Holy in Dating

Do you believe in soul mates?

I think God has ordained someone special for each individual—just like Adam and Eve. When God created Adam, he only created one mate for him, not several potential mates. I think it was like this for a purpose. God wanted this to be an example for us. Otherwise God could have created a whole generation of people and then let Adam meet Eve either by divine intervention or after dating several potential mates.

There are a lot of single, Catholic, God-fearing men out there, but just because they're Christian doesn't mean they're compatible with every Christian woman. I have several Catholic guy friends who will make great husbands for women other than me. It will take a special man to minister to my needs as a single mom to two teenage girls. Marriage is a ministry, and just like certain gifts are required to minister to the needs of individuals in ministry, the same applies to a marriage.

I think we should always reflect back to the first marriage when addressing a question like this one. What happens is we deviate from God's plan because of anxiousness and go through several potential mates before we get to the right one. We must allow God to bring us to the person for us. Sometimes, in our effort to meet the one God has for us, we may develop soul ties with other people and may confuse this person as being our soulmate. We must remember Adam didn't have to go looking for Eve; God brought her to him. Think about it, there was no other Joseph for the Blessed Virgin Mary, there was no other Sarah for Abraham, and there was no other Eve for Adam.

- Pam

I don’t believe in soulmates. I don't doubt the existence of true passionate love. I just think the best, most lasting love is the kind you grow into through commitment and patience. My best friend and her husband are more the soulmate type, I guess. They were high school sweethearts and have known each other since they were hanging out in the church crib together. They love each other so much it fills the room when you're with them. It's beautiful. But they've struggled to maintain that love. They've fought hard and worked hard and committed to God and to each other. Their soulmate love has grown into a more mature, committed love.

Maybe the real problem is when we try to hang on to that initial twitterpation—the soulmate fixation. Our culture teaches us that's what love is supposed to be. So we run around searching for eternal twitterpation, something we really can't maintain. I think God intended love to be more logical than that—a choice. We're commanded to love. If it wasn't a choice, I don't think we would have needed a command. If biblical love is a conscious decision, why are we searching for something we "fall" into? Because of my background, I don't know if I have the ability to "fall" in love. But I want to love someone. I want to choose to commit myself to someone who will commit himself to me—the way God commanded us to love each other.

- Jamie

I believe there's one person God has designed perfectly and specifically for each person. This person isn't only one's perfect match at the time they meet, but God knows that even their purposes and destinies match. He knows the combination of these two individuals will produce exactly the kind of children he wants added to the world. However, so few people make being in the perfect will of God a priority. Instead, they walk down a road that winds on and off of God's most desired path for them. Along the way they meet and fall in love with people who are great for them, but not perfect for them. So they get married and have a great life, but only God knows how short of perfect it really is.

I believe when a person actually does meet his or her "soulmate," it's undeniable. I also think there's so much more involved than just enjoying life with someone special. God desires that each of us be "perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect." So if God is looking for each of us to be perfect, and has given us the tools to be so, he certainly would require a perfect union of two who are to become a perfect one in him.

We will reach perfection as we desire and seek God's perfect will. And as we desire and seek God's perfect will, he will surely send us that perfect one.

- Joy

Until the last few years, I truly believed in soulmates. I felt God had designed one man whose beliefs, personality, talents, and weaknesses would mesh perfectly with those same areas in my life. Then I met Evelyn. This precious woman's soulmate died. They had been sweethearts since their teen years and had a wonderful marriage. After her husband's death, she immersed herself in church, and a couple of years later met a man who also won her heart. This man is her soulmate as well. They share a loving and exciting marriage just as she did with her first husband.

This leaves me to believe that while God does design the perfect spousal complement for our lives, perhaps more than one will fill the need if the first is taken by death. The second gentleman may not have been what Evelyn needed as a young woman, but he's what she needs now that she's in her 40s. Timing is always a key in God's plan for our life.

- Terri

Your turn to share your thoughts and comments, you may share some good books to read on this subject.

What is the Teaching of the Church?

GOD'S PLAN

1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.

Marriage in the order of creation

1603 "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity,88 some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone." The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Remember that marriage is a vocation and as such is not for everyone, therefore dating is part of that calling. Dating is part of the discernment process. The other person you date is not an object for your use but a daughter or son of God discerning their vocation. If you feel called to marriage have you began praying for your future spouse? Pray, Trust, Do.