Okay, okay before you call me a bitter man-hating feminist, let me explain myself.
I’ve always thought it was weird that out of the billions of people on the Earth we’d have to find ONE to be with forever… Statistically and emotionally, that makes no sense to me. It just feels limiting. I’m not suggesting everyone become a swinger and enter a polyamorous relationship. Nor am I saying abandon ship when you have a fight with your significant other. I’m just questioning the rigid ideas of finding one person forever vs. a healthy expectation of growth in your romantic life as well as self-growth. Whether it is a breakup or divorce, I feel like saying “one person forever no matter what” makes you less likely to seek relationship growth from your partners and more likely to settle. I have multiple best friends who I consider to be my “platonic soulmates,” but I don’t expect them to fulfill every aspect of my life.
Why is it that we are allowed to have multiple friendships, all of which that serve a different and specific purpose, but when it comes to romantic love we are expected to find someone that fulfills EVERY part of us? That just seems extremely rare to find that in ONE person and unrealistic & unhealthy to put someone in that position. I think its actually insane that we expect someone to be perfect and feed our physical, emotional, mental, sexual, and romantic needs on top of being with them forever.
Why is it that we are allowed to have many friendships, all of which that serves a different and specific purpose, but when it comes to romantic love we are expected to find someone that fulfills EVERY part of us? That just seems extremely rare to find that in ONE person and unrealistic & unhealthy to put someone in that position. I think its actually insane that we expect someone to be perfect and feed our physical, emotional, mental, sexual, and romantic needs on top of being with them forever.
Yes, it can happen, I’m not doubting that, but I think we need to rethink the idea of “The One”. People see an end of a marriage or relationship as a failure instead of a learning opportunity and an opportunity for growth. It’s like “Damn you let them get away, that could have been the One” through each breakup and its like… Can we just let people have their own journeys?!
Let’s talk history for a second.
In Plato’s Symposium, the two main narrators discuss love, Aristophanes tells Socrates that in Greek mythology, it is said that humans once had two heads, four arms, and four legs. However, Zeus split the humans apart with bolts of lightning because he was jealous. If you know anything about Greek mythology, you know that Zeus is the biggest womanizing man-whore of them all and it’s understandable why he didn’t want humans to have the happiness he couldn’t achieve. SO that’s where the idea of finding your “other half” was first mentioned. Fast forward almost two millennia later, Ralph Emerson wrote in 1841 that:
“Conversation is the practice and consummation of friendship and great conversation requires an absolute running together of two souls into one, yet it is affinity that determines which two shall converse.”
Now in modern times, the idea of your one true love and/or your romantic soulmate is EVERYWHERE. In movies, TV shows, literature, and damn near everywhere else.
I believe that “The One” doesn’t exist. I think that it would make more sense if we found “The Ones”. We change so much in our lifetimes, and that growth is okay, and it’s welcomed. It would make sense that we would meet multiple people throughout our lives that were our soulmates for the time when we met them. Some people meet the person they want to be with forever, but the timing is off, and they either wait or move on. What about everyone that’s been divorced? Do you think they missed their opportunity at finding love again because they “wasted their chance”? Do you honestly think with the population of 7,633,634,900 people on this planet that ONLY ONE is for you?
Okay, I apologize in advance but here’s the math portion.
I’m going to use myself as an example.
I’m 18, pansexual (so I’ll include the male and female population together), and English is my first language.
There are 7,633,634,900 people on the planet currently.
953,000,000 million people can speak English to some degree.
611,000,000 million people speak English as their second language.
372,000,000 million people speak English as their first language.
Since there is no way to see how fluent someone is in English out of the 611 million, I’ll just use the native language speakers.
350,000,000 is 4.584971702013153% of 7,633,634,900 so we’ll round that to 4.6%.
4.6% of the population of the world speaks English as their first language.
850,000,000 million people are between the ages of 18–24.
SO, that means 39,100,000 people out of the 850,000,000 speak English as their first language and are between the ages of 18–24.
So the equation is:
7,633,634,900 [total population] — 7,261,634,900 [people who aren’t native speakers of English or speak any English at all] = 372,000,000
372,000,000 [people] x .046 [percent of native English speakers] = 39,100,000
We aren’t done yet, however.
How many people out of this 39 million are married, how many are gay men, and how many are straight women?
According to Gallup News:
“It may be that no one will ever know for sure [The exact percentage of gay people in the world]. To some people, homosexuality is a matter of perception and definition. Furthermore, many people have trouble admitting their homosexuality to themselves, much less to a researcher. But when Gallup asked Americans for their best estimate of the American gay and lesbian population, the results made all the figures mentioned above look conservative.”
America cannot be an accurate representation of the entire world I’m going to use the conservative percentages.
According to a 1993 Janus Report, it claims that 9% of men and 5% of women have had more than “occasional” homosexual relationships.
So 9% of 39,100,000 is 3,519,000 and 5% is 1,955,000.
In 2010 it was reported that 4.2% of people from ages of 18–24 were married.
4.2% of 39,100,000 is 1,642,200.
So to continue the equation:
39,100,000 [native English speakers from 18–24] — (3,519,000 [18–24 gay men]+1,642,200 [people from the ages 18–24 that are married] + 1,955,000 [straight women]) = 31,984,000
So that leaves me with 31,984,000 people.
And to be fair, let’s say half of them aren’t attracted to me. Screw it, let’s say 80% aren’t. That still leaves me with a solid 2,587,200 people that I could potentially have a connection with at this point in time.
Now, this ignores everyone’s geographical location, socio-economic status, political views, and religious beliefs BUT it’s just showing the outline.
The reason why I broke it down like that was to show A.) How many potential soulmates are out there and B.) How many potential soulmates are out there but because we don’t speak the same language as them, are inaccessible.
It’s crazy to think that you could have a soulmate living in China or Madrid right now, but because you don’t fluently speak each other’s languages or don’t live in each others homeland, there isn’t a way for you to communicate with each other on a deep level. My point in all this is that we most likely have soulmates all over the world, but we’re limited in who we interact with daily because of where we live.
Also, that it’s okay to grow apart from a ‘soulmate’ you’ve been with for a while because you may find another! This idea that we are limited to one person forever is an ancient concept, but our reasoning has changed. Marrying for love is a relatively new concept, but marrying someone and staying with them because of various societal pressures, maintaining any generational wealth, and economic reasons are not.
Anyway, everything I just said is irrelevant because I asked my brother what he thought of soulmates, and this is the only definition that matters:
“Soulmate is just meeting strangers and then liking them in a, a affectionate way forever.”
Nine-year-olds are so no-nonsense and observant.
I hope you enjoyed!
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-Sources -
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ http://www.stgeorges.co.uk/blog/learn-english/how-many-people-in-the-world-speak-english
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0226_040226_language.html https://news.gallup.com/poll/6961/what-percentage-population-gay.aspx
Originally published at http://afrosandopinions.com on July 4, 2018.
