01 / Guided inquiry
Soulmate Recipe
An inquiry into childfree romantic partnering, bonding and intertwining as individuals.
The thinking behind the recipe
The logic of the Soulmate Recipe
Two people can feel a real pull toward each other and still find that their lives are hard to join. The recipe distinguishes natural connectivity, compatibility, viability and solvency in childfree romantic and sexual partnering.
Natural connectivity
The recipe starts from the idea that each person has an inherent range of people they are naturally connected to. The strength varies from person to person, so several people within that range may be more or less likely to make viable partners. The connection itself tends to shift more slowly than daily compatibility, though it can change. Each person can discern their own connections. The other person's recognition and choice belong to them.
Compatibility
Shared traits and ways of living can make two lives easier to join. Differences can also react well, bringing something genuinely desirable to both lives even when the change costs effort or inconveniences someone. Illness, work or other pressures can reduce compatibility for a while or for years, while the underlying connection remains.
Viability and solvency
Viability is whether two people can actually make room for a relationship. Solvency is whether they can keep doing so without depleting themselves or passing the cost on to others. A relationship can be possible to begin and too costly to sustain. The way each person meets the costs matters as much as the costs themselves.
Showing up and nourishing each other
Developing your own thought, wisdom and capacity to work through things is part of showing up. In this view, the way you live can quietly nourish people within your natural range and ease hollowing, even without direct contact. They can nourish you in turn. Each person has several such connections, and what one person's presence contributes can be particular to that connection.
How connection shapes a partnership
The recipe treats natural connectivity as a kind of natural marriage. Overriding it can draw attention and intimacy away from the connections they would otherwise nourish. In the recipe's view, that can make a relationship harder to sustain and increase the risk of violations, broken commitments and short-lived ties.
Individual choice
Within the spiritual view behind the recipe, overriding these connections is considered likely to go against God's unfolding. Each person is responsible for discerning and acting on their own connections, and free to decline pressure to partner for reproduction or for someone else's purposes.