As a professional psychotherapist with over three decades of experience in helping couples and individuals heal relationship issues and challenges, the question “are soul mates real?” enters the therapy sessions.

Deep in our hearts, we know that soul mates are real.

We know we’re in the presence of a soul mate each time we meet someone with whom we instantly click, feeling that we’ve known that person our entire lives and that we’re reuniting after a long absence.

The greatest minds have been writing about the soul mate experience since practically the beginning of time. For example, around 385 BC, Plato wrote in his dialogue The Symposium that each human longs for his/her other half--the other half of his/her soul. It is said that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another that they feel unified and lie with each other in joy.

The Yiddish word bashert, referring to one's divinely foreordained spouse or soul mate, finds its origins in the book of Genesis.

Conversely, if you ask most modern day social scientists whether soul mates are real, they will tell you: hell no! And, they will go so far as to say that seeking a soul mate experience is a set up for disappointment.

Our hearts also know that science and logic can’t begin to address the mysteries of the soul. While science can’t demonstrate the existence of the soul, or soul mates, any more than we can prove that God exists, our hearts know what is true.

When it comes to mate selection, rather than speaking of soul mates, social scientists talk about compatibility and the research shows that there are 10,000 people worldwide who would be perfect mates for each and every one of us.

How does compatibility relate to the concept of soul mate?

In my first Hay House book, Kiss Your Fights Good-bye, I explain that the instant sense of compatibility or click we feel for another person can be an unconscious signal alerting us to the fact that we have met someone who emotionally resembles a parent who hurt us in childhood. Since, we all crave to heal what I call, Old Scars, we tend to replay them with a person who emotionally resembles the parent who let us down. So, it’s no surprise that we will emotionally recognize a person who is like a parent with whom we struggled. The reason we feel a sense of elation upon meeting someone who triggers our Old Scars is because we hope that this person will help us heal the pain of the past.

But is healing the Old Scars a soul mate experience?

In a way, it is!

After all, the highest and most divine purpose of our intimate relationships is to help each other heal our Old Scars. As we heal together, we remove the obstacles to loving others and ourselves more fully, which is what we have been put on earth to do!

Traditionally, psychoanalysts have believed that the instant bolt of lightning, love at first sight attraction that we sometimes feel for another is nothing more than the unconscious mind's recognition of a person who has traits that are like the parent that we had problems with. In these cases, the emotional bells and whistles we feel come from the unconscious excitement at the prospect of being able to re-stage our original trauma (with a player who feels like our parent). If we can succeed in getting from our partner the emotional goodies we didn't get from out parents, it will feel as though we are getting the goodies from our parent and this will achieve a resolution to the original trauma (what I call the Happy Ending). You'll know if you have unconsciously chosen a parent rather than a soul mate if you find yourself caught in fight cycles that recreate the emotional pain you felt growing up.

I also know that the lightning bolt feeling can also signal a meeting with a soulmate. I experienced this when I met my husband, Jean for the first time and shot through a tunnel to the end of my life!

How do you know you’ve met your soul mate?

First, know that there are many kinds of soul mates. Some are designed to be with you for a short time, to assist you in evolving by helping you learn an important spiritual lesson; other soul mates are meant to be with you for life; and still others, like Jean and I, have a soul pact ministry that has bonded us for eternity.

5 Signs You’ve Met Your Soul Mate

1) When you meet, you have an immediate sense of having known the person your entire life. And the pull to this person is as inexorable as the tide.

2) You have a tremendous sense of feeling at home with this person. There is a passion combined with a sense of comfort, like slipping into a well-worn slipper.

3) You will often feel a sense of destiny and purpose associated with the union. Many soul mates feel a calling to share their life work. Often that work involves changing the world in some important way.

4) Compatibility is associated with homogamy (or similarity) in all the areas that count. Couples who are compatible are similar in terms of their tastes, values, interests, life goals, etc. 

5) Since the highest and most divine purpose of our intimate relationships is to help each other heal what I call our Old Scars from childhood, soul mates are often brought together for the express purpose of helping fulfill their mutual soul destinies. To that end, soul mates feel a burning desire to help each other heal in mind, body, and soul and this includes helping each other heal these Old Scars. 

If you’ve recently lost your soul mate, you don’t have to say goodbye to the love and the connection you shared while you were together on earth.  There is a way to reconnect and resolve any unfinished business you didn’t have a chance to do while your loved one was with you on earth. Simply asking to reconnect while meditating can be enough to open the channel of spirit presence. You can learn more about how to reconnect with a loved one in spirit here.

So remember, soul mates come in all forms and you may have multiple soul mates over your lifetime. Love never dies and love is never in short supply.