Experience description:   

Pam is 45 year old.  She met her soul mate 15 years ago when she was 30.  He was 18.  The experience when they met was one of profound recognition.  The first time they saw each other they felt they were not strangers.  'It is hard to explain but I felt like we had always known each other.  I knew he was IT' 

However, given the age difference and the circumstances at the time, it was inappropriate to pursue the possibility of any kind of relationship, particularly love or sexual.  Pam chose to stand back and watch her soul mate grow and grow up.  'It was the most painful experience knowing that we could not be together.  I yearned for him.  I yearned for him for 6 years until it got to the point that I had to move away from him.   I moved to another part of California and cut myself off.' 

I had other relationships but nothing ever matched up to what I had experienced with him.   I still thought about him and missed that level of connection that I knew was possible.  He was the only person I have ever met who I had felt totally comfortable with.  In his presence I can be totally who I know myself to be. This year, when I turned 45, I decided that I could not continue to live my life without knowing the answer to the question:  'Is he really my soul mate?  If I found him again, would it feel the same?'  I had to know.  

So I went back to the place where I had lived before, not knowing where he was or whether he would still be there.  But he was still there.  He had been married but his marriage had ended. He was now 33.  When we saw each other again, it was amazing. The feelings we had experienced before were still there.  The first thing he said to me was: 'Why did you leave me? How could you have gone away?'  He had had the experience of never finding that level of connection with anyone else. 

We were at peace again.  Now I know we will always be together. Being apart now is very difficult, especially for him.   He harbours fears that I will abandon him again.  We find it hard to be apart.   

For me, meeting a soul mate is a feeling of being totally comfortable with who you are in their presence.  We have an extraordinary level of communication but we can also just 'be' together without even having to talk.  It is not a physical experience although passion is definitely present. But lust shifts the focus to a physical thing.  When you are with your soul mate it is more to do with the 'essence'.  It is as though everything gets reduced to an essence, a single potent concentrated drop.  And you recognise that essence in each other.  

Needless to say I was so moved by Pam's story and I acknowledged the courage it had taken for her to go back and to search again for her soul mate.  She had no idea what she might find by going back but could no longer live her life without knowing the answer to the question: Should they be together? 

Now they have rekindled the spark of their relationship.  The fire had never gone out.  Pam shared with me that at age 45 she is pregnant and will be having his baby.  They have decided to call the child 'Aidan', a Gaelic, Middle English name that means 'Little Fire'.