What would this blog be if I didn’t register my angst with the etymology of the nomenclature of young, arduous love! There have been so many expressions that we have dissected here that I don’t need to delve into more of them. I don’t believe in “the one”. I don’t believe in “made for each other”. I really don’t quite believe in “star crossed”. And to be honest, I don’t believe in “soul mates”.
Life partners? Meh, have at it.
Soul mates? WTF!
The idea of the perfect love is so rampant and berserk in popular fiction that all girls have batted an eyelash or two to get it. Almost all men have joined the gym to get it. Most married couples have longed for it. Most dying people have regretted chasing it and not settling with the first person who showed any sexual or romantic interest in them. It’s an enigma. It’s a mystery. It’s the final douche move that life reserves for people who can’t be defeated in other ways. Life strips them of any logical sense of love and makes them pine for a soulmate.
It’s a revenge of sorts on people who have it made otherwise. It’s asinine and all-consuming. It’s what makes many successful people question their worth.
In my opinion, there’s no such thing like soul mates. There are no two people who are made for each other and there isn’t the one. It’s all about geographic availability of a mate.
Geographic desirability is the number one factor in finding this proverbial “soul mate”. I mean I never ever found a soulmate who didn’t live at a stone’s throw from where I went to school or lived myself or shopped. So basically any guy within a ten mile radius of my home or school had a chance of being my soul mate. Just knowing all the creeps who padded my stomping grounds too was unappetizing at best. And yet, I eyed several as potential soul mates.
But as I started growing up this word took a whole another meaning. When I noticed that due to an inherent patriarchal trait that every man is born with it is hard for them to be a woman’s soul mate. Call me a cynic but the privileged can’t be the oppressed people’s soul mates. Women have traditionally not found soul mates in men. They’ve found them in other women.
The idea is so colluded by the right-wing, patriarchal, conservative, coverture-endorsing men that women measure their worth by how much of a soul mate their supposed soul mate actually is. Which is why another atrocious expression rose from the pits of these stupid and moronic expressions which is Couple Goals.
Now what the hell is that? Being on vacation? Taking a nice selfie together? Having similar outfits? Being another stupidly coined and widely used expression The Power Couple? What in the name of marital bigotry are couple goals? If you asked me my soul mate would be the guy who’d let me sleep until noon, while surrounded by the most intoxicating white noise and a feeling of being unmarried and without responsibilities of child-rearing and husband-gearing again. That would be my soulmate.
But my soulmates have invariably been women. Women who get it and women who know it. Women who’ve been through it. Women who can smell patriarchy. Women who call BS on couple goals just because my husband extended an arm that was made long enough by God so a selfie could be taken. Women who have had their husband wolfing down a pizza as they pushed to bring his baby into this world. Women who do it all and then some. Women who make the world go round while their men hog the glory.
So this is why I don’t think my ideas of romance and coverture will ever associate with yours. I want my soulmate to listen, the world wants him to cuddle. I want my soul mate to feel, the world wants him to buy. I want him to see, the world deems it enough that he sleeps next to me.
Which is why I have found many soulmates, none in the men I’ve slept with. My soul mates are other women, in the trenches with me, leading from the front, by my side, and lifting me up. They are my #goals and they are the ones that God created for me.
My mind as a woman 