Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I spent a few years working in a developing country where a significant portion of the population lives in grinding poverty, and even in the middle and upper classes, most people are paired up in marriages arranged by their families, often between cousins. It's an honor-shame culture in which divorce is often not permitted by families of the woman even in cases of domestic violence, and women are honor-killed with some regularity. Domestic violence is common and seemed to be accepted by many people. I had a colleague who was educated in the West and successful in her career, but married to a man who, every few months or so, would beat her violently. She stayed with him and while she would complain about his abuse, between batterings she spoke of him and their family as if it were normal. We had one deep conversation once where I asked her, after a beating, why she didn't just leave, and she said that when he first started beating her early in their marriage, she had asked her parents to go home and they said that if she did, they and she would be socially shunned, so no. I pointed out that she could get a job overseas, and she said that she didn't want to separate her young son from his father because the son loved his dad so much (even though the dad beat the mom regularly). This was really how she thought. And I think many people in the world are in that situation. Marriage and love are viewed very differently in many parts of the world.

And I thought a lot about how we view love and marriage in the West. I concluded that "soulmates" are a luxury most people in the world don't even consider.

In our culture, we just have choices and the advantages of choice and education and options, but in the end, many of the love and soulmates fall apart after children.

I think that really meeting a soulmate is super rare. We in the West are all trying to find one, but most of us don't, even if we thought we did at some point.

If beautiful and highly successful people were more likely to find soulmates, I don't think we would see so many divorces in celebrity/politician/pro athlete circles?

So maybe we all have the potential to find a soulmate, but most of us just...don't.

I wish people would understand this with the trad wife phenomenon and the manosphere phenomenon. Sometimes I think that group is better at promoting healthy living by their focus on beauty, fitness, traditional values, and healthy living, but there is a lack of warning that the more simple traditional life also often comes with dangers in living those traditional values that make it hard to escape from.

Anonymous wrote:I think relationships are a lot of work, and the people who talk about their soul mates are actually talking about having met somebody who wants to work together with them on the same things.

I dont think looks etc factor in directly, but attitude and optimisn do, and your looks, awkwardness, and so on can affect your attitude. Or put another way, an ugly optimistic person paired with someone who shares their values will see a soul mate.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I spent a few years working in a developing country where a significant portion of the population lives in grinding poverty, and even in the middle and upper classes, most people are paired up in marriages arranged by their families, often between cousins. It's an honor-shame culture in which divorce is often not permitted by families of the woman even in cases of domestic violence, and women are honor-killed with some regularity. Domestic violence is common and seemed to be accepted by many people. I had a colleague who was educated in the West and successful in her career, but married to a man who, every few months or so, would beat her violently. She stayed with him and while she would complain about his abuse, between batterings she spoke of him and their family as if it were normal. We had one deep conversation once where I asked her, after a beating, why she didn't just leave, and she said that when he first started beating her early in their marriage, she had asked her parents to go home and they said that if she did, they and she would be socially shunned, so no. I pointed out that she could get a job overseas, and she said that she didn't want to separate her young son from his father because the son loved his dad so much (even though the dad beat the mom regularly). This was really how she thought. And I think many people in the world are in that situation. Marriage and love are viewed very differently in many parts of the world.

And I thought a lot about how we view love and marriage in the West. I concluded that "soulmates" are a luxury most people in the world don't even consider.

In our culture, we just have choices and the advantages of choice and education and options, but in the end, many of the love and soulmates fall apart after children.

I think that really meeting a soulmate is super rare. We in the West are all trying to find one, but most of us don't, even if we thought we did at some point.

If beautiful and highly successful people were more likely to find soulmates, I don't think we would see so many divorces in celebrity/politician/pro athlete circles?

So maybe we all have the potential to find a soulmate, but most of us just...don't.

Anonymous wrote:Never even been in love until 42 and even then it was love-bombing on their part and not a real thing.
Never met anyone interesting or exciting.

Anonymous wrote:The quality of men today is bad. I'm 33 and been married for 2 years. Most of my friends are still single and for good reasons. A friend of mine was dating a woman who made finding a husband a full time job. It didn't work out for her, she was trying too hard.