We are taught that “The One” exists. A perfect match waiting in the shadows. A cosmic appointment.
History loves this narrative. Plato told us we were originally four-armed giants, sliced in half by an angry Zeus. Ever since, we have been wandering the earth, half-blind, looking for the piece we lost. It is poetic. It feels like truth.
In the Middle Ages, it got more dramatic. Courtly love. Lancelot pining for Guinevere from afar. The knight sacrificing his own comfort for a love he couldn’t speak of. Then came the Renaissance. Shakespeare gave us “star-crossed” lovers. The universe conspiring against a connection that was too strong to be allowed a happy ending.
Today, Hollywood keeps selling us the fantasy.
But reality is messier.
Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University, traces the modern obsession with “The One” back to that same medieval European shift. Before, love was fluid. You could love multiple people. Sex and affection didn’t always mix in rigid packages.
“These stories pushed the idea that you choose one individual, for life,” Swami says.
Then industrialization hit. People were ripped from agricultural communities. They felt alone. Alienated.
So they looked for a savior. Not a god. A person.
This is where dating apps ruin the magic. Swami calls it “relation-shopping.” You scroll through faces like items in a supermarket aisle. Dozens of people. A swipe. A rejection.
“It’s a soulless experience,” he notes. You keep going until you hit a wall of exhaustion. Then you stop. Not because you found perfection. Because you’re tired.
The science suggests this mindset is dangerous.
Elizabeth Bruch and Michael Terman? No. It’s Carroll’s argument in The Soulmate Trap. Psychologists split us into two camps: Destiny believers and Growth believers.
Destiny believers think love should be easy. If you fight, the magic is broken.
Growth believers think love is work. Fighting is part of the deal.
Studies from the 90s led by C. Raymond Knee confirm this. People who thought their relationship was “meant to be” bailed out fast after arguments. Those with a growth mindset stayed put.
“Soulmates aren’t supposed to deal with things,” says a typical destiny believer when problems arise. “Maybe you aren’t my soulmate.”
Carroll calls this a trap. The expectation that love never hurts is what kills it. Real intimacy isn’t a movie scene. It’s sitting front row for each other’s worst moments. Your partner sees you broken, ugly, scared. And stays.
“That is sacred,” Carroll says.
But often, we confuse trauma for destiny.
Vicki Pavitt is a love coach in London. She sees clients who thought they found their person, only to realize the spark was actually anxiety.
High chemistry. Intense highs and lows.
It feels like passion.
It is often an old wound being poked.
“A person who plays hot and cold makes you anxious. And you mistake that anxiety for longing.”
Pavitt calls this a “trauma bond.” Your nervous system recognizes familiar pain and mistakes it for home. It isn’t healthy. It is just recognizable.
The Canadian psychologists Dutton and Painter studied this in 1993. They followed women leaving abusive partners. They expected to find strong attachment in the most brutal relationships.
They were wrong.
The strongest bonds weren’t in consistent abuse. They were in relationships that flipped between charm and cruelty. The danger mixed with the affection creates a hook. You get pulled back. Not because he is “The One.” But because your brain is confused by the rollercoaster.
It’s hard to discern.
Is this love?
Or is this just familiarity dressed up in anxiety?
Pavitt stops talking about soulmates entirely. “I don’t believe in one person for everyone,” she says. “But I do believe we become ‘The One’ for someone.”
There is another layer to this. Biology.
One study of 365 couples looked at contraception. Women’s sexual satisfaction was higher when the method they used with their current partner matched what they used when they first started dating.
Tiny shift. Huge implication.
If a pill can change who you want to sleep with, can a pill change who you think is “The One”?
It undermines the idea of pre-ordained destiny.
If hormones play dice with desire, then who is the mathematician?
Dr. Greg Leo at Vanderbilt University runs simulations. He puts thousands of digital people in a pool. They rank each other. He runs a compatibility algorithm.
The result? Most people do not get their first choice.
Many get their second. Or their third.
A happy couple in the simulation is just a pair where neither person wants to leave for someone better, because no better option exists for them in that moment.
Leo’s model suggests we all have multiple viable soulmates. Not just one. The “One” is a statistical illusion. We have a shortlist of people with whom we could be deeply happy. We just pick one, and make it work.
So how?
Jacqui Gabb at The Open University studied this in Enduring Love. She watched 50 couples for months. Diaries. Interviews. “Emotion maps.”
She asked them what made them feel loved.
It wasn’t trips to Paris. It wasn’t sunset proposals.
It was a cup of tea brought to bed. A car warmed up on a cold morning. A wildflower in a jar.
“Everyday attentive acts.”
These small things outweighed grand gestures. 22% of the mothers in the study ranked these small kindnesses above expensive gifts.
Take Sumaira and her partner.
He comes home. They hug. They eat dinner.
They dance in the living room.
They walk through long grass.
She writes: “It’s perfect. Just us and food. What more could one want?”
But it wasn’t magic. It was routine. Woven with money worries and depression.
Gabb says the “soulmate feeling” isn’t floating above life. It is built by it. Inch by inch. By how you handle the stress.
“It doesn’t steal the romance,” Carroll says. “It helps it bloom.”
We want to believe in fate. It is easier than doing the work. Pavitt admits it’s helpful to hope someone is out there. Just don’t expect them to be perfect.
The paradox?
The people who end up feeling “meant to be” together are the ones who gave up on fate.
They looked at the flawed, imperfect person in front of them.
And they said: Let’s make something.
