best to hide their imperfections for the duration of their relationships. However, this is impossible.
While I don’t recommend necessarily laying your hand on the table from the get-go, you can’t hide who you really are or you’ll never know if your partner loves all of you and not just the better part of you.
5. Your soul mate has to be capable of regularly putting your needs ahead of his or her own.
Love can arguably be said to be unnatural. It makes us put the needs of another individual ahead of our own – which is not what evolution teaches us should be happening. The beauty of a loving relationship is that we begin to rely upon each other so much that we feel as one and the needs of our soul mate feels more like our own needs than our actual own needs.
If your partner can’t put your needs ahead of his or her own, and you can't put your partner's needs ahead of your own, then you’re likely to fail. Of course, we can’t always be putting our partners' needs ahead of our own – we’re only human. But, we can do our best to show them how much we love them by sacrificing our wants in order for them to meet theirs.
6. Your soul mate should be able and willing to give you the attention that you need.
Different people have a different level of neediness. Personally, I’m on the lighter side of the spectrum. However, there are those who are very, very needy and require a whole lot of attention.
I can’t say that I find this healthy, but hey… not my problem. If you are one of those attention-seeking individuals then you better find someone that is more than willing to give you that attention. Your soul mate will likely be the person who has an identical level of neediness.
7. Your soul mate wants nothing more than to experience life with you because he or she feels that life with you is better than any life without you.
This is a big one. There are only so many versions of our lives that we could possibly live – determinism aside. If you believe that your life cannot be any better than it is when you are with the person whom you love then you may very well have found the right person to spend your life with.
Life is a chain of experiences of which can be experienced with either more or less pleasure. If the person we experience those with make those experiences joyfully memorable then we may have found a keeper.
8. Your soul mate is willing to lose arguments for the sake of keeping the relationship intact.
This is something that took me a long time to learn because, as you may have noticed, I like to argue. It’s not that some battles need to be lost… it’s that some battles simply aren’t worth fighting. Moreover, most of the arguments lovers have aren’t over concrete facts, but over opinion.
Opinions are opinions and we are all entitled to our own. Skip the less important arguments and fight the real important ones instead. Otherwise you are likely to lose what you have. And that’s the only battle worth fighting.
9. The two of you want to live very similar lives.
When we’re younger, we don’t put much thought into lifestyles that we wish to live. Or rather, we don’t think much about the possibility that the lives that we ourselves want to live might not line up with the life that our lover may want to live.
Do you want to travel constantly or stay put? Do you want to be incredibly rich or simply comfortable? Do you want kids? And how many? All these decisions affect different parts of our lives.
It takes a lot of time and energy to do some of the more important things in our lives and because we are sharing our lives with another, both will likely be missing out on certain things. Hopefully those things aren’t incredibly important to our lovers because if they are then we’re setting ourselves up for disaster.
10. Your soul mate is loyal and would never abandon you.
Life can be a bitch. It can make us miserable. It can make waking up in the morning and going about our day near impossible. It can make us moody, unhappy, stressed, rushed, angry, emotional, moody… And that’s fine enough – until you start to share your life with another.
Can you deal with your partner when he or she is going through a rough patch? Can your partner deal with you? How much is simply too much? These are all questions that we have to ask ourselves. Loyalty does go a very long way and is incredibly important in a relationship.
Sometimes we lose control of ourselves and fall down that spiral. Will your lover stick around as you crawl back out of that hole?
Photo by Melissa Green Photography
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