Soul Mate Divorce
A Gay Opinion 4/16/02
by R. A. Melos
Since as far back as I can remember, I have believed in the concept of soul
mates. A soul mate, for those who don't know, is a person with whom you have
an affinity. This person is, as the theory of soul mates goes, someone with
whom your soul has traveled time. You and this other person are constantly brought
together in each successive lifetime, because of your comfort levels with each
other's souls, and because you have much to learn from each other.
Just because you are soul mates doesn't mean you are destine to be together
for a lifetime. Nor does it mean you are going to have pleasant experiences
when together. One of the operative points of the soul mate theory is the "learning
from each other" phase we all must go through. Some of our soul mates may
be drawn to us, not out of good intentions, but because we are to learn a valuable,
yet potentially painful or hurtful lesson from them.
While flipping channels the other night, I paused on a program where two people
were discussing soul mates, and in the course of the conversation they came
to the conclusion a soul mate is the person who forces you to grow the most
as a person. Well, hearing this got me to thinking about my potential soul mates,
past and present.
I had been mistakenly raised to believe my soul mate would be the person I would
fall madly in love with, and we would spend the rest of our lives together in
utter bliss. I was raised to believe this by my maternal grandmother, who did
just that. She married the first man she fell in love with, and spent a little
more than 30 years with him, and mourned his passing everyday for the remaining
30 years of her life. She truly made love and soul mates sound like the most
wonderful thing anyone could experience.
Well, if the theory of soul mates is accurate, then my soul mate, the man who
forced me to grow more as a person than anyone else in my life, is a self-loathing
closeted homosexual who would rather live a life built on a foundation of lies
than even attempt to build a relationship based on honesty and truth. Now I
don't fault him entirely for his inability to be what I know he could've been,
because we each live within or close to our comfort zones, and he wasn't ready
to move outside of his comfort zone.
Coming to this conclusion led me to the further conclusion, it was time for
me to invoke a soul mate divorce.
Now if you are in anyway interested in the metaphysical or spiritual side of
things, you may wonder what I'm talking about, since the concept of soul mates
is both physical in this existence, and ethereal in the astral planes. And being
physical in this existence, a divorce is a divorce, and two people simply stop
whatever they have between them and go on their merry way. Only a divorce, of
any kind, is not that simple. Also, in my case, I'm an "I've gotta love
one man till I die" kind of guy. So the concept of divorce, quite foreign
to most of my youth and actually almost unheard of in my own family (with the
exception of two distant cousins), was new to me.
Oh, I knew what a divorce was, having lots of friends with divorced parents.
It simply meant they spent less time with their fathers, seeing them every other
weekend, and every other holiday. but I never considered what it was like for
the people who were divorced. Being gay I figured I'd never have to know, since
I legally am not allowed to get married in most places. You see, I was still
not getting the concept of divorce as being anything other than a legal paper
saying two people were no longer married. I never connected divorce with emotions.
It was all about the money, the house, the cars, the material aspects of life.
Well, when my soul mate decided to cut me out of his life and proceed to pretend
I never existed, I got my first taste of the true meaning of divorce, since
in my mind, on some level, I had given myself to him mentally as one does in
a marriage. At least, if it were legal for me to marry, that is how I would
view my vow to my partner, as an eternal obligation or promise to love unconditionally
and expect the same in return.
Admittedly this is a naive outlook on the obviously antiquated concept of marriage
as it is known to be today, what with the more than fifty percent chance of
any legally bound relationship ending in divorce, but again I was raised to
believe people talked out their problems and tried very hard to work them out
before tossing one another aside like worn out shoes.
So, in my state of mind, I had made a promise with my soul, not something to
be taken lightly, and thus I was bound to work things out. Now, as I said, my
soul mate basically tossed me out of his life and did not make it possible for
us to work things out, yet I, on some level, held on to the hope he would not
be as single minded and bitter as to literally cut me out of his life completely.
I was wrong.
I admit I'm the kind of person who needs to be bashed over the head with rejection
before I comprehend it and, in my inevitable style, I tried as best I could
to get my point across to my soul mate. Well, I've given up.
It became quite clear he is content with the decisions he's made, decisions
which caused me years of emotional pain and scarring to my psyche, leaving me
feeling as though I can never again trust anyone, and I have no recourse but
to accept his cruelty. Well, I accept it.
However, being the student of the metaphysical I am, I too have made a decision.
I want a spiritual severance of our souls. Put bluntly, I want a soul mate divorce.
What this means is, for those like myself who believe souls travel from lifetime
to lifetime in groups, our souls would never again, for all eternity, reunite
in another lifetime. One has to believe in reincarnation, as I do, for this
to be plausible.
Now the ramifications of a soul mate divorce are far reaching, since this is
something which transcends conventional thinking and enters the metaphysical.
To divorce a soul from another soul, to eternally separate two souls, is equivalent
to separating Siamese twins. It means eternally feeling a phantom twinge, knowing
something is missing from your lives, but not know what it is that is missing.
It means losing a part of yourself, a part of your learning or growth process
forever limiting yourself to some of the possibilities which may come your way
in this or future lives.
This is a serious decision for someone who believes in the concept of soul mates,
and I did not reach it lightly. I took into consideration the levels of pain
I felt caused me by someone I loved unconditionally, someone I felt I've loved
in many lifetimes unconditionally, and came to the conclusion this soul finally
pushed too hard and hurt me too much, and is a soul I will be better off without
encountering in my future lives.
This doesn't mean I no longer love this soul mate unconditionally, only that
I won't love this soul in future lives and will finally be emotionally free
of the pain and anguish I felt at being treated the way I had been by his unthinking
actions. It means I take back my emotional promise to myself to love this person
on such a deep level, and retrieve the right to my own desires without waiting
to see if he would change his mind or even want to work things out. Very simply,
once a metaphysical divorce is cast it can not easily be undone.
Decisions are made, and consequences must be lived with.
To this end, I am finally ready, after what seems like a lifetime, to let go
of outmoded promises, and a soul which caused me grief, in spite of the good
I saw in it, and move on to new experiences with other potential soul mates.
Since marriage, in my opinion, is a state of mind, so is divorce. And after
wrestling with the notion for a long time, I am ready to put it into practice.
Of course this is all theoretical and only on metaphysical planes of existence,
but it serves its purpose in allowing me the chance to let go of so much painful
baggage and opens me up to new possibilities.
I'm sad my former soul mate and I will never again interact in this or any other
lifetime, but happy to know he helped me grow as a person to the level where
I can comprehend this experience and let go of the hurt and move on. Yes, it
took me much longer than most people to come to these conclusions, but I'm not
good with listening to my own advice.
Besides, I'm looking forward to my soul mate divorce party and possibly meeting
up with a new soul mate. Hopefully he won't be the one with the lampshade on
his head dancing the macarena naked on the beach.