What if someone who already died, or hasn't been born yet was the person that would make you happiest?

You could say that about millions of scenarios. I could have potentially won the lottery if I bought my ticket at one store instead of the other.

I could’ve potentially been a movie star or addicted to drugs if I moved to California after high school etc.

You don’t know what you’ve never had. Only if you found the person that is perfect for you, spent some time with them, then they were gone from your life… only then would you be able to miss that and speculate on “what ifs”.

In life, there are infinite possibilities. The person I am today may not feel the same next year, thus a perfect person for me would change.

It’s a sad thought, but in reality, not worth thinking about. First, the world is filled with wonderful people. How much happier could the ideal person, dead or not yet alive, bring considering the selection to choose from that exist? Second, I truly feel that we need to follow our dreams and make our own happiness. Finding someone and wanting to spend the rest of your lives together with is just the icing on the cake of life. Saying that there is someone better suited out there that I will never meet wouldn’t change my choice.

So @Ltryptophan, what if, during this life, you met the person that you believe is “PERFECT” for you, but they don’t agree that you are “PERFECT” for them? Does that mean that it’s not as perfect as you believe or do you stick with how you feel and watch as they walk out of your life? With today’s technology we have ample opportunity to meet the perfect person, yet when so many do they continue to search. What does that say about love and proximity? About life in general?

Well you’re shit out of luck then, aren’t you? But since you’ll never know it’s totally irrelevant.

Sucks for me.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Yeah I was gonna say…guess I’d be fucked outta luck lol.

I think @Pied_Pfeffer has something there. Life is about more than sharing it with the “Perfect” person. Everyone is so important that just making your life about any one person is definitely a waste. The more special you are the more that sharing yourself with everyone becomes an even better ideal to strive for.

But, I suppose the scope of my question should have been about that limited portion of life we think of and define as romantic love.

Some people might feel that anything less than 100% unrelenting, ultimate, happiness is comparative unhappiness.

I’m very happy with my marriage and yet there could be someone that’s even still alive on this planet that could make me 1% happier, but as I said, I’m very happy in spite of that.

So rather than spend what could be the rest of a relatively lonely life looking for someone who might give me that extra 1%, I prefer to enjoy the hell out of the relationship that I have.

Actually, I’m perfectly happy making that extra 1% my responsibility. ;-)

I really don’t believe in such relationships. Connections with people evolve, they grow, even the best relationships of your life will have some really lousy moments. There isn’t any such thing as the “PERFECT” person for me.

I think it’s a good question for bringing out these feelings very clearly…I don’t think I’ve heard them addressed quite as clearly without it…

“What if I’d been born fifty years before you on a house on the street where you lived?
Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike, would I know?”
-Ben Folds, The Luckiest
Course, now he’s divorced from the woman he wrote that song for…but don’t think about that, it’s a pretty song.

I guess I don’t really believe in the concept of a soul mate. I could describe for you right now the kind of person that I think would be ideal for me, but in reality I’ll probably end up falling in love with someone completely different, because shared experiences will draw us close and the little flaws will come to be the things I enjoy about the person.

If there’s someone who was or who will be or who I will never meet because they live on the other side of the world, who would be “perfect” for me, it doesn’t matter, because there’s plenty of people here now who I can make a connection with, and they don’t have to be perfect for that to happen.

I would say that perfect matches are made, not born. No two people are perfect for one another by nature. They become perfect for one another through a process of mutual discovery.

But as usual, Tim Minchin says it better.

That life seems like a game of chance, but really it is all planned out for us even before we were born.

I thought someone might bring fate into this. Do you really believe that maybe fate/God/Destiny/predestination has grafted the right people into the right moments in our lives @MRSHINYSHOES?

It would be disaster! Nuclear conflagration! People would all be so angry they’d all kill each other!

No. The fact that we have not yet had nuclear conflagration is proof that there is someone for everyone, and they all live at the same time.

Under the orange tree.

What if

@Ltryptophan Yes.

I’ve wondered something similar… 100+ years ago, most people barely travelled beyond the outskirts of their own towns/villages. When they found love, (or at least found a partner), it was someone from the same location.

Now, it is possible to find a soulmate across the great ocean.

My wondering was kind of regarding the whole fate/God/predetermination thing: 100+ years ago, would whoever the Determiner is be sure to place the soulmate within reach? And now that we can travel and communicate across the world so easily, so the soulmate is still within reach, even if they are 6 hours behind?

It was only a wondering though!

Sometimes the PERFECT person becomes less so . . . much less so. And then it’s not so perfect.

I agree with the comments above that we create our perfect relationships, we don’t find them. I also believe that a fair amount of self-delusion is at play when those love hormones are simmering in the heart caldron.

I am the only person who can make me the happiest. I can find other people to share my happiness with, and we can create many perfect moments. And I can do it all alone, too. Just sayin’.

They are already born and you see them in the mirror looking back at you every day. No one else is responsible for your happiness but you. There is no ONE perfect person that will make you happy. Any person you happen to share time with and love, it is the love and relationship you build together that makes you happy, not ‘the person’. And if you truly knew what love was, you would not make that other person responsible for making you happy. Life and love simply doesn’t work that way and you are setting yourself up for disfunction, depression and unhappiness if you hold on to that ideal.

You can’t miss what you’ve never known.

What makes 2 people “perfect” for each other?
Isn’t it the sense of rapport that they have with each other? The sense that they are seen, understood, and loved for who they are? The sense that they don’t have to be perfect to be perfect for each other?
Time changes us and holding on to this feeling and this special relationship is what takes work. So maybe you find someone that is perfect for you to begin with, but then you change or they change, or you both change. You need to keep loving each other and making room for those changes in order to keep life in your relationship.
Maybe sometimes you just have to do that work up front! I mean, maybe you meet someone and they don’t seem like the perfect person but your relationship grows and deepens because you both work on it. There has to be something there, a spark, or a respect, an admiration, something that you know is special.
So, as most people have said, no relationship is perfect and all relationships need to be maintained. You need to keep cherishing each other and making allowances for each other’s flaws.
I think to a certain extent finding the right person for you depends on factors like how picky are you? How forgiving are youi? How tolerant are you of personal differences? Some people are more idealistic than others. Some feel like the perfect person will “save” them and make everything right in their world. Maybe, during the infactuation stage this feels like what is happening. But that doesn’t last forever.
Even though much of what I just said seems like a denial of the idea that there is one “perfect” person for us, when all is said and done I do believe that there can be more or less of what makes a special connection. Some people are lucky in love. They meet that person, some people never do but they can still be happy as long as they know how to give and receive love. As long as they value what they do have and don’t just keep seeking for something better and more perfect.