It’s time to dis­cuss these three tan­ta­lis­ing terms and tru­ly un­der­stand what makes them dif­fer­ent. Al­so, find out if your re­la­tion­ship or past re­la­tion­ships can be placed in­to any of these cat­e­gories.

A dear friend of mine asked me to write about the con­cept of soul mates and if they ex­ist. I am so ex­cit­ed to delve in­to this top­ic which has so many lay­ers and opin­ion­at­ed be­liefs. My thought is that not on­ly do soul mates ex­ist but there is al­so the ex­is­tence of ‘life part­ners’ and ‘twin flames’. All three are beau­ti­ful con­nec­tions that are dif­fer­ent but equal­ly im­pact­ful love re­la­tion­ships any per­son can ex­pe­ri­ence or may not ex­pe­ri­ence in their life­time. I learnt a lot whilst do­ing re­search on these ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships and I hope every­one gains some clar­i­ty and un­der­stand­ing why dif­fer­ent love-bonds are made for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

What is a soul mate? Af­ter read­ing what felt like an en­tire li­brary of con­flict­ing the­o­ries, soul mates can be viewed as peo­ple you have a deep soul con­nec­tion with or you feel linked to in some way (al­most like you knew each oth­er from a past life). Both part­ners seem to just click nat­u­ral­ly. The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple claim this hap­pens in their first se­ri­ous re­la­tion­ship and the ex­pe­ri­ence tends to open you up as an adult, pro­vid­ing an av­enue for growth as you de­vel­op in­to the in­di­vid­ual you are meant to be in the fu­ture. Many think they lose their soul mate and ex­pe­ri­ence their first in­tense en­counter with heart­break and nev­er feel quite the same chem­istry with any­one af­ter. There is al­so a com­mon be­lief that you are al­lowed on­ly one true soul mate in your life­time, ac­cord­ing to most re­la­tion­ship ex­perts this is not the case, friends and fam­i­ly can be soul mates. For in­stance, you can meet some­one and de­vel­op such a bond of close­ness and love lead­ing to a deep lev­el of friend­ship, not just ro­mance. There­fore, soul mates are known to be kin­dred spir­its that sup­port us and un­der­stand us on a lev­el that very few can.

Twin flames are in­deed dif­fer­ent from the con­cept of soul mates. Your twin flame is said to be the oth­er half of your soul and he/she adds a feel­ing of com­ple­tion to your life. It is a high­ly pas­sion­ate, spir­i­tu­al and sex­u­al con­nec­tion that brings out ex­tremes in your be­hav­iour. Many feel like they are ad­dict­ed to their twin flame part­ner and all their en­er­gy shifts from ex­ter­nal fac­tors in­to this re­la­tion­ship. It is com­mon for these part­ners to have a soul tie and un­ex­plained psy­chic abil­i­ty to read in­to one an­oth­er in a way no­body else can. They tend to “bump” in­to one an­oth­er on ran­dom oc­ca­sions, even if they break up. This is due to a deep in­ten­si­ty that pulls them close and there may be many rec­on­cil­i­a­tion at­tempts if they de­cide to split up. Many be­lieve that twin flames some­times need to sep­a­rate and de­vel­op them­selves as in­di­vid­u­als be­fore as­pir­ing to­wards a last­ing re­la­tion­ship with one an­oth­er. This type of con­nec­tion can be­come so in­tense that it can de­vel­op in­to some­thing un­healthy and de­struc­tive in the long run. It can be over­bear­ing emo­tion­al­ly and even bring old trig­gers from past wounds to the sur­face, re­sult­ing in ei­ther de­feat or heal­ing and growth. This in­vig­o­rat­ing re­la­tion­ship is in­deed a one-of-a-kind, core-shak­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that can be com­pared to no oth­er.

A life part­ner is the third type and in­deed the love re­la­tion­ship that is most re­li­able and promis­ing. It is de­scribed as a healthy love that makes you feel “at peace”. There is a yin/yang en­er­gy as both of you bring bal­ance, dif­fer­ent strengths and healthy in­de­pen­dence to each oth­er. It is a love that works through tough times with pa­tience and the se­cu­ri­ty of know­ing your part­ner will not leave you at the drop of an over emo­tion­al hat. A won­der­ful sex­u­al and spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion where chem­istry and longevi­ty are preva­lent, these re­la­tion­ships of­ten lead to mar­riages that last, not on­ly on pa­per, but in each oth­er’s heart space. It is the peo­ple that get up each day and de­cide to make it work in a man­ner that heals and sup­ports with­out jeal­ousy and games. The con­cept of ‘life part­ner’ can hap­pen with soul mates and twin flames but both in­di­vid­u­als have to reach a lev­el in per­son­al de­vel­op­ment and growth for the con­nec­tion to be a healthy bal­ance of grow­ing pains, in­ten­si­ty and of course, love. It is al­so pos­si­ble that your life part­ner has the abil­i­ty to de­vel­op a stronger soul con­nec­tion with time.

All three unions are won­der­ful in their own way and many of us may have ex­pe­ri­enced at least one in our life so far. On the flip side, some of us may have nev­er gone through any. No jour­ney is the same, but it re­al­ly shows how many dif­fer­ent types of love re­la­tions ex­ist.