Is Your Purpose In Life To Find A Soulmate?

I spent my time as a teenager – in the 1970’s reading and trading “Love Comics”. They no longer exist, but the whole plot for these comics was finding and falling in love. The comics ended once the heroine was in the arms of her loved one, wrapped up in his life. I deduced that my purpose in life was to find a soul mate.

I wasn’t raised that way. My Dad was a feminist. I was programmed however by the media that I consumed. I believed that when I found my soul mate, I would finally be understood and validated and no longer invisible - just like what happened on television and in my love comics.

Many women when I went to University, focused on the M.R.S. degree (finding a husband). That might be a thing of the past, but have you watched children’s television aimed at girls lately? I was recently gobsmacked watching girls shows on Netflix with my 4 year old grand-daughter. The main conclusion of these shows is….the kiss. It’s the adult version of the Hallmark movie. Life ends happily when you’ve been chosen. Girls are still being programmed.

In Canada, Hallmark movies that end with a kiss are on “W” Channel. The “W” stands for women. We all know that men don’t watch this stuff. As women we are programmed. We are programmed to fall in love, to have a partner.

Our programmed purpose as women, is to find romantic love and a partner.

So what do when your relationship explodes? When you believe that your life purpose is to be matched and you aren’t, who are you? Do you have any value?

That’s what happened to Diane. Diane’s husband of ten years has left her for someone else. Her world has erupted. She is devastated and desperate.  She wants to go back to what they had before. She’s sure it could work. She’s sure she can get over this “small breech” and they can both be okay.

The volcano that is Diane’s life, has erupted and she’s in denial.

Even though Diane was unfulfilled in the relationship she was good at coping with it. When her husband left her for another woman however, Diane decided that this relationship was one she wanted to fight for.

Because we humans dislike change. We’d rather stay in the misery of what we know than move into the unknown – which we can’t be sure will be any better. Diane is consumed by pain and just wants it to go away. She wants to stay on the island where the volcano has erupted, and is spewing lava, because that’s where she is used to being – even if it’s not where she needs to be. (Download my free Soul’s Calling® Roadmap Training, to hear more of this metaphor for transition HERE)

When your relationship erupts, you are being given an opportunity to discover your true life’s purpose, not the one you were programmed to have.

I like love relationships as much as you do, but finding a soulmate is NOT your life’s purpose. Girls and women have been fed a diet of romance, of being nice, and pretty and polite so that they’ll be chosen….by a man. That’s a super passive way to live. Women are also told:

 “Your purpose is life is to have children and be a Mom.” The corollary for this is: “If your husband leaves you, then you are a failure.” And “If you are unhappy as a mom then something is wrong with you.” This results in so many, many women feeling bereft of purpose when their children leave home.

Women have been historically completely ignored in the quest for purpose. Joseph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey – a story of finding purpose in life, wasn’t meant for women. Women were the prize for men.   

Black women, Indigenous women, brown women don’t exist on the purpose train. We’ve been told that our only purpose is to help others to be better or to be wild sex partners whether we consent or not.

This is all programming. We’ve been programmed by Pirate World to believe that our primary job in life as women, is to find a husband, have children and raise them. Anything else is extra, but that primary job, partnering, nurturing, supporting is our purpose. We, women are all programmed, unless we have an unusual force of character or otherworldly influences.

That’s why I say that when your relationship explodes – even when it’s a long-term marriage to the father of your children, you have an opportunity.

You have an opportunity to deprogram yourself.

• Is it true that you’ll be alone without your ex? (Didn’t you feel alone with him?)
• Is it true that you’re ruining your children’s lives? (Maybe you were ruining their lives IN the marriage.)
• Is it true that if you keep coping with this bad relationship, it’ll get better? (Maybe if you keep coping you’ll just get more and more resentful.)
• Is it true that something is wrong with you because you couldn’t make your ex happy? (Is that really YOUR job?)

There are so, so many more things to question when a relationship explodes. What you are actually seeking is the truth of who you are – which isn’t how you’ve been programmed and isn’t how our society is set up.

You are going to need to go off the beat and path.

When Brenda’s relationship erupted, she was angry and resentful about her ex, particularly because she had two special needs children and became responsible for everything. She had absolutely NO time for herself and grabbed time scrolling through the internet between midnight and 2 am. She was exhausted. And yet she kept a cartoon drawing of the 4 of them, her ex-husband, herself and her two children – entitled – “Our Family” – up on the wall. She had to deprogram her ideas about what a family was “supposed” to be and embrace what she had. When she did that, her new family unit began to thrive!

When your relationship explodes you have the opportunity to blow up all the SUPPOSED to’s.

Because you don’t have what Pirate World has told you that you’re supposed to have.

Grieve the losses.

Embrace what is.

Find yourself again. Find your inner spark. Make it your job to find what makes you come alive. Then do it!

When you do that, you’ll find new purpose and meaning, not dependant on being chosen by somebody else.

And this time it won’t be the meaning you’ve been programmed to have, but it’ll be the meaning you were born to have.

You’ll find a love-partner if you want it. But that love-partner won’t be your reason for being. That love-partner will enhance your life, not be required in your life.

When you are spewed out by a volcano eruption– after years of coping with a less than ideal life situation grieve, grab your courage and get going on creating the personally meaningful life that is waiting for you.

You can do this!

Life happens FOR you, not TO you and this is your opportunity.

Download my Volcano Questions Worksheet HERE. If your volcano has erupted, these questions will help!

Big love,

Bev