What Psychology Really Says About Finding Your Soulmate

What Psychology Says About Finding a Soulmate

Psychology's short answer is that a soulmate is made more than found. Research on long-term couples suggests that matching personalities and shared hobbies predict surprisingly little about who stays happy together. What predicts more is how two people treat each other day to day: how they respond when the other reaches out, how they handle conflict and whether they build something together.

That is not a cold or unromantic conclusion. It means the most important ingredients of a lasting bond are within your reach, rather than hidden in a perfect match you might never meet. Here is what the evidence says, where the soulmate idea came from, and what you can do with it.

Where the soulmate idea comes from

The dream of a single destined partner is ancient. In Plato's Symposium, the comic playwright Aristophanes tells a story in which humans were once double beings that Zeus split in two, leaving each half to search for its missing other. Jewish tradition speaks of bashert, the person meant for you. The English word "soulmate" appears in writing at least as early as an 1822 letter by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Films, songs and dating apps have carried that story into modern life. Many people now expect a partner to feel instantly familiar, to share their tastes and values, and to need little work. The appeal is easy to understand. The trouble is what happens when real relationships fall short of the story.

Why "we're just not compatible" often means something else

Online dating sites built whole businesses on compatibility questionnaires, matching people with similar answers about values, plans and lifestyles. Some similarity does help: it is easier to share a life with someone who also wants children, or who does not hate the city you love. But long-term studies of married couples have found that objective compatibility explains less than people assume.

Relationship researcher Ted Huston of the University of Texas at Austin (his name often appears online as "Hudson") followed couples over many years from the start of their marriages. His work is widely reported as finding that happy and unhappy couples did not differ much in how compatible they actually were. What differed was how they described it: unhappy partners tended to say "we are incompatible" when what they really meant was "we no longer get along". We could not trace the exact quotation that circulates under his name, so it is summarised here rather than quoted.

A broader review points the same way. A 2013 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin by Paul Eastwick and colleagues, summarised by psychologist Jeremy Nicholson in Psychology Today, found that the qualities people list as their ideal partner do not predict who they are attracted to at first meeting. Those ideals did matter later, though: partners who fit each other's broad ideals were somewhat more likely to stay together and feel satisfied. In other words, chemistry starts things, but what keeps them going is slower and more practical.

What actually predicts a lasting relationship

Psychologist John Gottman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, co-founder of the Gottman Institute and executive director of the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle, spent decades observing couples. His most practical finding concerns small moments he calls "bids": a comment, a question, a touch, a request for attention. A partner can turn toward a bid by responding, or turn away by ignoring it.

According to the Gottman Institute, newlyweds who were still married six years later had turned toward each other's bids about 86% of the time. Couples who had divorced averaged around 33%. The difference was not grand gestures but thousands of tiny responses: looking up from the phone, answering the question, sharing the joke.

It is worth knowing that some researchers have criticised the most dramatic claims made about Gottman's ability to predict divorce, arguing that the statistical models were built on small samples and not tested on fresh groups of couples. The everyday advice, to notice and respond to your partner, holds up well even with that caution.

Gottman's work also suggests that couples who share meaning, such as raising a family, running a project or building a home with values they both care about, tend to feel closer than couples who simply share a household.

What arranged marriages can and cannot teach us

Arranged marriages are sometimes held up as proof that compatibility is overrated, because divorce rates in some cultures where they are common are very low. That argument needs care. Low divorce rates can reflect how hard or socially costly divorce is, not how happy couples are. Studies comparing satisfaction in arranged and self-chosen marriages have produced mixed results, often from small samples, and neither model guarantees a good marriage.

The point that does survive is narrower and still useful. When people expect love to grow through commitment, rather than to arrive fully formed, they put effort into making it grow. Researchers describing a "soulmate model" of marriage have contrasted it with a more institutional model built around permanence, mutual help and support from family and community, and found the second more likely to last.

The myth of the one perfect person

Belief in a single destined partner can backfire. Relationship researchers have argued that seeing love as destiny raises expectations and discourages people from learning the skills that relationships need, such as listening, apologising and working through disagreement. When the first serious conflict arrives, the destiny believer may conclude, "This must not be the one," and leave a relationship that could have thrived.

A healthier belief is that good relationships grow. Attraction, admiration and that sense of familiarity matter. They are simply the opening chapter. One line often quoted on this theme, attributed to the writer Shannon L. Alder, puts it gently:

"Love doesn't make the world go round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

How to find, and become, a good partner

Know your non-negotiables. Big life goals such as children, faith or where you want to live are worth discussing early.
Use attraction as a starting point, not the verdict. Notice how someone treats you, and others, over months, not just how they make you feel on a first date.
Watch how bids are handled. Does this person respond when you reach out? Do you respond to them?
Look for a shared dream. Ask whether they can see the life you are hoping for, and whether you can see theirs.
Accept the person in front of you. Loving someone for who they are today, not for who you hope to turn them into, is a strong foundation.

If you want a soulmate, the research suggests looking for someone kind, responsive and committed, then becoming that kind of partner yourself. Compatibility is less something you discover in a test and more something two people build, one small response at a time.

Sources: Jeremy Nicholson, Psychology Today (31 December 2013), on Eastwick et al. (2013); The Gottman Institute, turning toward bids; John Gottman (Wikipedia); Soulmate (Wikipedia); Arranged marriage (Wikipedia). Credit: Learning Mind, which published an earlier article on this topic.

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