Sharing Your Life with Your Soulmate!

Allow me to start with a joke. A reporter interviews a well known and successful CEO.

• "How did you manage to become so successful?" asks the reporter.
• "Wise decisions." he replies smiling.
• "Yes, but how did you manage that?"
• "Experience!"
• "Yes, but how did you acquire your experience?"
• "Bad decisions." he says with a sad smile.

You decided to share your life with your soulmate. We would like the people we care for, to have a better life than we did, to learn from our mistakes. Alas, experience cannot be ... injected with a serum. It is said that wise people learn from their mistakes while wiser people also learn from other peope's mistakes. So, here are my two cents.

• We start of course with the best intentions. Our education is oriented however into making us a well functioning cog in a production machine. It is not aiming at making us happy. Sorry for challenging what our society is trying to sell to us. We start with zero experience and zero training on (a) what a relationship is and (b) how we, as human beings, may function in it. We also do not realize that living together is the most challenging and important project we have in our life!
• Whether we like it or not we are programmed by two factors. The first is our genes: a short temper may be a biological trait passed from parent to child. The second is the environment we were raised: in a conflict situation that comes sooner or later, the easiest thing is to jump into behaviours we observed in our environment when we were kids. It takes a substantial amount of effort to rise above these impulse reactions. To which extent are we able to identify these reactions and willing to reprogram ourselves is the one million dollar question.
• The day has twenty four hours. We sleep for eight hours (if we are lucky), we work for eight hours (in the private sector, we may work ten, or even twelve on the average), we travel for one hour (or more), so we are left with seven (or less) hours to ... live our life. During that time we need to rest, blow off steam, do things that fullfill us (to what extent is your job fulfilling, really?) and ... find time to rediscover our soulmate! Do not take for granted that what you have now as a relationship is the same as when it started!
• Life is changing us. Some things that have brought you and your soulmate together may have changed or have been eliminated, while others may have been added that make allignment more challenging.
• Being in love is an entirely different ball game than living together. Sounds heretic but is true. Being in love is triggered and controlled by erotic impulse, i.e. our ... basic instinct. Living together requires on top of that, an entirely different skillset: using more our logic, notion of justice, patience, respect for the other person and more. Much more ...
• Your assumptions are your enemy. Your friend is the discussion that may shed light to a different point of view that led to the conflict. Remember however that the timing of the discussion is usually different for different people. One may need to discuss the issue asap while the other may require several hours or more than a day. One may need to be away to think better, while the other needs resolution in proximity. So, on top of the initial conflict, there may be a second conflict on how to resolve the first one!
• Sorry for being bad news, but In the course of time, what matters most is the one thing you cannot tolerate, not the ten things that brought you together. If for example your soulmate is constantly nagging and this makes you go ballistic it requires some serious consideration if being together is a good idea.
• Two must agree In order to be together. Unfortunately, in 99% of the cases, it takes only one person's decision for two people to be apart.
• Finally, if you decide to have a kid, the most important thing for it, is to know that its parents always love it, no matter if they are together or apart. If at some point you feel betrayed and making your kid hate your ex-soulmate seems an amazing idea, give it some extra thought: your kid needs your ex-soulmate as much as it needs you! Remember how you felt when you were a kid and saw your parents in conflict. Sure, a person with crutches can still walk with one leg, but having two legs is better, dont you think?