The most common thing people associate with happiness in their love lives is finding a soulmate. Everyone wants to find a soulmate—their “one true love.”
Truth be told, there are billions of people in this world. That means by sheer population numbers, there are potentially thousands of people who we could meet in our lifetime, fall in love with, and label as our “soulmate.”
For true believers in soulmates, that’s not something they want to hear. Particularly for those who feel they’ve found their soulmate. They don’t want to believe that there could ever be someone else out there.
I’ve always thought soulmates in love are what religion is in life. It’s a system in place to instill more control and purpose in our lives. Without it, we feel out of control, with no real sense of purpose.
Just like under religion’s terms, the purpose of life is to live in a such a way that when we die we get to go to heaven. Without it, what’s the point in living if it’s not in service of a greater purpose than ourselves?
Just as the purpose of loving could be: we continue loving in hope that one day we will get to find and love our soulmate. Without the possibility of a soulmate, what’s the purpose of dating?
You see the parallels I’m getting at. While I don’t subscribe to organized religion. I also don’t subscribe to the notion of one true soulmate either.
In fact, I want us to throw away the term “soulmate” altogether. That’s because I think it boxes love into a corner. What happens if you meet your soulmate, love your soulmate, but it doesn’t work out in the end and you break up? What will you do then? What will your view of love be like then?
Your entire view of love will be shattered, as it was merely protected by this soft shell you attributed to a “soulmate.” But once that shell breaks, so does all your hope for the possibility of love in the future.
Just as religion and our belief in a perfect God can confuse us when tragedy and darkness strikes, the existence of a “soulmate” can confuse us when the love we experience in reality doesn’t match up to the idealized and romanticized version in our heads.
Soulmates give us the false illusion that we cannot possibly love after love. It gives us the illusion that love should be perfect, without friction and hard times. It gives us the illusion that somebody comes perfectly ready-made for us, without us having to learn how to love and be with that person.
So I say, forget trying to find a soulmate—find a weirdmate, instead.
Not because you’re jaded and pessimistic and have decided to downsize and truncate your belief in true love. But because being weird is the very essence of soul connection and alignment. It’s a much more attainable and fun way to approach your love life.
The word “soulmate” applies so much pressure.
The word itself presents an undeniable and daunting fear that we will end up settling in our love life and never find our “one true love” because how hard is it to find someone whom we could consider our soulmate?
That’s like being asked to scale Everest without oxygen. Chances are, you’re going to get suffocated by an avalanche or die of altitude sickness. No thank you.
We often fall in love with people that have a compatible sense of weirdness. Somebody who sees us at our weirdest self and can’t stop smiling and giggling to themselves. Somebody who thinks to themselves, “Oh my god! This person is so weird! But I just love them so much! Thank you for existing!”
I’m a weird person. Well, we’re all weird people in our own way. But love happens when we find someone who wants to consume our particular brand of weird every single day.
I always know my compatibility with a woman very early on based on how she reacts to my weirdness. I always know I have the potential to fall madly in love with a woman when she sees me in all my weirdness and can’t stop laughing or being amused by how weird I am.
Whenever I find myself in those situations with a woman who gets and loves the weird stuff that I bring to the table, I always say to myself, “This is my kind of girl. There is a possibility I could fall for this girl and a possibility she could fall for me.”
When it comes to life, we all want to be seen. Every human yearns to be seen. To be understood. To be seen for the essence of who they are. And we fall in love when we meet someone who sees us and understands us without even having to try.
They see the essence of what makes us, “us.” And they dig it. They don’t have to think about it or waver on it. They just see us and scream “YES!” This person is weird in the best way possible and I want more of whatever the hell they’re smoking in my life. I don’t care where they are going, but I’m going to strip down naked and run through the sprinklers of life with this person because wherever we end up going, I know we’re going to have a whole lot of fun along the way.
Forget trying to find that one perfect person. Instead, just find someone who provides you a safe space to be your weirdest self and the full shape of who you really are. Better yet, find someone who literally pulls, yanks, and claws that weirdness out of you on a regular basis.
Growing up, my mom’s romantic advice was always one thing: find someone you can laugh with.
What she really meant, even if she didn’t realize it, was find a “weirdmate.” Which has now become my whole philosophy on intimacy.
Life is too short to be lived with a stick up our rear. And love is too rare to be lived by two people who both have sticks up their asses. Get it? Find someone who removes the stick from your rear. Screw it, you can bend each other over and take turns removing the sticks from each other’s asses. Then you can run off into the moonlight waving those sticks you just removed from each other’s bums as magical nature wands in celebration of unplugging each others and claiming your weirdest selves.
Don’t be one of those couples who are too proper. Afraid to say the wrong thing. Afraid to draw attention to themselves. The couples who are sitting across from each other in near silence, both reading, texting or barely mumbling conversation that extends beyond the doldrums of today’s monotonous events and the goddamn weather forecast.
Find someone who makes you laugh so hard you fart accidentally. Snort. Giggle. And soil yourself with excitement.
Find someone who makes you want to have a dance party with just the two of you.
Find someone who you can criticize and judge other people with while you people watch.
Find someone who you can banter with and make inappropriate jokes with.
Find someone who makes you feel like you’re on a 24/7 sugar high.
Find someone who likes to play the music too loud and sings every note off key and owns it.
Find a counterpart to your weirdness.
You see, our capacity for intimacy stems from our ability to harness our own personal “weirdness” and own its space in the world. And a couple’s capacity for intimacy as a unit stems from the dual ability for both people within the relationship to harness their own weirdness, while also being able to accept their partner’s weirdness, free of judgment.
Someone’s inability to connect with others stems from their inability to connect with themselves.
So, until you own your own personal brand of weird, and free its majestic tomfoolery into the world, you will not be able to connect with someone else’s brand of weird and find your weirdmate.
This relational framework for weirdness creates an arena for trust, expression, and acceptance. It sets the table for both people within the relationship to feel more comfortable expressing themselves to their partner and be vulnerable. This weird-ass framework for intimacy has created reassurance that their needs and desires will be met by their partners with open arms, free of criticism.
Someone who owns their weirdness in the world and confidently lets their weird flag fly high is someone who is better prepared for intimacy, for a variety of reasons.
For starters, someone who has harnessed and set their weirdness free is someone who has truly explored themselves, figured out who they are, and has confidence and swagger releasing themselves into the world. No facades—just the weird truth of who they are.
This not only leads to better partner selection on their part, but it also attracts more people authentically aligned with them. For the reason that their truest self is on display. This true expression of character can act as a polarizing filter, weeding out the wrong people who don’t dig the weird stuff they bring to the table, while aligning them with others who eat the weird stuff they bring to the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
For these types of people, satisfying, intimate relationships are far closer and more attainable than people who live with their weirdness in a cage.
I’m telling you…build a relationship from the weird ground up. When you find someone who digs your weird and you dig theirs, you have a direct highway to hilarious, amazing, and satisfying intimacy.
Couples who have fun together and are weirdly perfect for each other are the kind of couples that we label “couple goals.” They’re the ones laughing uncontrollably. Supporting each other unconditionally. Allowing space for each other to grow and make mistakes. Constantly reminding each other that they never have to be perfect, but to always be themselves. Their weird, flawed, quirky, beautiful, and magical selves.
For this is where true love and true intimacy is born. Relationships built on the grounds of compatible weirdness.
Weridmates are the antidote to soulmates. Soulmates are built on the grounds of perfection. The perfect person. The perfect relationship. Whereas weirdmates are built on the grounds of complete and utter imperfection. Messiness in fact. The imperfect person. The imperfect relationship.
Soulmates are found in the movies. Weirdmates are found once the ending credits start rolling, in the sandbox that we call real life. They may be imperfect. Messy. But they’re also authentic. Uncaged. Soulful. Passionate. Deeply meaningful. And a whole hell of a lot more fun.
When you come to terms with what makes you weird and you aren’t afraid to let the world know, and you find someone else that has harnessed their inner-weirdo, also—you come together and create this weird little love unit, and make this weird little life together that is weirdly awesome, in all the best ways imaginable.
Find a counterpart to your weirdness. Find someone who you can be super uncool with. Life and love are never guaranteed so let’s laugh our faces off and dance our asses off while we have it.
Forget a soulmate. Find a weirdmate. And be happy and silly for the rest of your life with the person you love.
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This post was originally published on jamienrae.com.