I'm thinking that if you think you may have found The One, it would be hard everytime the One annoyed you not to wonder if, indeed, The One isn't The One and, in fact, The One was still out there. Whereas if you believe you've chosen one of many possibilities, you understand your partner's going to annoy the crap out of you from time to time, but then again, so would anyone else.

I think there is a pool of soul mates. There has to be some unconscious WTF connection for the thing to get going/last. I don't think you can just decide with your head to be with someone. On the other hand, yes, your partner will annoy you. So would anyone else from the pool. But someone from outside the pool, or merely on the banks of the pool, would annoy you on an unacceptable level.

There are few people on the planet capable of irritating me more than myself. I've long said that one of my fondest wishes would be to take me out for a drink (or five) and bitch about myself until I got it all out of my system.

Jokes about dissociative tendencies aside, if you can't recognize that capacity in and with someone else, even the most wonderful and compatible person in the world, I think you're doing everyone involved a disservice.

I need at least three bitches.

What? I meant to keep the relationship financially solvent. It's simple pimpinomics.

Eideteker, you make me laugh. You may swim in my pool in a future lifetime.

Just remember to post tthis sign, rainbaby:
≡ Click to see image ≡

jonmc, you are so not in the pool in any lifetime. That makes fun of my Girl Logic in a mean way!

*plays in sandbox*

I think The One is an illusion. I think there are many people that each of us could make a strong, meaningful, lifelong connection with.

The illusion is the result of people finding one of those many when the timing is right for both and both are willing and able to pursue it. When two people like that settle down, it certainly seems to them that they have found The One. However, what they found is that because of their situation, they just didn't need to progress to the Other Seven to Fifteen.

"The Other Seven to Fifteen." Brilliant, Miko. I may appropriate that in the future.

This great article (via MeFi, of course), has influenced my thinking somewhat.

Miko's point from a pessimistic perspective (Margaret Drabble, (The Waterfall, 1969):

"Human contact seemed to her so frail a thing that the hope that two people might want each other in the same way, at the same time and with the possibility of doing something about it, seemed infinitely remote."

)

You dropped this, tangerine.

I liked that article, Miko.

It reminds me of a past boyfriend who had decided that he was only going to sleep with 10 women over the course of his life, which seemed highly arbitrary to me. I was #9. I think he's still with the girl he dumped me for, and I wonder about his motivations there...

That's really, really bizarre to me, occhiblu -- I can't begin to put myself into the mind of a person who needs to define his limits like that, and then to go ahead and force himself to actually live exactly according to them. Do human beings really have such a need to attach significance to some kind of dogma -- any kind -- that pulling numbers out of hats to attach to non seqiturs will give them the ordered structure they need to understand, say, relationships? I just can't fathom that.

"Welcome, please take a number!"

Plus, he obviously has poor judgement when it comes to making decisions about staying with women.

I'm lucky in that I found (although I wasn't looking) The One the first time around. Whether or not he's the only One will remain an unanswered question (toe tags, babeee!). The mister is perfect for me, clay feet and all.
;^)

to refute your theory, I think you could argue that people who believe in The One are more optimistic and have more emotionally invested in their person not being wrong enough to break up with, that they might downplay, not be bothered by, ignore or just not notice the negative traits of their SO, while someone with a more pragmatic outlook might sort of take a more 'consumer reporting'-ish angle, assessing whether the relationship is working constantly. It's like people who believe in god - you might logically think they'd be more disappointed than atheists in all the imperfections of the world, but that's not how it works at all...

I don't believe in soulmates, but I would not be surprised if people who did generally considered themselves happier than those who don't...

DaShiv --- Awwwwww. Thanks.

In any event, I'm so much better off without that particular guy that I can't even begin to explain. Had I stayed with him, I would have been one extremely dysfunctional chicka.

And I have no idea why it took me so long to check back in on this thread.