Some people are convinced they need to find their “soulmate” or “twin flame” in order to be happy. Are such thoughts accurate and helpful or likely to be an unfulfilled dream that may keep a person from finding love at all?

There are some who take this quest to an extreme and set standards arbitrarily high and, in fact, may abandon relationships that could grow into an extremely satisfying partnership simply because the sparks are not flying early on and they rule the person out as a potential mate far too soon before they give love a chance to bloom. In actuality, each person has many potential partners. This is because of the similarity among people in the human family in terms of their desires, their need for love, and the power of chemistry to increase desire and fuel the formation of love bonds through shared experience, mutual respect, and a desire and willingness for an intimate relationship. This will usually become self-reinforcing and will grow a love bond inevitably because that is within the capability of humans to happen and to foster it. It is, in a sense, a default mode. This is what people describe as "the power of propinquity," that many, many people will fall in love simply by being around one another enough time for deep bonds to form and, adding hormones to the mix, will result in a deep relationship that unfolds and may lead to marriage or, in the case of married individuals, may lead to an affair and a potential problem in disrupting the lives. But what is happening is simply the fact humans are created to be loving and to seek love everywhere they go, and to respond to love quite strongly. So there needs to be due recognition of its power to influence people’s thoughts and feelings, and their judgments and decisions about conduct deportment and the establishment of clear boundaries to not engage in inappropriate conduct if there are vows to others of fidelity in particular. Each person has a group of individuals who are potential mates for life through having a past history in other lifetimes of closeness and a deep soul connection that can flourish into strong love bonds given half a chance. The responsibility of the higher self is to assist the person in their charge in navigating through life and to work with other higher selves to orchestrate meetings between people who are potential soulmates, meaning they have a soul connection from the past and are well suited to be in love with one another and maintain a permanent, or at least a long-term, relationship that will be fruitful. So to tie hopes and expectations to one magical relationship is ill-advised. It is often the case that twin flames are separate and on different schedules altogether precisely because it is not the goal of human existence to have such preoccupations, given the many obligations as well as the need for learning about not only love but its loss—that provides the greatest benefits in growth and development through the course of time and that will make the effort worthwhile.