Almost everyone in the world shares a dream that there is a perfect partner for them.

Whether it be labeled as a soulmate, twin flame, “The One,” or a “partner in crime,” it falls under the belief that there is another just like us out there to love and be loved by.

So how do we know if we have met “The One,” or how do we call them in? (For the purposes of this article, I will refer to this romantic ideal as a soulmate.)

What is a Soulmate?

Arguably, a soulmate is a person who matches our ideal vision of love. When we fall in love with someone, it is because we feel a strong like-minded connection. This connection sparks joy in us. However, what we are truly loving is the version of ourselves that is reflected to us through the eyes of another.

Have you ever fallen in love with someone who just adored you? It is their adoration that you fall in love with, because this person makes you feel safe to express your love, so you open up and allow yourself to feel love. Essentially, it is not the person before you whom you love; it is the vision of love that you have managed to materialize before your eyes that is allowing you to access your own resource. They are your dream—so, therefore, they are perfect. Because they are your dream, you are loving your most authentic self—your creation.

When people are in love, they are in love with their own alignment that they see mirrored back to them in another person. They are in love with the state of being in love. The danger of believing that the other person is the cause is holding their state of love as dependent upon something external—and if it is external, it cannot be controlled.

This is where expectations come into play. Our soulmate who is the vessel of our love has their own free will, and, because of this, they may distort our vision of love if we rely on them as the source. When they do, our reaction is fear; what we perceived to be love is now being changed before our very eyes and we do not like it. Thus, we try to control it by holding onto it so we can maintain our vision. Our need for control leads us into a state of fear, which in turn pulls us out of alignment with love, and we may begin to inject the poison into our minds that love has deserted us, does not exist, or is a weakness.

Since nothing feels more empowering than the alignment of love, we will search for it in other outlets by chasing power, fame, other partners, or busyness that provide a temporary feeling of love because it feeds our ego. We become slaves to external validation because we have cut ourselves off from our own resource.

How to Open Your Heart to Love Again

It is important to note that we are born with an open heart. It is in the teaching that love is something outside of us that leads us into closure. For most, the connection to family is so strong and many people love their family more than other humans, because family is the closest reflection of unconditional love and thus they can make us feel the safest to express our love—our most authentic selves.

Lovers may come and go, but love will always remain the same if we make the choice to feel it within ourselves. If we do, there would be no distinction between the amount of love we have for a family member versus a stranger we have just met, because it is coming from ourselves—not coming from external sources.

The dilemma is that once we have attributed love as dependent on another being or resource, we close our hearts to feeling its abundance by measuring how much we express. We fear that if we express the abundance of love, we will be rejected, judged, or abandoned. We hide our hearts by controlling how much we give, whom we give it to, and when we feel it is appropriate.

It is in this need to restrict that we suffer the most. The love we withhold is the pain we carry. The more that we open ourselves up to expressing love freely, without the expectation of it being returned to us by others, the happier and more empowered we feel. When we hold and maintain this vision of love without fear of losing it or assigning it to something or someone, the more we birth this into our reality.

This is our happily ever after: breaking the illusion that our soulmate is anyone other than ourselves. When we maintain our vision of love by keeping our hearts open, regardless of external situations, this is when we become a magnet for calling in a perfect partner (if even necessary)—someone who aligns with the highest version of ourselves, someone who shares our vision.

Happily Ever After

This is when the spirit of romance comes alive. Romance is the expression of love, and when we allow ourselves to engage in it because it makes us feel good to express love, our environment picks up on this empowering feeling of love. Because we are free to express love, others feel free to express it too and thus begins an abundant exchange of giving freely and empowering each other.

Some Practical Tips for Opening Our Heart

1. Think about your ideal partner. Write the qualities they possess and recognize these qualities as things you wish to expand upon in yourself.

2. Recognize when you feel fear or anxiety in a situation. Lean into it. Do not cut things off from a place of fear. Conquering it will eliminate it forever.

3. Start to notice how you measure love with others. Why do you choose not to like someone’s photo or why does the behavior of certain people irritate you? These are areas you need to work on in yourself. When you measure out your love, you are not hurting someone else’s ego as much as you are putting a limitation on your heart.

4. When you develop feelings for someone, notice if you feel afraid to express that love. This fear is because you don’t feel secure in yourself to love. It’s all about you. The other person has nothing to do with it.

These are some realizations I have had recently regarding the construct of soulmates.

I strongly believe that our thoughts control our reality, and when we reach a state where our thoughts are only love, then we are free to express our love in abundance, without fear of rejection or need for return. We see life as an abundant flow and become a magnet for our heart’s desires.

If you want a perfect partner, great—but first and foremost, recognize that you are your own perfect partner.