A platonic soulmate is someone you love, madly, the instant you meet, a love beyond understanding. Plato defined this type of love as a love that goes beyond the personal self: a mysterious recognition of what is good, beautiful, and true.

As a woman terrified of full-blown intimacy – a legacy from a childhood where letting anyone into my bubble was unsafe, I still yearned to be loved. And life offered up a spectacular solution: I have been gifted an unending parade of platonic soulmates.

Platonic soulmates are a recognition of Angelic love.

Because of this mysterious and baffling gift, I have the great honor of being a serial platonic soulmate. I have been blessed with a love that transcended all my terrors and kept me in great company during the deep darkness of my early life. Undeniably, I am aware of what a rare privilege that is. And through my experiences, I have learned something inexplicable.

Now, we humans want to hide or feel guilty about the gifts that are offered up to us in seemingly discriminatory ways. However, I believe that if we inhabit and share our privileges, we can inspire others to begin to inhabit those same privileges. After all, we are one.

Personally, I love being inspired by the greater privileges of those who appear to have something I don’t. If I can stay clear enough to not get threatened into a story about “not me” or “left out” – or the stickiest for me, “injustice” – I am invited to rise up to claim those same privileges as my own, realizing they are in fact indiscriminate.

And so, I would like to share my experience, with the invitation that you could rise up in 2019. Claim some angelic love for yourself through this very extraordinary and rare privilege of mine.

Platonic Soulmate #1

My first platonic soulmate walked into my life when I was 16 years old. She was standing in the doorway on my first day of work. Instantly, I felt this mysterious transcendence, a presence that rolled through me. I tried to push past it, as I had first-day appearances to keep up. But at the end of the day, as I was just about to pull out of the parking lot, she approached my car window.

I forgot something at the office. As she leaned into my window to hand it to me, I could feel and sense that she saw me as an unearthly beauty and would love me forever. Something much louder and clearer than a ‘normal’ or even ‘great’ friendship erupted. 

The dilemma

We were inseparable for years. She was engaged to her college sweetheart, but we were young and the love between us was confusing. I didn’t know how to make it something other than platonic, and she didn’t know how it could be platonic. So every evening she would tuck her boyfriend into bed, laying with him until he fell asleep. And then she came and slept with me in the other room.

He knew our love was something innocent and big. And I think he was as much awe-inspired by its profundity as frustrated to not have that same connection. In our youth, all three of us were too awkward and immature to handle these gifts with any diplomacy or grace.

On her wedding night, she slept with me. She caressed my face like I was an angel descended to earth to remind her that we are just made of stardust and love. I never felt so wholly seen as when I was with her. Our love was sacred, holy, and platonic. But in the end, I had to move away. Her husband encouraged us to cut ties when I moved – likely due to the relief of finally being her sole focus. And so we did.

Platonic Soulmate #2

Within two years, her missing space was filled in my heart.

I came late to the theatre lobby after a performance. I was slow to change costumes and I never loved slipping into the lobby to say hello to friends and family after a show. Invariably, I was too raw and too open after stepping off the stage. It felt awkward and strange to collect pleasantries, but it was expected, and my boyfriend was waiting for me. Our relationship was deeply fulfilling. But even in the depth of its sweetness, the signature wasn’t that of a “soulmate”.

She was near the exit where I usually stood. I didn’t know her name, or who she was. Regardless, I knew I loved her madly.

As our eyes connected, I could see that she felt the same thing. She didn’t know who I was, but she was feeling a love sweeping her open in a way she had never known.

For ten years, we were inseparable. She got married and later became a mother. My boyfriend became a serious contender for “husband”. And through those years, we recognized what was good and beautiful and true through our friendship with each other.

Kindred souls calm the inner storm

This love landed us beyond all our personal entanglements. Even though I was an emotional basket case everywhere else in my life – with her, my inner storm calmed. She knew how hard life was for me, but she never had much direct experience of that. All because when in each other’s company, a kind of safe haven opened up, and life was smooth, simple, and expanded.

In hindsight, I can see that the platonic nature of these friendships made it possible for me to transcend my own pain and suffering into a love so deep and mysterious. Emotional healing demands an ally, as I document in Can We Heal Alone and is an essential part of what makes us human.

Platonic soulmates are a significant benefit in their supportive presence as they don’t get jostled by the bullshit of the other. Patterns and preferences that irritate and aggravate normal loving relationships mysteriously slide away from soulmates. All while the beauty and truth of the other remains brilliantly clear.

Soulmates deliver to us a kind of transcendence of our personalities, habits and pain bodies.

 The presence of a platonic soulmate provides a deeper connection, that you never have to work for. It keeps you in sync, and you never feel as whole, as good, as seen, as in each other’s presence. 

And yet they end in much the same way as all relationships do.

With her and I, our lives simply went off in very different directions, and it stressed the relationship beyond the possibility of survival. In our last phone call, I told her it didn’t matter how long we were apart, I have and will love her forever. This was the truest thing I knew.

Platonic Soulmate #3

Almost immediately, my third platonic soulmate came along. And if it could be said, the love between him and I was even higher, even more transcendent, than I’d ever experienced before. With blazing clarity, I knew our love was always here, regardless of who we’d been in our many lifetimes. Our love was a solid anchor that could never not be. It didn’t even need us to be together.

Sadly, it was a very tough time in both my life and his. Because of our own struggles our lives felt heavy and bitter, and we couldn’t always be lifted up in the other’s company. We could have some big battles together. Although, behind those fights were huge smiles and this impenetrable love— something smooth, calm, and pulsating with purity. But we were both so mired in our own challenging situations that we could not push it aside, regardless of this love’s invitation to do just that.

Even kindred souls have to separate

In the end, I left him. Ironically, the reason being our love was too big, too hot, too much. I didn’t know how to sustain such engulfing love. When we were together, I couldn’t even hear what he was saying sometimes. His preciousness and beauty would just take me over. Unknowingly, I would be kind of swept into worshiping every cell of his body.

His perfection touched me so deeply that I could barely speak to him. Truthfully, I couldn’t bear to be away from him, and yet I was totally blown out around him. I didn’t know how to love another person as though they were a God before me. I didn’t know how to be seen in that same light. Above all else, I didn’t know how to be One brilliant flare of love, transcendent of all human foible and all separation.

His looks didn’t matter to me, or who he was, or how he made me feel. Our connection transcended all of that. Some kind of presence just connected, and knew itself as whole. And with him, I didn’t even need a personal connection – just this whole brilliant love that shone beyond our lives, beyond a thousand lives.

On the day I left him, in that last call, I said that our own pain was just too much to sustain our connection. He and I were one, and he was always inside of my being. But we couldn’t find harmony as humans. We were too much for me. He asked me not to walk away, but I knew the love was bigger. I knew I didn’t have to be with him to be held in that love, and so I hung up the phone, ending the blazing heat of it.

The aftermath of true love

Yet when I hung up the phone, pain ripped through my being, tearing me apart. As it tore open, the love burst forward. A storm began blowing wildly outside, and the neighbor’s dog burst through my gate and began scratching and gnawing frantically at my door. But I was unable to move. The old version of myself undid itself, and I was never the same again. I had learned an invaluable lesson from the love of my platonic soulmates, I learned that love is not attached to that person, it is an always present light, and this transformed me.

❧

My current experience with platonic soulmates

Soulmates continue to walk into my life. When one ends, another one will grace me with angelic transcendence the next day. That mysterious pattern remains true for me, but I am better at keeping my soulmates now.

The very next day, after the storm passed, I went to a friend’s house for consolation and understanding. And K was there. He came up to me at the end of the night, and I loved him right then and there. I didn’t know his name, or who he was, but I loved him, and I could sense that he loved me.

Neither of us is perfect people; we certainly both have annoying habits and deep imperfections. And from the human perspective, we don’t necessarily get on well together, but platonic soulmate love doesn’t really trip up on that. It’s not a partnership in the same way as lovers or spouses are. However with K, the love was softer, and I knew what a soulmate was by now. Hence, my relationship with this soulmate was more manageable and sustainable.

❧

Kindred Spirit or Angels?

Strangely, only we can see the angel in the other person. Seeing it, we can’t help but be madly in love. It goes beyond ourselves, beyond how we love our mates, and later our children. It is something beautiful and good and true, something instant and obvious and always present. See, beyond our human suits, we are pure love, just as Plato described it. A platonic soulmate is someone who you effortlessly see, beyond their human suit.

I remember a dream I had when I was eight years old. A queue of girls lined up vying for a boy’s attention. The boy stood at the head of the line, and as each girl approached they batted their eyes or made alluring postures. When my time came to approach, instead of flirting or trying to win his attention, I just pulled out my inner self and laid it down on the floor. Inviting him to do the same we could see, side by side if our insides fit together.

How to find a platonic soulmate

I can’t offer you a precise pathway to finding a platonic soulmate.  Likewise, I don’t know why some people get to have this experience of mirroring so directly that we are just pure love under all our human foibles.

I can only tell you that it is possible and that you are intrinsically just as lucky as I am. And when your soulmate shows up, you won’t care how long it took, because clearly they were always here anyway.

And I can offer you this invitation. I invite you to reach for fulfillment. Instead of lingering in that subtle fear that you ask for too much, that you desire too much, or that you must settle or you will be left out. Don’t get caught in Fear’s narrative that there is something rotten about you and you are just not going to make the cut. Don’t get hooked by the myth that you are alone, separate, and not good enough.

Let this be a time of actualization for each and every one of us. This is a year for risk and for courage and to know that you are pure love. And that will find its own expression.

Be bold. Be unmanageable. And be clear that you are pure love, regardless of how painful or challenging or stuck your human suit seems to you. 

XK