I'm impressed with the number of soulmate and twin flame stories here. All the happy endings! I'm so jealous. My story is not quite as happy  but it is still a story of lives, plans, and love. The story begins about forty-eight years ago and will continue until the end of time. 

I was a Mormon at a church Halloween party. My mother forgot that she was supposed to pick me up when the party was over so I went to a neighborhood home to ask if I could use their phone to call her. Inside the house, I saw a geeky girl in faded flannel pajamas and a towel wrapped around her head. As soon as I saw her I thought, 'That's the girl I'm going to marry.' Being twelve years old, my next thought was, 'Why am I such a dork. My brother is right, I'm a dork!' I left the house and got a ride home. I didn't see that girl again until I was nineteen. No, this story is not about her as my soulmate. 

I met my soulmate when I was a handsome young lad of fifteen, selling mistletoe at a shopping center. That's what we called them before the term Shopping Mall was coined. She walked past me and I knew in that instant that she was different from any girl I had ever met. It was love at first sight. I sold her a baggie of mistletoe for her phone number. I knew that she was a girl who I would love and hoped that she would love me in return. 

During that portion of my youth I had several consecutive and concurrent girlfriends, a few of whom were intimate. When I first called this new girl, the feeling was different, it didn't seem like the others. I went to her home and we kissed. Something about what we were doing was entirely different, a feeling of another type of  love began to grow. It was unsettling. I knew she was beautiful and our kisses were passionate but something didn't feel right. She told me that I should leave before her mother got home from work and we started walking through the garage to her driveway. Suddenly, I felt my heart beating in a way that I had not felt before. Images and thoughts flooded through me. I knew something, remembered so much. The presence of a higher consciousness was known. 

I turned to the girl, not knowing how to explain what I was going through and what I suddenly knew. In my mind were running two thoughts, one set of thoughts of my fifteen year old self and the other set of thoughts of a timeless being who I knew to be my higher self. 'I'm going to have to break up with you,' I told her. The words were almost foreign to me. I searched for a way to explain. 'Ah, you're the kind of girl who I would fall in love with and I don't think you are affectionate enough to return that love,' I lied. 

 The truth was that I knew we were with each other in an earlier life, but we weren't meant to be together in this life. I wanted to leave her then because I knew I would love her greatly but would have to let her go when our childhood was complete. My higher self feared that the break up, which I envisioned happening shortly after high school graduation, would be so devastating that I would not be able to complete my lessons in this life. 

After I had made my stumbling statement that she was not affectionate I had a change of heart. It seemed a running conversation was going on. Not that my Earth bound self was saying words to my higher self, rather that emotions of knowing feelings were being exchanged with lightening speed. I found myself saying, 'Actually, I think we were together in a previous life and I think we loved each other a great deal. I know that we would love each other again but in this lifetime, we have separate lessons. I think you're going to go far away for your lessons and I will have to stay here. We could be together for a short time, but about the time we would go to college we would have to part. I think that would be devastating to me and I might not be able to do the lessons I came her to do.' Now, I say there, 'I found myself saying'.' You see, the experience was as though another person, my higher self, was speaking through me. Even as I spoke, I felt I was observing rather than speaking , and I didn't know what I was about to say. 

So, imagine what the fourteen year old girl heard me say. 'I'm breaking up with you because you aren't affectionate enough ' blah, blah blah ' something about a past life, weird. I wonder what I did wrong? Breaking up with me! Something about lessons. Why is he breaking up with me?'  

That day, during the conversation, I saw her future in Florida and Georgia; even seeing that she would be in the Florida Keys and in a specific house in the hills of Georgia. Yet, I didn't have any basis for those thoughts, or that it was in anyway possible. We lived in California and I didn't know anything about her except for the past life memories. I thought about telling her exactly what I saw, but stopped myself because I reasoned that she would think that it happened because of my suggestion or that my prediction and her actual life were merely a coincidence. 

At the same time as I was seeing into her future, I remembered her as my mate in a previous life. We had lived in hilly country with stone cottages and stone fences. We were old, short and round. I had big broad hands and liked making dark wood furniture for our home. In one part of the visual memory I saw her standing in one of our fields, She was chubby with rosy round cheeks and wore a long dress. I saw that our stone house had two windows, one on either side of the door. There were flower boxes beneath the windows. Then the scene shifted to inside the house where she was sitting near the fireplace. I was finishing work on a dark wood cradle. She was smiling at me and I knew that we had spent a loving life together, and were both very happy. The love we shared in that life was very strong. These were visions; a lot like having a dream in your mind while still awake, but also like remembering something that had just happened. My awareness of them was instantaneous. 

It was odd to be standing with a beautiful fourteen year old girl, seeing her, and also seeing a chubby, big cheeked, elderly country woman, and to know that the two were the same soul. Yet, the reality of both images were equal.  

There was something about the visions that made them known as true memories rather than mere imagination. For one thing, I wasn't prone to anything like this happening to me before that day. The other thing is how the vision 'felt' to me. There was a certainty to the memory that was exactly like any other concrete memory, distinct from a dream, daydream, imagination, or verbal 'story' memory. It was like this: Whatever you did yesterday, you remember now. There is no way that you can undo the memory or think of it as something you imagined. You know that you were doing that. Well, the memory of our previous life was just like that, clear, precise, known as though it happened the day before, undeniable. In addition, there was a feeling of that 'presence' of my higher, spiritual, self. In that moment, my consciousness transformed from an awkward fifteen-year-old boy who was interested in girlfriends and the Beatles, to a mature, knowledgeable, much older, spiritual being who I knew to be my true self. Third, the experience was a transformational experience, meaning that it made a profound change in my life from that day forward; Imaginings, daydreams, and wishes don't have that power. Forth, the memory of that experience is as vivid today as if it had happened this morning. Whole years of my life I have forgotten, but that experience, forty-five years ago is indelible. 

I saw, as I walked away that day, down the sidewalk from her home, I would go to her in my late fifties, when our lessons were nearly done, to tell her that what I had said that day was actually true. I saw a stack of typed pages that I would give her then. Because I was 'seeing' the vision, I had no idea that the papers would be a manuscript of a novel that I had written for her. I thought about what had just happened to me and wondered why; I wondered how I would live my life knowing now that it was just a fragment of a much larger and more meaningful life. I was startled that I had been allowed to know what had just been revealed. Now, I knew that our lives are planned by our souls before we are born. I was slightly panicked that knowing this would invalidate my experiences.   

(How did I live, knowing what I learned: Have you watched a fantasy movie and become immersed in the story? You shudder as Frodo is stabbed by the ring wraith. That's called 'Suspended disbelief' It's what makes it possible for us to enjoy the movie even though we know it is a fantasy. Since that day of the vision I have been two individuals: one who participated in the dramas of life and one who knows that this life is but a stage for the learning of our souls. Like any actor on a stage, I am immersed in my part, believing for the moment that I am the human I am, yet I know, as the actor knows, that when the play is over I will go home as who I truly am, a spiritual being evolving.)  

Everything went back to normal after that. I resumed being a teen-age boy. I had other girlfriends and the usual teen-age things to do. I put the experience to the back of my mind for at least a few months. It was entirely too much for my fifteen year old self to think about. Then came the twist: When she wrote a letter to me asking me to come back. That changed everything. The letter was sweet and sincere. What it said was that she knew you could be affectionate and she wanted me to give her that chance. Evidently, she had heard my 'line' about why I was breaking up with her, that I had said at first, because the truth was so hard to explain. She must have assumed that the truth, about our past lives, was the 'line' and that I was rejecting her because she wasn't affectionate.   

Everything that had happened that day came back. Reading her letter more than once, I debated for hours, alone in my bedroom, even crying; I argued back and forth with myself, my heart torn over the question of whether I should go to her, knowing what I knew, or stay away. In a detached way, I knew that the emotional reaction to the letter and the debate I was having was verification that what I remembered about us, and what I knew about our future, was true. In a detached way, I knew that I was deciding something very important, not the decision of a teen-ager, the decision of a soul on its path through life. No decision in my life had ever been so seriously pondered. I knew that if I went back to her that I would fall completely in love and still, she would have to leave for her lessons and I could not go with her. I knew it would tear my heart apart. 

My final decision was to let the wings of love enfold me, even allowing the sword of love, hidden amongst the pinions, to pierce my heart, (from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, which I had read often since age twelve); For to know true love, even for a single day, and to feel its wound for a lifetime, would be better than to never know love at all. I also reasoned that the damage had already been done. I knew that having met her, even for the briefest time, that all who followed would be measured against what I knew in my heart: a love so true, so pure, and so eternal that I could never love another in that way, an everlasting love from deep within, a love that wasn't in my heart but in my soul. I would know a love that was more than something within me, a love that even the word love cannot describe, a love that wasn't what I felt, rather a love that I was. And I knew that when she would go, my soul would be torn asunder. Those are the thoughts I had that day, when I was fifteen, as I decided that I would see her again. 

Lately, I have had questions about why we ever met, knowing that we could not be together in this life. Was it an accident or planned? Do our souls naturally seek each other out in each lifetime? I'm certain that our meeting in this life was planned, so that my awareness of the spiritual realm would be factual. The best things I have done, and some of my greatest lessons, have been due to that knowledge. That is, the work I performed, done with the compassion that comes from knowing we have a higher purpose, and that we each have individual paths, required that higher awareness. I worked as a psychiatric counselor able to connect to patients in a compassionate way due to my awareness of our spirituality. I lived a life of giving to others, seeing good in every being, and doing my best to do no harm. Like everyone, I've had my failings and times of uncertainty. Yet, the awakening I had with my soulmate was the turning point in my life that enabled a spiritual path of learning and being. 

The next major incident with my soulmate happened on the day I asked her to marry me. For us at least, there was a place between human childhood, where we are prepared to face our trials, and the commencement of our life lessons. At that point, we were at a crossroads and it was our option, by our freewill, to defer the lessons to another incarnation if we desired. I wanted to, but she did not. I'm the one who is so ignited by her presence that I throw the textbooks out the window. It's very much like a young college age couple who have the option of going to another year of university, attending separate classes and living in separate dorms, OR, behind Door #2, going on a one year jaunt around Europe and being in each other's arms every night. She was the pragmatist who said -- lets finish school first, then we'll have fun.  

At that moment, I saw all of my life ahead, in either direction, with her or without her. The experience was much like looking through a telescope into time. I saw our children; souls who we both know and love. I saw us on camping trips and sitting in our living room with our Christmas tree; I saw her holding our children in her arms. Most of all, I saw her smiling. I knew we would have been very happy in that future.  

I also saw my life ahead without her. I saw the places I would live and the women I would call my wife. I saw the life that I would live in order to achieve my lessons and wait for her. In order to learn my lessons I would have to suspend knowledge of her and the world we came from. I would go thru the motions of life, playing the roles of husband, father, friend, and worker, but my life would be detached from my real self. Much like an actor on a stage, who is now the character he is portraying, yet knows that he is also an actor with a real life beyond the stage. I would live as a man with his feet in two worlds, and I saw that emptiness would be my shadow; And what I saw, came true. 

My first, seven-year marriage, was somewhat like being with a lab partner in college: You have fun with the person, you experiment, your relationship is amicable, you learn a lot, but when the lesson is over, you are done. That was the girl I had seen when I was twelve, a co-participant in life's planned lessons. It was simply that our two soul's, close to the same level, and needing what each other could supply, could link up for some lessons in common. Those were lessons I would rather have deferred. 

Two more marriages, much the same. Twelve years ago, I used the internet to find where my soulmate was living. Of course I found an address in Key West and several in Georgia. I wrote a 200 page novel for her. Last year I delivered the novel to her. As I drove up her driveway I saw the exact house of my vision that day in the garage. She didn't recognize me at all after forty years since we had last met. She doesn't feel any connection to me. And I, well I love her just as much as I did on the day I gave her a bag of mistletoe for her phone number, and on the day I asked her to marry me.  There is no 'need/want' in that statement, not for this lifetime anyway, just a consistent, eternal, ever-present faith in the connection of our souls. 

The thing is, my final explanation, the only one that makes any sense to me, is that she and I are spiritually connected, born of the same light, from the womb of the universe. There is no one else in the universe who I love as much. I know we had a wonderful life together before and that she has to live her life lessons without me this time around. It's not even the same kind of love that one would feel, say, in a romance. It doesn't 'feel' like a human emotion, a longing, or a need. The only way I can explain that is to say that it's a part of me, in my soul. It's not what I feel, it's what I am. I will wait for her in that tunnel that leads to the light. There, she will finally remember, and will know that I loved her every day of my life.