College Dating: The Race for a Soulmate

Art by Isabella Chiu

I know. You are reading the title and thinking, “Well, that’s dramatic.” It is, but it would be a lie to say that there is absolutely no societal pressure to find your person in college. Unlike high school sweethearts, which are considered special and rare, couples who met in college are pretty easy to find. Whether it’s your parents, your friends' parents, aunts, or uncles, there is going to be someone in your life who can tell a sappy love story about how by “fate” they found their partner while in the library or at a college party. The problem is that, after listening to these stories again and again of people meeting the love of their life, it creates this precedent that you, too, will meet your person in college. 

“Everyone says the people you meet in college are the people you are going to have for the rest of your life, so there is a pressure to find your person,” Hannah Friedman ‘27 said. Even during those discussions with friends about “what we are looking forward to in college”, there always seems to be a mention of excitement at the idea of the new dating pool. But it’s these instances that make the fun idea of possibly finding your soulmate turn into you needing to find your soulmate in college, or you worrying you’re missing your window to find true love. 

So who is to blame for this race to find your soulmate? Well, the mythos of soulmates has existed for hundreds of years, but it was only first written in 1822 in a letter from poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poet was not only a theologian and philosopher, but the founder of the Romantic Movement in England. What could be a better time to be writing about soulmates than the Romantic Movement, a time period that embraced sensation and emotion while rejecting rationality and reason? Coleridge wrote, “To be happy in Married Life... you must have a Soul-mate.” Ironically, the so-called founder of soulmatism never found a soulmate as he married his wife due to societal pressure and eventually divorced. I guess it is true when they say coaches don’t play. 

While the founder wasn't quite successful in finding his person, the concept of soulmates still impacts how people view romance and their relationships. This begs the question: why does society love the idea of soulmates? “I think people like the reassurance that there is someone out there for you,” Friedman said.

Sage Jezierski ‘27 added, “I think people enjoy the idea that there is a person for you out there, and you just have to find them, but in reality, you have to in a way make your soulmate.” Jezierski went on to describe how, if you are still in your relationship going into college, many people perceive it as being “unfortunate” since so many view college as the “perfect time to meet someone.” In some ways, that makes sense: in college, you are exposed to a larger population of people right off the bat and have so many opportunities to get to know possible partners. But if there is anything we can learn from Coleridge, it’s that the possibility of finding the perfect person isn’t as promising as it seems. 

Hope is not lost, though. When I asked Lauren Davis ‘27 why they think society loves soulmates, they said, “I think it has a lot to do with media production and the idea of finding someone at the right place and right time and all the tropes that are associated with it.” With so many movies, shows, and books about predestined love, it is hard to escape the concept of soulmates. But with that in mind, through the many reiterations of “soulmate stories,” the definition of what it means to have a soulmate has definitely changed. This expansion of soulmates has led many to believe they found their person–just not Coleridge’s definition of one. Davis deems that “even platonic relationships can be soulmates.” Who could argue with that? The best friendships truly last a lifetime and can be as valuable of  relationships as their romantic counterparts.

It’s okay that you haven’t found your soulmate, and if you have, that's great! There is no pressure! Dating in college is supposed to be a time to explore and figure out what you want, so you may as well have fun instead of stressing out about finding your soulmate. So, for all the people still searching for their person, know that if predestined love truly does exist, it will come to you. Therefore, there is no time limit to finding your "soulmate" in or out of college. And who knows? Maybe you already found them, and you just don’t know it yet.