The term "soul-mate" compared to friendship or spouse has a connotation to it for me. This idea implies that somewhere out there is that “perfect person” for you, and if your marriage is not exploding with intense communication, romance, and a great sex life, well then maybe it’s because your spouse is not your “soul mate.” Men who are a little bored with their wives, or vice versa, might be tempted by a co-worker who “understands me so well and is my soul mate, or could be my soul mate.” But frankly, this is a recipe for adultery and divorce, and families end up getting dropped for “soul mates.”
Someone once wrote a tribute to C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” called “Screwtape Proposes a Divorce,” in which Wasphead, the author's invented senior devil, says the following to Gallstone, the junior devil: “That (soul mates) do not exist is to be kept TOP SECRET. … Let’s be blunt: these humans are scouring the globe for someone with whom a relationship will require absolutely no work or compromise. … Many adult humans who have long ago dismissed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as myths somehow persist in believing this person to exist.”
The “soul mate” concept is unworkable and completely unfair to the real other person in your life. It puts enormous pressure on him or her to perform, to meet our impossible expectations. As Jerry Root and Stan Guthrie point out in “The Sacrament of Evangelism,” putting others in God’s place—expecting them to give us what only God can—is a naked form of idolatry and will only lead to deep disappointment.
Here’s another thing. The “soul mate” idea suggests that marriage is all about me, that I need to find someone who understands me perfectly, who makes me happy. Marriage should be about finding someone you can make happy. In the great teaching on marriage in Ephesians, for example, husbands are told to lay down their lives for their wives, as Christ did for the church.
As J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote to his son, “No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial.”
I think the beautiful ideal of a "soul-mate" is not an accurate look at Biblical relationships. A true soul-mate should only be your spouse. Categorically a friend can have a true connection, an intimate connection even, but this is not a soul-mate.. For in a marriage to submit to one another, and to commit to one another, and to marry one another in a public declaration of oaths; adding intimate sexual oneness is a person connected literally to another's soul. This is God's grace lived out in this union; it is a form of worshipping Him actually. But, it is work isn't it?!!
It is true, many married people don't always connect in an natural way cognitively, and emotionally personality wise. But that's the point. If we are married we are to work in our choice of loving them to grow together in that way of submission to loving; hence, the oneness in submitting to our spouse returns thru them - back to honor us eventually. And regardless of the outcome it honors God, which He then is faithful. If your spouse does not return the submissive love (not based on your rule book, but on God's Word), that is the prayers of many and the spiritual fight of our relationships as married couples. This is where we all need to pray for marriages, even intercessory prayers for others who are married. If we honor our spouse we honor ourselves, in other words.
I don't think there is (only one) out there for you, until after marriage. I think there is the one you choose in His will at the time He brings them by. In other words, I think God will honor our heart (while in Christ thru righteousness) and since He is omniscient He happens to know and will intercede for His will to be served. In other words, we have to make those moral choices ourselves.
Marriage can be wonderfully satisfying, but that’s the result of God’s grace, hard work, and self-sacrificial love. And that is the truth. "Soul-mates," seek self, and I am not about that.
... like he's your Adam, and in some ways the male version of you. And there's such an intense intimacy, it makes me think of the rib that was taken from Adam.