Over spring break, apart from enjoying the Chicago weather, sleeping in, and hanging out with friends, I was catching up on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Some mornings, I would wake up at 10am, snuggle with my dog, and watch Netflix till maybe the late afternoon. I have no shame. During one of my Sex and the City binge sessions (I can neither confirm nor deny that I’ve watched every episode at least twice), I suddenly found myself beginning season 4. Again, I can neither confirm nor deny that I had gotten to season 4 in less than a week.
Airing from 1998-2004, Sex and the City follows the lives of four friends as they navigate love, sex, dating, and friendship in Manhattan. In the first episode of season four, “The Agony and the ‘Ex’-tacy,” the ladies are at their favorite restaurant for a late night dinner. During their meal, Carrie Bradshaw, a columnist, expresses her worries of being “35 and alone.” To this, her friend Charlotte York then replies, “Don’t laugh at me, but maybe we could be each other’s soulmates. Then, we could let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
While Charlotte is often painted as the fairytale romantic of the group, she’s got a point. In life, we all hope to meet our soulmate. That one person with whom you just feel this deep connection with, that understands us like no one else does. Someone who can make us feel secure and safe even when everything around us is falling apart. Growing up, we are often taught to associate the term soulmate with romance. However, Charlotte made me think otherwise.
I believe that we can have more than one soulmate and that the term doesn’t always have to be used in a romantic light. Like Charlotte said, our friends can be our soulmates. We all have a friend that we can always turn to when we feel down, who laughs at our jokes even when they don’t make sense, who we tell everything to. So, why sholdn’t we categorize our friends as soulmates?
When we romanticize the idea of soulmates, we make them seem much further than they are. But more often than not, our soulmates are right in front of us in the form of friends.
Image Sources: Thumbnail Image-Keystone Press, Image 1