The idea that each of us is destined to find our soulmate was first introduced by one of the world’s greatest philosophers. In 385 BCE, Plato wrote that each human was one half of a whole being that had been split in two by the gods and longed to be reunited with our missing half. “Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole,” Plato said in The Symposium. The idea took hold of our collective imagination and artists breathed life into the concept of soulmates through songs, novels, plays and films.
From the 17th century West Yorkshire moors, where Cathy declared her love for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, saying, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” to the bloodstained streets of Paris in the throes of revolution, when Marius fell irretrievably in love with Cosette in Les Misérables with a glance, the notion that there is one perfect person for us all has excited and compelled us.
It may seem fantastical, but there is truth at the heart of this romantic notion. Psychiatrist Amir Levine, whose book on romantic bonds, Attached, has sold more than 2 million copies, says soulmates are a physiological fact.
“Biologically speaking, soulmates are entirely real,” Dr Levine wrote in . “Humans evolved with the neurocircuitry to see another person as special. We have the capacity to single someone out from the crowd, elevate them above all others and then spend decades
