Stop Waiting for Your Soul Mate
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
Do you believe in true love? Probably so: 94 percent of Americans say they do, according to one 2019 survey by the data-collection company Statista. I am one of them, after 30 years of marriage to my true love.
True love isn’t too controversial, I think. But a large portion of Americans also hold some even more romantic—and less realistic—beliefs about love. According to a 2017 run by the dating site Elite Singles, 61 percent of women and 72 percent of men believe in love at first sight. Back in 2011, a Marist poll , “Do you believe in the idea of soul mates, that is two people who are destined to be together?” To this question, 74 percent of men
