Issue 19: Soulmates and Besties
and other people we're supposed to marry
Kurt: Hello everyone! It’s June. No, you’re not losing your mind, we didn’t have an issue for May for absolutely normal reasons (one of us went on vacation and caught COVID and had to quarantine in their cute AirBNB…okay it was me).
Ursula: The other one of us has been spending 14 hours a day playing Valheim and shirking all her other duties. Oops!
Kurt: Now we’re suddenly thrust into the dog days of summer in Chicago. We’re writing this from our climate controlled bunker, where we keep it so cold we’re practically cryogenically freezing ourselves.
But we have a hot take we’ve been dying to talk about. In the spirit of summer and being hot and bothered, we’re going to use this bonkers article–wherein the author falls hard and fast for her “soulmate”–as a diving board to jump into our topic: What makes a soulmate a soulmate? And how are they different from your bestie, your pal, your BFF? And which one of you has a pool we can borrow?
For me, a soulmate is a friendship on another level. It should feel profound, like you’ve known this person your entire life despite only meeting a few days ago. My first soulmate was a friend I met in college and we just understood each other on a fundamental level. Even though she lives half a country away, we still make time to talk regularly and be involved in each other's lives.
Gil is another soulmate. The first night we met, I knew there was something special about him. I have other soulmates, too. But those are the most significant ones. I’m sure some of you might be thinking “wait, aren’t we allotted one singular soulmate? One solitary best friend?” And to that I say no!
Ursula: Kurt, I really like your interpretations of soulmates; in particular, this notion that it doesn’t have to be someone with whom you have a sexual or romantic relationship, necessarily, but anyone who feels like your kindred spirit. I also have a college experience like that—I became friends with someone in an instant, all-encompassing way that I’d never experienced before. She and I eventually fell out of touch, but the connection we had for several years was very real and meaningful.
Like you, I don’t believe in soulmates as a “one and only” type of thing. JD and I work super well together and love each other, and I also believe we could both be just as happy with any number of other people. I mean, what if I had never met JD? Would that mean I was doomed to a life of never knowing true love and partnership? I don’t think so.
Kurt: We are led to believe that there is one person out there for us. That once we meet them we’ll “know.” If I had decided to close my dating app a week earlier, I never would have met Gil, but it doesn’t mean that I would have wandered this earth sad and alone. To those of you who have found The One, I am thrilled and happy for you. But this idea is constantly put on a pedestal higher than all of our other meaningful relationships.
Ursula: If you zoom out further, believing in “the one” has to mean you believe in destiny and preordination. And I just don’t. Now, I also don’t think this diminishes the partnership I have with my husband. I think it’s cool and great and lucky that we found each other, and I think we work hard to maintain a strong relationship and keep each other close.
Now to the question of referring to your partner as your best friend, as many women my age tend to. It’s an interesting phenomenon that I think has only become a thing in the last few decades, and if it suggests that more people are marrying for love and friendship than security or convenience, that’s obviously a good thing. And yet, something about it bugs me. One of my favorite TikToks is on this very subject:
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I think part of the problem with “marrying your best friend” is that as a culture we don’t give friendship the kind of weight and importance it deserves. Friendship is SO IMPORTANT, but we kind of take it for granted, and there’s not a lot of guidance out there about how to maintain a friendship in the way that we talk about maintaining a marriage or partnership.
To be clear, if you consider your partner your best friend, that’s great; I just ALSO think it’s great if that’s not the case. I’m like you, Kurt, in that JD is not my best friend. He’s a WONDERFUL friend, but he’s also a lot more than that. JD and I have talked before about whether we’d be friends if we had never gotten together as a couple. Honestly, I don’t think we would be! We might be acquaintances who’d be happy to see each other at a bar once in a while, but I don’t see a purely platonic relationship lasting between us. It’s an entirely different thing.
You mentioned the idea of choosing just one person for the coveted spot of bestie, and I think we see that differently. Best-friendship happens organically, and it can change as friendships grow or drift apart. It’s not about picking favorites, or having a mentality like the MySpace Top 8 that caused so many of us anxiety in the early 00s.
Kurt: I tried so hard to make sure everyone was given equal weight in my MySpace Top 8. Maybe that’s where it comes from. Having to arbitrarily rank your friends is silly. Because each of my friends brings something different to our relationship. Whether it’s art, or writing, or playing video games, or shaking our fists at the sky. Just like how Jack Donaghy and Pizzerina Sbarro had different partners that fulfilled specific relationship needs (sex idiot, grandpa energy, etc). Yes, all things come back to 30 Rock for us.
I do have to wonder if Gil and I would have been friends outside of our dating. I’d like to think yes, because we connected on favorite bands and movies early on. But it’s really hard to say! We would, at the very least, probably have been concert, movie, and gamer friends.
Ursula: I know you and I play a mutual role of “friend who will yell about this unhinged tweet with me.” It serves us well.
So let’s take it back to that absolutely incredible book excerpt we mentioned up top, which made the rounds online a month or two ago and is basically ancient history now. In sum, the author meets someone new, is completely infatuated with him, abandons her husband and children in anticipation of a new life with her new man(!!!), and then he’s like wow, this is not what I signed up for. Notably, the book is titled When Your Soulmate Says No. I want to maintain some glimmer of hope that that title is tongue in cheek, like, “when your soulmate says no…they might not be your soulmate!” But I’m probably being naïve.
Kurt: If it’s ancient history, does that make us internet archaeologists? I don’t think it’s naïve, but there’s too much weight put into these experiences we call “love at first sight.” I feel like that can be misconstrued as just big horny feelings for someone. But, again, society tells us that when we meet The One, we’ll just know. That everything will be in a soft, Glamour Shots filter, and rainbows and hearts will float around you. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had that experience. Have I been instantly attracted to someone before? Sure. Did I think they were my lifelong soulmate, MySpace number 1? God no.
Ursula: I don’t think I have either, but that’s just because I’m dead inside.
Okay, wait, I’m going to take your premise seriously here and think. Here’s my romantic story: when I met JD, we had matched on OKCupid the day before and he came down to Hyde Park to take me to lunch in the middle of the work day. We talked easily over turkey sandwiches and then he walked me back to my office. And then, right before we said goodbye, he—okay, I just need to preface this with, THIS IS NOT NORMALLY SOMETHING I WOULD LIKE—he took my hand and kissed it. Like old-timey gentleman style. It wasn’t sleazy or awkward. It was actually very sweet. And then he walked away and I had to go back into work like a chump, and I giggled the whole rest of the day. What was the question?
OH! I guess my point is, that was definitely a hearts-and-butterflies moment, and it’s also a separate experience from what our dating and married life has been. I think I’d still remember that day fondly even if JD and I didn’t date that long, you know?
Similarly, early on I had a weird insecurity about the fact that I didn’t have a big, explosive engagement (this was the era of flash mob engagements and that sort of thing). I felt like, if I didn’t have a great engagement story, would that mean our marriage wasn’t as legit or as love-filled as the ones where the engagement went viral on YouTube?
Kurt: You know the answer. Both of our marriages are illegitimate because neither of us had the foresight to make our engagements go viral.
Similarly, on our first date, Gil walked me to the train station and stole a little kiss from me. I swooned basically the whole train ride home. For me it cemented that my feelings for him were mutual. I’m sure if we hadn’t pursued a relationship after that, I would still be hung up on this amazing guy who swept me off my feet, if only for a moment.
But I also think that queer relationships and dating can be really fluid. I feel confident that if Gil and I ultimately didn’t commit to a relationship, we’d probably shift to being friends. And I think that happens a lot in the queer community. I’m not saying there aren’t any bad break-ups–far from it, as Gil and I can speak from personal experience–but I notice a lot more exes-turned-friends in queer social circles.
Ursula: That’s really lovely, and way more rare among straight people, from what I’ve seen. I think a lot of it gets back to that tired trope that (straight) men and women cannot be friends. We tend to cut and run—which, don’t get me wrong, is often the very right choice—it’s just that we often don’t leave room for much else.
Readers, we’d love to hear your stories. Do you believe in soulmates? Did you marry your best friend? Sound off in the comments. Hope you’ve been having a great Pride month!
