The Soulmate Equation

I’ve always believed in soulmates—long before I even knew the word for it. At five years old, while other kids asked why the sky was blue, I asked what came after death. Not because I was afraid, but because I already suspected this life couldn’t be it. It couldn’t be this short, this simple. I knew, somehow, that I had been here before. That I’d laughed in other languages, cried in different bodies, and met people I would meet again. I sensed that life is school for the soul, and we reincarnate like students repeating the same tricky subjects—love, loss, letting go. I just didn’t know what subject I’d signed up for this time. Not until I met him.

Not just in this life. I’m certain we’ve met before. Perhaps in Rome, centuries ago, as shadows crossing under torchlight. Or in an ashram, barefoot and full of silence. I believe we are sent here, again and again, to experience the beauty and ache of being human. Each lifetime, we meet pieces of ourselves in the form of others. We call it love. We call it heartbreak. But in truth, it's all evolution. Every encounter is designed to teach. And with him, the lessons have been the most profound—and the most painful.

Now I have an idea: this lifetime was meant to be the semester of the deepest, most disorienting, most beautifully human love story I’ve ever known. Or maybe it’s him. Maybe he’s the syllabus. I’ve never longed for anyone like this. It’s spiritual. It’s cellular. It’s maddening in the most sacred way. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what soulmates are for—not just to complete us, but to crack us wide open.

In this lifetime, we met at a company Christmas party. The music was too loud, the wine too warm, and yet I remember the moment our eyes met. Something ancient stirred. The kind of recognition that feels like both a question and an answer. I felt a spark, that unmistakable flicker that made the crowded room blur around us.

I turned to my friend and colleague, the one who introduced us, and asked about him. She told me he was in a serious relationship, had been for years. So I locked that spark away in the vault of “things not meant to be.” I danced. I laughed. I left.

But the truth had a different timeline. A few months later, in April 2018, he became my direct colleague. His desk was behind mine, close enough to hear him talk about Tinder dates with others. That’s when I knew: he was single. The story I’d been told wasn’t true.

Something in me opened.

We started talking more. Small things at first. Office gossip, Spotify lists, how he took his coffee. But those conversations grew. Grew into walks and talking outside the office. Grew into “friends with benefits,” though there was always something more layered beneath. By October, we were inseparable. Quietly, secretly, we became a couple. We kept it hidden from our colleagues until the glow of Christmas lights gave us away. And we’ve been together ever since.

Seven years.

Seven years of laughter and long nights, of Toby—the dog who became our child—and of dreams that reached as far as the stars. And for the last four years, we’ve been trying to bring another soul into our orbit. A child. A being who would carry our love forward into another chapter. But it just didn’t happen and our love began to fade.

Four years of hopes raised and dashed. Four years of ovulation calendars, of hormone levels and quiet disappointment. We told ourselves it would happen when the time was right. That the soul meant to be ours was waiting for the right moment to descend into this reality.

But last August, something shifted.

He met her.

I choose not to name her, for names carry weight and power beyond their letters. She exists on the edges of this story—not truly a part of it. She isn’t the villain, though there are moments when my mind paints her as one. She is, perhaps, the chaos that arises when comfort and curiosity collide.

He fell in love with her. I know because he told me. Almost left me the day before our annual 2-week vacation. But he couldn’t. We still went. We walked by the sea. We slept inches apart, were making love, but still miles away from each other.

I tried to escape. Scattered around the hotel were remnants of Christmas—snowmen frozen in time, Santas caught mid-sleigh ride, twinkling lights that refused to fade with the season. When a panic attack seized me, I’d slip away to those forgotten corners, as if stepping through a portal into another dimension where the chaos of the world paused. In that suspended magic, the weight of pain lifted, if only for a moment, leaving space for quiet to seep back in.

He stayed.

But so did she.

She was a quiet hum between sentences. A shadow behind his gaze.

He didn’t choose her. Not fully. But he didn’t choose me, either.

He took two weeks in Egypt to gain clarity. Walked through ruins, perhaps hoping for divine intervention. Two weeks to decide between two women. Between two lives. But clarity cannot be rushed. And maybe the gods stayed silent.

He returned from Egypt tanned and quiet. Something in him had changed, but it wasn’t resolution. He smiled less. He touched me like someone trying to remember. At night, I’d catch him staring at Toby, his eyes glassy. I could almost hear his thoughts pressing against his skull.

We fought. I told him to leave. Then begged him to stay. I tried to end it. More than once. But he lingered. The emotional equivalent of holding a match just close enough to feel the heat, but never lighting it.

Until he did.

Three Thursdays ago, he moved out. Not angrily, but in quiet mourning. He folded his clothes neatly. Kissed Toby with reverence. Looked at me and said, “I need to figure this out.”

I packed his things. Every item. Every shirt and every jacket. Every love note scribbled on a receipt. They sit in boxes now, untouched. He refuses to take them.

“This isn’t the end,” he says. “It’s a pause.”

But pauses echo, don’t they?

After our evening walks, Toby waits by the door—patiently, stubbornly—his eyes fixed on the threshold as if willing him to walk back through. Dogs don’t understand ‘breaks.’

And honestly, neither do I.

I’ve become obsessed with checking his and hers Facebook and Instagram pages looking for any hint—any new “friend” status, a tagged photo, a comment—that would signal he’s choosing her over me. It’s a strange kind of ritual, one I perform every day like clockwork, half hoping and half fearing what I might find. The digital footprints of love and loyalty, laid bare in pixels. Still, no change. No definitive answer. Just the endless cycle of “Did they reconnect?” and “Is this the sign I’ve been waiting for?” It’s exhausting, this dance with uncertainty, but it’s also strangely comforting—a way to hold onto some control in a situation where I have none.

So, when hope feels closest to slipping away, I turn to what I know best—manifestation. I let myself imagine a timeline where we find our way back to each other, where the fractured pieces mend and love blooms anew. Where he walks through the door, not because he’s lost, but because he’s found his way back to us.

To me.

To the life we built.

I picture the moment we hold our baby. I dream of nights full of soft lullabies and whispered apologies. I envision mornings where we smile without effort. I hold onto the vision of a life rebuilt. Not because the old one was bad, but because the new one could be even better.

Because I still believe he is my soulmate.

Not in the sugary, romantic sense. In the spiritual sense. The kind that Plato wrote about, when he said we were once whole—two beings in one body—until the gods split us in half. Since then, we have wandered this world, aching to find the other part of our soul.

He is my other part.

I’ve always known. I cannot imagine in any other way. Even now, in this rupture, I know. In the way his absence feels like missing a limb. In the way Toby still sleeps on his side of the bed.

Last week, we bumped into each other at work—an unexpected collision of two lives that had taken separate paths, however briefly. The moment was awkward, our eyes locking with a fragile intensity, but beneath the surface, something quietly ignited. We retreated to a meeting room and held each other tight, as if trying to freeze time, refusing to let go—even if only for a few breaths. That unexplainable jolt of recognition. The same one I felt years ago at the Christmas party. The same one that started it all.

Later, he texted. “Can I see Toby?”

Now, on the days I go into the office, he comes to our apartment. He works from home—our home, not his—and spends time with Toby. When I return, we sit together. We talk. We hug.

And something delicate is happening.

Not a rekindling. Not yet. But maybe a remembering.

He still knows how I love having a breakfast ritual. I still know when he’s lying about being fine. We talk about art. We talk about spirituality. We share space, cautiously, as if afraid one wrong move might shatter this fragile bridge.

The last time he came over to see Toby, exhaustion weighed him down, and he simply sank into the couch. He rested his head near mine on the couch—close enough to remind me, but far enough to keep the line clear. I didn’t move. Neither did he.

He says: “With time apart, I feel myself growing closer to you—and drifting away from her.”

It’s a fragile but welcome truth, one I hold onto tightly, choosing honesty over uncertainty.

And he stays. Not in permanence, but in presence. He stays in the quiet conversations, in the shared dog walks, in the familiar rhythm of being around each other even when it hurts. He stays in the small, hopeful pauses.

I’ve started to wonder: maybe soulmates are not the ones who stay forever. Maybe they are the ones who stay when it matters most. The ones who return not because they have to, but because their soul whispers, “There is still more to do here.”

I still believe our child is waiting for us. Floating in that in-between space, waiting to descend into a life healed by grace. Maybe they’re waiting for us to get it right. Not perfect, but right. Sometimes, I lie awake and talk to their soul. I tell them about us—our love, our confusion, our strength, our mistakes. I tell them we are trying. That even though it doesn’t look like a fairy tale right now, it is still love. It is still real.

I imagine what they’ll look like. Will they have his eyes? My laugh? I envision them painting beside me or resting against his chest as he reads. I see the echo of us in their every move. Maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting for our hearts to learn the final lesson before arriving.

I ask myself: Can I start over? To trust again. To hope again. To love without the safety net of certainty?

Yes. But only if we both do.

We are 41 and 42. This is not young love. This is not infatuation. This is something deeper. A test of spiritual endurance.

I speak to the universe every day like it’s an old friend. I ask for patience. For strength. For clarity. Every night I meditate on timelines. I practice quantum jumping, stepping into the version of myself who already has the love, the peace, the child.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would look like had we met under different stars. What if, in a parallel universe, he hadn’t been uncertain? What if we had conceived that child years ago—would the presence of a baby have rooted him here, or would the fracture have widened under the weight of exhaustion and responsibility?

There’s a certain tragedy to soulmates meeting at the wrong time. In another life, maybe we’re artists living in a sun-drenched village, making love and coffee and slow music. In another, we never even meet—passing each other on a street in Berlin, hearts stirring unknowingly.

But this is the lifetime we were given.

And there is something sacred in trying. In sitting in the middle of a storm and saying, “Let’s still build a home here.”

My spiritual beliefs tell me that souls agree on their contracts before they descend to Earth. That before we are born, we look one another in the eyes and say, “This will hurt. But we’ll grow. I promise.” Maybe he and I made that deal. Maybe this break is part of the curriculum. Maybe the intruder is part of it, too—a catalyst, not a thief.

I take a note about the small things he does—the way he refills Toby’s water bowl without being asked. How he hums the same tune when he’s deep in thought. The way his voice softens when he says goodbye.

These are the threads I hold onto—not out of desperation, but because they are evidence that love, even shaken, can still shimmer.

People ask me why I haven’t closed the door. Why I haven’t moved on. But this isn’t a door—it’s a path. And while I walk it slowly, barefoot and bleeding at times, I know that it leads somewhere meaningful. Either back to him—or forward to a version of myself who no longer needs to.

And if he chooses me too—fully, consciously—then we’ll build a new story. We’ll learn to laugh in the cracks of our old one. We’ll raise a child who will never doubt they were born from love.

And if he doesn’t? If he chooses her?

Then I will still have loved honestly. I will still believe that we came together for a reason. I will still trust that even the endings are beginnings in disguise.

Because in this life—or the next—I will find him again. And I believe, with everything in me, that love like this does not disappear.

And maybe then, we’ll get it right.