Answer

Do I Need to Find My One Soulmate?

You may believe Heavenly Father can guide you toward marriage and still wonder whether there is one particular person you are supposed to find. What if you somehow miss that person? What if you meet someone wonderful but never receive a dramatic spiritual confirmation that says, This is the one? Those questions can make dating feel more stressful than it needs to. The restored gospel offers a reassuring way to see it: God can guide you in choosing a spouse without requiring you to discover one predestined person.

Eternal Truths

Choosing whom to marry is an important use of your agency. In 2 Nephi 2:27, Lehi teaches his children that because of Jesus Christ, they are “free to choose.” Heavenly Father can guide, warn, reassure, and help you recognize what matters while still allowing the decision to truly be yours.

A good marriage is something two people continue building after they choose each other. President Spencer W. Kimball taught that “‘Soul mates’ are fiction and an illusion,” while also encouraging serious thought, prayer, and fasting in choosing a spouse. Whom you marry matters deeply. But so does what you both become as you worship, repent, forgive, sacrifice, and keep covenants together.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Movies, books, and even the way people sometimes tell their love stories can make the right relationship seem obvious from the beginning. That can be comforting because certainty feels safer than making a choice. But it can also make normal questions and uncertainty feel like signs that a relationship must be wrong.

What Research Shows

A Wheatley Institute study of 615 couples found that highly connected couples were especially marked by commitment, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, meaningful time together, and deliberate effort. Lasting closeness seems to involve much more than simply finding someone who feels like a perfect match from the start.

Questions to Think About

• Am I waiting for a level of certainty God has not promised?
• Am I noticing character, discipleship, friendship, and attraction?
• Could comparison be making a good relationship harder for me to recognize?

What You Can Do

This week, write down three qualities that would help two people build the kind of marriage described in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Let those qualities shape what you pray about and what you notice as you date.

Jesus Christ can help you make a wise choice without seeing the whole future first. You can trust His guidance and still use the agency He has given you.