The concept of a soulmate is relatively new.

Considering homo sapiens probably lived in fiercely egalitarian societies before the advent of agriculture, the idea of a mate that is tailor-made for another would have been an outlandish thought. For millennia humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies that shared everything among their fellow tribesmen, including sexual partners.

Marking another person as one’s property didn’t start until the appearance of marriage around 2,000 b.c. and wasn’t popularized until much later.

But just because marriage became an institution doesn’t mean young lovers began asking the question, does “the one” exist? For millennia the chief reason two parties were married had nothing to do with love.

Marriage used to be about the consolidation property and for many still is. Daughters were viewed as a father’s property until they were given away to a typically much older man who would in exchange provide the father with resources by way of money, cattle, or land.

So far, the social pressures that lead to marriage seem pretty barbaric. It must have been the Bible that introduced love into the dynamic of marriage, right? Not exactly. In Deuteronomy, securing a wife didn’t involve penning silky smooth poems and slipping them under her door -no.

Dating advice from Deuteronomy went more like this, “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife.”

There is no mention of dating around — attempting to find a woman that will complete you. Instead, Deuteronomy suggested pinning a single woman to the ground, engaging in nonconsensual intercourse,  admitting this evil deed to her father, and then paying a mere 50 shekels for her hand in marriage.

So no, it wasn’t the Bible that civilized the institution of marriage.

It wasn’t until the Victorian Age that our species considered pairing up with someone for eternity for a reason outside of the amelioration of social status. There may have been whisperings of a romantic soulmate prior to 1822, but it was this year that the idea began to take flight.

It was this year that the famed Romantic poet, Samuel Coleridge wrote a letter claiming that, “To be happy in Married Life… you must have a Soul-mate.” Don’t get me wrong, many young ladies living in Britain during the 19th century chiefly cared about their mate’s social status and resources much more than love. But despite this preference, love was finally being used as a variable to gauge one’s likeliness of marrying another.

It truly wasn’t until women entered the workforce en masse that talk of a soulmate began to make its rounds. Finally, women no longer needed to shackle themselves to a man in order to survive. A paycheck -even a modest one- enabled women to select a mate based on things like physical attractiveness and personality rather than how much property he owned.

It’s clear that “the one” is a cultural invention. It’s a myth that we all agree to believe. Through time, this shared belief has morphed in order to fit our cultural needs. If instead of believing that we each had a soulmate, we shared a belief that polyamory is the only viable path to happiness, society as we know it would be revolutionized.

We know understand the long arc that history took in order to create the notion of a soulmate. Now let’s talk about how we’ve been lied to.

Biological Clues

Our species is rather complex. Despite the modern human being around for approximately 200,000 years, humans are still supremely ignorant as to what makes us tick. To better understand why we act the way we do we often look inwards. The human body gives us clues that tell us how our past has helped mold us into the confused creatures we are today.

Let’s use the lens of an evolutionary biologist to figure out how valid the idea of a soulmate is.

Your soulmate is a romantic partner that is tailor-made for you and you alone. That’s our definition of soulmate. She’s ideally suited for you in every way, and conversely, you are her perfect mate -how convenient. If this is the case, why then do humans have various lovers? Why does the average American fall in love an average of four times throughout the course of their lives?

If every human has only one ideal mate out there why then do we have sex with on average 7 different people during our lifetimes? If we truly only had one soulmate, wouldn’t we be sexually restricted to having sex with just them? As we know well, that isn’t the case. Human genitals don’t only become engorged when they’re close to their soulmates. Vaginal canals aren’t shaped like locks and opened only once her soul mate’s penis penetrates her. That’s just not how it works.

If our biology reflected our cultural narrative our bodies would be sealed shut until our fairytale lover came along. But as one night stands and late-night booty calls to our ex-girlfriends demonstrate, this just isn’t how our bodies work.

The Math Isn’t In Your Favor

This article is meant to be liberating. But if you’re a slave to the Disney worldview I can imagine that you’re feeling pretty down right about now. But for the moment I’ll suspend my disbelief and agree with all soulmate believers out there.

Let’s say that in fact there is an ideal mate that was created specifically with you in mind. If that’s the case, what are the odds that you’ll actually find this dream partner? Well, as it turns out someone much more math-savvy than mysel actually did the calculations.

NASA roboticist, Randall Munroe doesn’t just program robots how to explore extraterrestrial lands. In his free time, he likes to answer life’s most absurd questions, one of which is “what are the chances of us finding our soulmates?” Considering your soul mate wasn’t born during another era, the chances of meeting your soul mate are 1 in 10,000 or .01%.

.01% is the likelihood of finding your ideal mate if you’re proactively searching for her. If you’re an introvert that’s more concerned with leveling up on Fortnite than finding your forever mate, you’re odds decrease significantly.

Absurd Expectations

Harken back to the last wedding you attended. During the exchange of vows, each party probably started to wax poetic about their partner by saying that they’re not only lovers and partners, but also best friends, dance buddies, a shoulder to cry on, my other half, and a host of other cliches. But here’s the issue. No one person can satisfy all your social needs.

Nowadays we claim to have found the one when we’re no longer interested in dating other people. We believe that this new woman is so marvelous that she’ll be able to satiate all of your social needs. That’s an unfair expectation.

As psychotherapist and author Esther Perel puts it, modern lovers have an absurd mindset when it comes to love. Young lovers now think, “I want from you, basically what I would normally get from an entire community…  I want you to be my best friend, my passionate lover, my intellectual equal, that hopefully maybe one day for some of us you will be my co-parent, that you will be the person with whom I will never feel alone again, that you are the person in whose presence I always feel wonderful and cared for and beautiful and smart, I can go on and on and on.”

This is how a relationship fails. Placing unrealistic expectations on the back of your partner will only lead to failure. “The one” can’t be everything for you. Lovers shouldn’t be treated like emotional beasts of burden carrying all of your social needs on their backs.

As Perel vehemently asserts, there is no one individual that can give us everything. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been infatuated with this person since day one, you still need a social community that involves family and friends in order to maintain social harmony within your relationship.

Going to your girlfriend for all your emotional and social needs is like trying to get all your nutritional needs from one piece of food. You can’t keep eating that same meal every single day. Variety both in diet and in love is what leads to a happy life.

Rethinking, “The One”

Searching for your soulmate will leave you stranded in a solo journey that never ends. To put an end to this myth once and for all, we must rework our understanding of “the one.”

We need to stop looking for a mate that’s more compatible with us than anyone else. Thinking in superlatives will lead to comparing our mate to every eligible woman around us. When comparisons abound, no one is happy.

There is no, “the one.” Instead, there are many, “the ones.” There are dozens of women out there that will make you happy. We can’t say that one is better for you than another. What we can say is that each one is different.

As you’ve seen in your past relationships, each one is disparate. Your goal is to find a woman that you can be happy with, that’s all. She doesn’t need to be an angel that was tailor-made to suit you. Thinking in such grandiose terms is a set-up for divorce, not lifelong happiness.

“The one” is the woman that you’re happy being with, that’s it.

In no way am I encourage settling. Before making a significant decision such as who to marry, adequate research must be carried out. You need to date around to figure out what type of women you’re compatible with. MegaDating is the best way to date various women and sharpen your ability to identify a worthy partner.

Wanna Learn More?

To get started with MegaDating, book a 1-on-1 Skype session with Emyli today. The only way you’ll find a woman that will make you happy is if you explore your options and date around. During your 1-on-1 session with Emyli, you’ll learn how to mine for dates, get phone numbers, crush online dating, ask a woman to be your girlfriend and much more.