h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can there be only one person in the whole of space and time for you, or are the odds better than that? (What happens if they are reincarnated this time around as a dolphin for instance? DON'T ANSWER THAT!)

Is romantic love a myth for gullible fools, or is it the only way to start a relationship?

If someone is not 'the one' are they still worth spending part of your one and only precious lifetime with?

Can you be in love with the same person for 20 years? For 50? For 70?

Answers behind the bikeshed, please.

B

Behind the bikeshed?

I don't believe that there is only one true soul-mate for everyone. To me that doesn't really make sense. If there is one person in the entire world that you are somehow meant for, then the chances of the two people actually meeting each would be very slim considering the number of people on this planet. What if the two people don't even happen to be born in the same time period?

I think there are many poeple out there with whom a person can be compatible with.

I think although there can be more than one person for you ,you only have one true soulmate..when witches marry (some call it handfasting) they state whether they sense the other person is their true friend n companion for this life alone or for all lives to come (ie their soulmate) ..and that sounds good enugh to me. And yes I think its worth spending some of our life with someone less than perfect..how else would we learn?

You have to make mistakes to learn, this is true, and i think I mostly agree with Serephina in this

..and thats not to say that becauses someone's not your soulmate they can't make you truly happy for the time..or lifetie you spend with them.

The idea of a 'One True Soulmate' is a Western Fantasy, a fantasy of fairytales, of Mills and Boon books, and 'they all lived happily ever after'.

My friends who are intending on having arranged marriages firmly believe that arranged matches are more successful than love matches. After all passion dies, but with an arranged marriage you start of with a mutal desire to go to the same place - which doesn't wear out.

I don't know how the relable the statistics are but I've heard that arranged marriages in the UK are likely to last a lot longer than Love Matches.

I didn't know they still do that.

I have to say I find anyone having that little contact with another culture quite disturbing. I by no means mean this as a personal attack, : lack of contact hasn't been your fault. I also occasionaly find this site strangely white dominated.

The majority of girls I know of who are having arranged marriages are people from my course - they will all in a year be guarenteed a job that comes with free accomodation and a good pay packet, they are not downtrodden girls with limited opitions.

Those that don't want arranged marriages all have option to refuse.

The majority have choosen to have arranged marriages because they have seen their own parents marriage work well, and hope for a similar one. Some set themselves a deadline saying 'if I don't find myself a husband by the age of 24 I shall have an arranged marriage'.

I have to admit that I do get jelous occasionaly, it's difficult meeting someone on your own and I'd quite like my aunt to find me some girls.

Other cultures are weird. Nevermind them and their silly, silly arranged marriages.

I personally don't believe in soulmates (probably because I don't believe in the existence of "souls" ). But it is nice to have a girlfriend.

Recently I happend on an article in a magazine a friend of mine gets called Kindred Spirit. In it the assertion was that though at times you may have felt that you'd met your soulmate, later you might see them as having been an important stepping stone to preparing you (emotionally, psychologically, spiritually... sartorially?) for a later, better fit.

I can't think of a significant relationship I've had that hasn't in some part been the making of me, so found myself agreeing with the article wholeheartedly. I figured maybe a person's love life is a succession of soulmates, doing for each other what those souls needed then. The for-life one being the end-of-level boss, for want of a better expression (any ideas?)

Shagrath's comment about cultures with arranged marriages did come across as facetious, I do hope it was meant that way.

>> (any ideas?)

Only that I ought to start reading Kindred Spirit again! That sums up my view almost exactly!

B

Myth!

The one true love/soulmate is nature's way of tricking us into reproducing. At the end of the day you have to remember we're just over-evolved lumps of meat.

Yes arranged marriages may have a lower divorce rate Z..but are the people in them really happy?
It's possible to make just about anything workable ..how many people stay in unarranged marriages they're not happy out of stubborness and unwillingness to admit failure through divorce? quite a few probably..and I feel that must be the case with arranged marriages..as we can't just fall in love with who we're told to..or even who we want to!..life would be easier at times if we could!..but it's the love that makes a relationship happy..

OK, this probably isn't the response that B(en) was looking for, but let's look at this statistically:

There are 6,000,000,000 people on this planet. Let's assume that just one of these is your soulmate. You have a very active social life which means that you meet, on average, 4 new people a day. Counting from when you become hormonally active (let's say the age of 11 for the sake of argument) and assuming that you live the traditional three-score-and-ten, this means that you will meet 86,140 people during the course of your life. Not a lot, is it? Half of these will be of your non-preferred gender (I'm assuming straight men don't find male soulmates very often), that's 43,070. So the chances of you even meeting your soulmate are roughly 1 in 140,000. And, to return to post 1, that's not even factoring in the historical element. There have been roughly 260 generations since the beginning of recorded history (that's not a lot either, is it?), making your chances somewhere in the region of one in 3-and-a-half million.

B

I've just had a trawl through my romantic back-catalogue *shudder* and it's quite true - every one of these failed relationships has been a better fit than the one before. The last one was so close, so very close, to what I've been looking for... Maybe next time I'll get there.

I'm not sure that I believe in the existence of a single soulmate, with whom I am destined to be for ever and ever. It's an attractive concept, of course, but there's also pleasure to be had with a person who is not a perfect match. I don't mean that in a lecherous way (not that there's anything wrong with that), but in a more intellectual manner. There's all the fun of getting to know and understand another mind that is not on exactly the same wavelength. It broadens one's own mind, and that's never a bad thing.

Ivan.

Hey, I put it up as a debating point, Master B. And I get off on statistics, as you know, so

>> but it's the love that makes a relationship happy..

Or is it fufilled expectations?

How many westerners go into a relationship assuming that they have found their one true love based on the hormonal evolutionary con-trick already mentioned, and then don't know how to cope when the little things start to niggle and excalate to being big things?

Equally, my assumption is that a well-arranged arranged marriage is going to be inherently more stable because the expectation from the start is more like that of getting along with a colleague or business partner, and will never be clouded by remarks that destroy such as 'if you loved me you wouldn't do that'.

Don't forget that there is a difference between arranged marriages and forced marriages, and that most marriages in the west were arranged one way or another until the 19th century. We had a tradition of matchmakers here, too, you know.

B

"And I get off on statistics, as you know"

That is a truly odd mental image.

B

I'm not saying that love should be the be all n end all..it shouldn't..no relationship can survive on that alone..you also need good communication, friendship and respect etc..but love should still play a part.

>> >> "And I get off on statistics, as you know"

>> That is a truly odd mental image.



Mind you there is a mathematician who used to hang out here who said in the middle of a story about teaching a rather lovely young lady ".... and calculus is erotic anyway... "

Which set me thinking, since I was going out with a mathematician at the time. And yep! Though calculus didn't do it for him, topology apparently did! And I thought he loved me for my curves....



B