For Time Magazine, May 29th, 2017, Ada Calhoun wrote an essay called Searching for a soul mate is futile. The ideal partner is the one you create. Based upon her book, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, in her essay she uses quotes and commentary to advance the idea that even if soulmates exist, they do not happen in a blaze of light but rather by hard work over decades. [All italics in blockquotes mine]

The concept [of soulmates] dates back at least to Plato’s Symposium. Zeus, seeking to humble humans, split us in half, forcing us to wander in search of our other half: “So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.” While romantic, this has done an awful lot of damage — creating impossible-to-meet expectations, making people think that a happy, healthy relationship isn’t good enough, tricking people into holding out for “the one.”

[J.R.R. Tolkien] acknowledged that soul mates are pretty good in theory: “In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world.” “Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgment concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married. Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates.” Tolkien blamed our “soul mates” obsession on the Romantic chivalric tradition: “Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake. . . It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eye off women as they are” — that is, “companions in shipwreck not guiding stars.”

[Ada Calhoun] I love that: companions in shipwreck. True soul mates are made, not born. This tracks with what I see in long marriages. It took time for many of even the most loving couples to feel like kindred spirits. It wasn’t something that happened in the first hour, or even in the first year. It took time, and patience, and commitment.

Our old notion of soul mates is not helpful. “The ‘real soul-mate,’” Tolkien wrote, “is the one you are actually married to.”

As a writer of spanking fiction, the soulmate meme is a quite handy one to utilize. The valiant and virile knight storming the citadel and capturing rescuing the dainty and virginal princess from the clutches of the wicked fill-in-blank villain. The hardened and stoic loner melted by the bratty runaway. The overworked executive swept away by the dangerous and mysterious sugar daddy. The list is infinite.

Ada’s point however, is that waiting for your soulmate to arrive on a white horse; or show up on time for a first date, is not a strategy likely to succeed for a lifetime. No matter how many points of compatibility the online dating site promises, or how many ‘perfect’ matches align with your stars, receiving a rose means nothing in the long term. You have to create love out of lust and household chores.

The flip side of course, is that if it were that simple to create a soulmate, then there wouldn’t be so many divorces. Sometimes marriage can’t be salvaged. Sometimes the reasons for getting married created a situation where soulmates were never even possible. Sometimes, out of the millions of possible soulmates, the partner chosen wasn’t the right one and moving on is the best thing to do. Staying married to someone who is not a partner in any sense should not preclude starting over and searching again.

What about D/s then? Was kink part of the initial lust that attracted you to your current partner? When did you feel that they were the “one”? What I find so fascinating about D/s is how often it comes on later in life, either with the first soulmate, or after ending sometimes multiple marriages and/or relationships. It seems to me that those people who are inclined to D/s and spanking, are much more determined to seek out compatible partners than those who drift along in a vanilla haze.

If you are not currently in a D/s marriage, but wish to be, then all the time in the world will not be enough if your partner is not interested. Believe it or not, there are those that aren’t attracted to spanking. I know, seems inconceivable that if asked, someone would turn down the opportunity to spank their spouse; but in that case, a little judicious research and show-and-tell, may tip the scales in favor of a trial run. If you have a stable marriage/relationship with your partner(s), then an open and honest dialogue about your desire to spank or submit to a spanking, may be the start of something special. If the answer is still no, then is the rest of the package worth keeping? That is a decision only you can make.

So, as Ada states, can you create a soulmate in D/s through ‘time, and patience, and commitment’? Duh! Of course you can! Just shake the stardust from your eyes, unfurl the mainsail and steer clear of the rocks.