Tangled in Toronto

(Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)

My boyfriend and I were watching Sleepless in Seattle, backdropped with rain that danced rhythmically outside. It was his suggestion – a classic romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan that was perhaps born out of my stupefying question the night before: “Do you think I’m the one?” Shocked by my boldness, he did the best he could do and answered in his typical frank fashion, “I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means or if I believe in it at all.” I wasn’t upset to hear his response because I myself was tangled – tangled in Toronto. I did not know if he was “the one,” but I knew for certain that there was an obvious soul connection that had formed between us and that, for some unknown reason, we were unable to admit its existence. Determined to understand the puzzle in which I found myself, I spent the next couple of months uncovering the intricacies of love.

As an idealist, I have always believed that there is someone out there who is meant for me. I have always wanted to meet “the one,” my soulmate, and experience the magic of knowing that this is my forever person. This wasn’t a search for perfection – “the one” didn’t have to be a perfect person – it was rather a search for perfect compatibility with someone imperfect. Movies and books have convinced me that meeting “the one” is unavoidable; you are bound to meet, drawn to one another in a supernatural magnetic pull. It is a magical buildup where you can’t escape each other, and it feels almost as though the whole universe conspired to bring you together. Once you meet, you feel their indisputable role in your life and you know at once that they are your mystical soulmate meant to be forever yours. Your heart is engulfed by primal flames, your stomach is filled with fluttering butterflies, and love – as described by the 20th-century Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov – “[leaps] out in front of [you] like a murderer in an alley, leaping out of nowhere and [strikes you] both at once” (1994). There are no doubts or hesitations; your hearts and brains work in unison, and you fuse into one.

The design of soulmates is brilliant in its simplicity, but how well does it match reality? Do people really fall in love at first sight and know immediately that they have found their soulmates? Or do they instead alter their perception of their relationship to satisfy the cravings for a love that is reminiscent of fairytales? I, of course, don’t doubt the existence of intense chemistry that draws two strangers together, but I do doubt the never-doubting. As species that evolved from pessimists, it is only natural for us to extend our careful natures to our love lives. Can we truly instantly recognize that someone is our soulmate? If not, can we be blamed for being cautious in love and having reservations? More importantly, do these reservations signify a larger underlying problem such as a lack of faith in your partner? As I embarked on my philosophical expedition, I wondered – was our uncertainty simply a reflection of cautiousness, or rather our intuition subtly telling us that we weren’t meant to be?

I could consult science, but I decided against it. I wanted my conclusions to be sourced from life itself. I thought about one of my best friends, C, who once proudly expressed that she doesn’t believe in soulmates or rather in the idea of a single soulmate. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” she wrote to me once, “the one doesn’t exist! No one is perfect for you!” She then added, “You can value more than one relationship in your life. You have a wife for 20 years, she dies, you marry someone else later. You think your new wife wants to hear about how she’s not the one?”

There was some truth to this; we can love and feel deeply connected to multiple people in our lives. We can also amend our previous beliefs, as in the case of divorcees finding their soulmates later in life. It would be unfair to reduce their first marriages to carelessness – after all, a marriage is a significant commitment regardless of whether it lasts a lifetime or not. Could they have been just mistaken? Maybe, but shouldn’t we be able to easily discern “the one” from others? Of course, maybe they were never even looking for “the one”; maybe they too thought that “the one” doesn’t exist and, in some twisted joke of fate, only found their soulmates after they had already built families with other people? The questions were piling; the answers were nowhere to be found.

The idea of multiple soulmates intrigued me. I remembered how my other best friend, G, texted me once to say that her and I are soulmates. “I feel like I see everything so clearly,” she wrote. “I think we’re soulmates. But not in like a romantic sense.” It was easy to admit that my friends were my soulmates in some regard – reduce the notion to its barebones, and you will notice that a soulmate is someone for whom you have a natural affinity. The concept essentially describes an effortless relationship, one that is built on a mutual desire to partake in each other’s journey and to share the joy as well as the sorrow of life. We are not bound by legal obligations such as the ones found in marriages, nor are we bound by the expectations born out of kinship, and yet we still choose to be there for our true friends. We never question the deep feelings we develop. We simply let our friendships flourish and periodically observe how far we’ve come from being mere strangers with open hearts. Was this the key to figuring it all out? Maybe we don’t need to experience instant epiphanies to know that we have found our soulmates. Maybe there was more to being soulmates than knowing for certain. Maybe the true magic lies in choosing someone over and over, day after day, even if you don’t know if you are destined to be together.

My search was directionless, but soon after I had given up all hope, I found a lead. Months after I started writing this article and my subsequent abandonment of it, my boyfriend and I watched When Harry Met Sally... Unlike Sleepless in Seattle, this classic portrays non-linear romance that is born between two individuals who at first dislike each other. Although the plot follows a deterministic route typical of romance stories where the characters bump into one another “by chance” in airplanes and bookstores, this movie has a more realistic take on love. Neither Harry nor Sally experience epiphanies upon meeting; their relationship evolves slowly without any expectations. In fact, it takes Harry and Sally twelve whole years to even fall in love. The time, however, does not matter – they were soulmates even before they knew it.

Having regained some sort of optimism, I realized that the spider responsible for the tangled web in which I found myself was my absolutist mindset – I had to be absolutely sure at the absolute earliest that my partner was absolutely “the one.” I discovered, however, that certainty only comes with the benefit of hindsight. Finding your soulmate was akin to a black swan event – a “high-impact event that is difficult to predict under normal circumstances but that in retrospect appears to have been inevitable” (Raikar, 2024). As mere mortals, we are unable to predict whether our partners will be there in the future, but having lived through the future, we can proudly express that we always knew that our partners were “the ones.”

This reveals the following – the only way to know for certain whether we have found our soulmates is if our relationships stand the test of time. Accordingly, echoing marriage vows, our soulmates are the ones who hold us for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till the very end. In rudimentary terms, finding your soulmate is more of a lifelong journey rather than a one-time discovery. It is akin to finding a rough diamond and converting it to a magnificent gem – you must be lucky enough to find the rough diamond, but you also need to have faith in its ability to turn into a precious jewel.

Given that all stories are retellings of the past in some shape or form, it is clear why movies and fairytales emphasize the magical encounters where souls are immediately and knowingly drawn to one another. We experience nostalgia and reconstruct the past while wearing rose-tinted glasses. The benefit of hindsight makes us feel as though we knew from the beginning, right there and then, that our partners were “the ones.” We dramatize and attempt to capture the beauty of love in single extravagant moments such as destined encounters and spiritual epiphanies.

Love, however, isn’t in need of such artificial stories because it is a magical experience in and of itself. Mathematically speaking, our odds of finding that special person to grow old with are very low and, depending on the strictness of our requirements, might even be less than one percent. Doing the calculations for myself, once I account for my preferred sex and age range, I am left with about 170,000 potential partners in a city of a million singles. This is before I even consider attractiveness, intelligence, or compatibility parameters, which would further lower the probability. Ultimately, the chances of me finding my “ideal” partner would be 0.29%, and somehow I was lucky enough. Meeting my partner was a relatively improbable event, and yet it happened, which might very well be the magic that we so desperately crave and portray in love stories.

I have built my understanding of soulmates on a select few stories, and it was time to add new perspectives. The truth was that I was searching for magic while failing to notice the magic around me. Focusing my attention on the present, I recognized that I was happy, secure, and hopeful about my relationship. I no longer had the need to know what the future holds because I had faith in what I had. I wanted my relationship to last regardless of the answer. In the weeks following the first discussion I had with my boyfriend, we had finally gained the courage to call each other soulmates. He took a leap of faith, and I followed. I was finally ready to answer the big question – our uncertainty was indeed a reflection of our cautiousness and not a reflection of our relationship. As my boyfriend and I continue to navigate our path together, I realize that it's not about knowing if we are "the one" for each other, but about choosing each other every day, despite the uncertainties. Perhaps in that choice lies the true essence of finding a soulmate.

Bulgakov, M. (1994) The Master and Margarita, Grove Press, New York.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993) Directed by Nora Ephron. Available at Prime Video (Accessed: 20 March 2024).

Raikar, S. P. (2024) Black Swan Event. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/black-swan-event (Accessed: 15 June 2024).