How do you know you've found your soul mate?

Soul mates have been defined as many things... they can be the person who makes your heart sing and your smile beam every time you think of them, touch them, see them, hear them or simply watch them from across the room. They can be the person who showed you the way out of what you may have felt a hopeless situation and showed you 'the light.' They can be the person who mirrors you in every way possible that it's frightening to see yourself as another human form. They can be a person who's chemistry electrifies your own to the point that you've never felt so alive or comfortable as you are with them. It could also be the person who makes you feel like yourself, and that you don't need to 'try' anymore to impress anyone.... he or she makes you honest in who you are. Or it could be a little piece of them all.

So how do you know you've found your soul mate? But more importantly, how do you know that they feel the same about you? That is the $64,000 question. Some people don't believe in soul mates. Or they do, but believe that there are many 'soul mates' out there for all of us, they are just sometimes too hard to find.

For me, I think the most important attribute in finding your soul mate is that you feel instantly comfortable with them. You have an attraction, not just visually, but also emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and have a similar sense of humour. You can feel all of that within the first five minutes of a conversation, and you want to know more. If it's reciprocal, the conversation, the seduction, the laughter and the witty banter can last for hours and hours with no care in the world about the time. That first conversation, the first interaction can tell a lot about how the relationship will be sustained because it is both of you being raw and honest to each other, revealing all the things that your stand for - including your family life, your work life, your political stance, your religious stance, your likes and dislikes... essentially your world. Of course there are a few hidden secrets that may not be divulged, or if they are, the accent may not be strong as there might be a little unfavourable reception to some concepts you relay in the first conversational interlude, but the most important ones come out and paint a picture of perfection about your new mate.

So what happens if time and circumstance don't allow you to be with your soul mate? Say, for instance, you have competing jobs that keep you away from each other, one is sent to war, your stages in life are different and one party is not prepared to compromise to keep you together or you have family issues that can't bring you together. It doesn't mean you can't give up hope. Look at all those wonderful stories of first loves finding each other years afterwards, sometimes decades afterwards, after they have had their children and sometimes grandchildren, to be together again. They are soul mates, they were meant to be together, if not at one time in their life, but definitely in another time... and their magical soul mate connection found each other again.

A soul mate isn't someone you desperately need in your life, it is someone who is 'supposed' to be in your life. It's never a forced union, it's an underlying yearning to be together bond. It's a bond that despite all the things that go against you, you somehow come back to each other. It's something that, no matter what, you always have happy thoughts for that person. There can be troubles, but the troubles usually have to do with why it's not possible to be together, not because you don't want to be together.

Time and circumstance... can only keep soul mates apart physically, but never apart in the heart... and when the time is right, they will find themselves together forever.