Stop Waiting for Your ‘Soul Mate’

Almost all people say they believe in true love.  A smaller number believe in love at first sight, and an even smaller number believe in “soul mates.”  Arthur Brooks explores why focusing on “romantic destiny” or “soul mates”— the belief that two people are deliberately brought together by unseen forces – isn’t healthy.  “Research on hundreds of college students has shown that such expectations are correlated with dysfunctional patterns in relationships, such as the assumption that partners will understand and predict each other’s wishes and desires with little effort or communication because they’re a cosmically perfect match. In other words, a belief in destiny leads to a belief in mind reading.”

Read more:  Arthur Brooks, The Atlantic