c. 2008 Religion News Service
WINTER PARK, Fla. _ Until their lives finally intersected in 1997, Erich and Sandra Blossey lived parallel but very separate lives for almost 50 years.
He had been at Stanford University, and so had she. He had been at Harvard University, and so had she. He had lived in Mexico City, and so had she. At one point, they lived only blocks from one another.
It wasn’t until they met over coffee at a faculty meeting at Rollins College that they connected, astonished by all their near-misses. Even their grandparents came from the same parts of Germany. They married in January 2000, and today they sometimes wonder why they didn’t find each other sooner.
“I think a lot of it has to do with timing,” said Sandra, 68, now retired from Rollins and working as a consultant. Adds Erich, 72, a chemistry professor, “We were different people then. We brought a certain maturity to the relationship that we would have had to hammer out had we gotten married earlier.”
They seem like long-lost soul mates, but are soul mates real?
The question is steeped in our spiritual beliefs on luck, fate and faith. Do we stumble into romance, or are two people brought together as part of a broader plan? Is the concept only a myth we imagined to protect against loneliness and explain the complex emotions we feel when we are in love?
Among people who have never married, 94 percent want their spouse to be a soul mate, a trait they value more than money, religion and parenting, according to a 2001 Gallup survey. Eighty-eight percent believe in a special someone or soul mate, and 87 percent believe they will find that someone when they are ready to marry.
“It’s the idea that you have someone that you are fated to meet, that God will deliver that person to you,” said Gail Laguna of Spark Networks, a provider of online dating sites including JDate.com, ChristianMingle.com and CatholicMingle.com.
The term is not biblical, but Scripture does support the idea of two people joined in a sacred, transcendent union, starting with Eve, whom God created from Adam’s rib, said Brennan Hill, a theologian who teaches about marriage and family at the Xavier University in Ohio.
“It may not use the language of `soul mate,’ but there’s a strong tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures of man and woman being one,” he said.
In Hebrew, the term is “b’shert,” or one’s destined mate or spouse. The mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah teaches that two people share a soul. Christians, like Muslims, believe in an afterlife, and many Christians feel it’s possible to reunite with a soul mate after death. Mormons teach that marriages sealed on earth last for all time. Hindus worship many gods, most with feminine counterparts, said the Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, an interfaith wedding minister in New York and leader of The Soulmate Project, a social networking community on Beliefnet.com.
But Brockway cautions, “The idea of `I want a boyfriend, I want a soul mate,’ that is a modern invention. The overall majority of people who talk about soul mates are not really talking about the true essence of a soul mate.”
In such a relationship, she said, the soul is laid bare for the other person, with all its beauty _ and flaws.
“A soul mate relationship isn’t perfect,” she said. “The person who loves you on a soul level is the one who will stick with you while you’re going through the machinations of human living. Is there pressure on people to find their soul mate? I think there is a commercial hard-sell about it. … But the concept challenges us to go deeper.”
Some soul mate relationships may last a lifetime while others are short-lived, meant only for a certain space in time, she said. A soul mate may pass on, while another is waiting for the right time to appear. But Hill is skeptical of a divine plan.
“We might be attracted to someone, and two people might be called to be together, but the calling is within them,” he said. “I don’t think the calling is outside somewhere by some divine force that’s drawing us. I think the calling is within us.“
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Renee Dowell, 55, of Nashville, Tenn., married her husband nearly 40 years after he first wrote her, asking for a date. At the time, Dowell was shy and declined, but she liked him. Eventually they lost touch, and she moved to Detroit and back and had two sons, while he became a widow and father of three.
Still, she thought of him often.
The two reunited through Dowell’s friend at work, who offered to fix her up with an uncle. Dowell recognized the man’s name, D.C. Covington, but couldn’t place it. They went on a date, and Covington, 58, revealed he was the one who wrote the letter all those years ago. They married in September 2005.
“I just said in my head, `Oh my God, it’s him,”’ Dowell said with a laugh. “I’m just amazed. It’s just strange. It’s a phenomenon that we met after all these years.”
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