Is there such a thing as “the one”?

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I am in my late 20s and have been talking with many friends from my church lately about the concept of God having picked out a person for you for marriage (commonly called “the one”). Many of my friends don’t believe in this idea anymore, but I was taught growing up that there was such a person that God had in mind for you.

I don’t even know at this point which one I’d prefer to believe and I feel very confused (and overwhelmed). I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this and their reasoning.

Thank you!
 
“The One” is the person whom God has destined you to be with since the beginning of time. When or who that is will be up to you to find with the help of God’s grace and the Holy Spirit. Im 25 and believe my potential wife is out there, Im just terrible at searching lol
 
There may be a One in the sense that God has always known who we would marry… but we have free will. And our potential partners have free will. There are many potential partners for pretty much anyone.
 
There is such a thing as The One Among Those I Meet While I’m Open To Marriage. There is no such thing as The Only One On The Entire Planet. The latter is not what a person should seek in a spouse because (s)he could end up in a never-ending search for the perfect match (which also does not exist because there are no perfect people).
 
Paradoxically, you can’t know who “the one” is until you know it in retrospect. The things God knows from the vantage point of knowing all of time and eternity are things we will only know in the fulness of time. (Obviously, it is impossible that there is a “the one” in the sense that if you are widowed you are sunk and can only find a poor substitute after that!)

I would say that the idea that there is just one whom you have to “find” and might “miss out on” gives you some feeling that you could fail to find that one or could mistakenly marry someone else and only know “the one” after it was too late. Work hard to get rid of that notion. It could interfere with your discernment process and could certainly get in the way of working through difficulties in marriage which have this way of making “the one” temporarily look like a huge mistake.

I think it would be better to ask God to help you and the one you will marry to grow in grace, so that your marriage might be holy and fruitful. Leave it to God to know from God’s vantage point exactly who it is you are praying for.
 
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If there were only one person destined by God for you to marry, then we do not really have free will. What if that one person dies in a car wreck at age 5? You are then destined to be called to a vocation you cannot possibly enter?

God allows us to choose our spouse.
 
When I was growing up, I never anticipated being married. In high school, I did not date all that much. Though I liked girls, dating and the idea of getting married was not at the top of the list.
I did wind up getting married. She and I have been married for over 40 years.
Is she the one? She has been for me.
 
I strongly reject the notion of “The One.” First of all there is nothing to support it theologically, so I’m not going to bother with that. “The One” is contrary to what I think is a much better representation of reality: any potential couple that could get married will fall on a sliding scale of compatibility. The goal is to find someone that high on that scale to start with, and then the couple must actively work to keep that relationship going.

My problem with “the one” idea is that it minimizes the responsibility the couple has to put effort into the marriage because it’s just assumed that “I foundThe One, so that means everything has to work out now.”

Another problem with “The One” is that it is sometimes used as a rationalization for staying single for far too long. A person might find a series of dates that are very compatible, but any percieved flaw will be used as evidence that the other person isn’t “The One,” and therefore the search must go on. (Oh, and in the meantime, this person will have no problem sleeping with people who aren’t the one, and thus live in sin).

Even more dangerous is when “the one” is used as a rationalization for divorce. A couple can completely shirk their responsibility to work on their marriage and make it last as God intended, and can just split and look for someone else because they didn’t find “The One.”

ETA: I don’t like “you are The One.” Instead, I like "you are the one I chose."
 
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I don’t think there is ‘the one’. There is a lot of idealization about it. People spend years looking for the perfect person, for ‘the one’ that will be absolutely perfect for them. I think there is no perfect person that you meet and all the sudden everything is magical. Yes, there are people you click with more but, after the initial stage of falling in love, there is a different stage. It is the stage of the long term relationship, a stage in which commitment to each other and sharing common goals is super important, a stage in which God’s Grace and a strong will are necessary to stay together when challenges and the boredom of daily routine will suddenly be part of the couple life.
 
It’s like everything else. God allows us to choose our spouse but he knows which one we’re going to choose way in advance.

I also think God’s not above giving us a good push in the right direction sometimes.
 
Also please bear in mind that “the one” for Virgin Mary was an elderly gentleman, not what we might expect. The Jewish concept of soul mate is beshert, that means the gift, a gift from God, not just someone who pleases us or we please him/her. But someone who takes us back to God as a gift from Him to us (and us to him/her).
So while we may have a beshert, we, under our own will, may not be open for him/her. We are searching for our own ideals, based on our gut feelings, not open to His will.
A soulmate is also taking us Home, to God, even in unseen ways. While we search for someone obviously pleasing our expectatioms we may not be in fact searching for “the one”. If there is a beshert for us, only God and prayer can help us find him/her.
 
I think there is “the one” only in the sense that God has a plan for us. I don’t think you can “miss out” on the one by marrying early or letting somebody go. Any 2 people that are physically attracted to each other and strive for virtue could probably have a strong marriage. Love is a choice.

I do strongly believe that meeting my wife was an answer to my prayer, “God, please bring me to whoever it is your will for me to be with.” However, if one of us had made a poor choice early on that ended the relationship, such as refusing forgiveness, I believe God would have brought each of us to someone else.

God’s plan is multifaceted, so even if we were to do something He doesn’t want us to do, it doesn’t mean we will miss “the one”. His will brings good even from our poor choices, just like a child born from adultery.
 
I think you can be happy with a lot of different people. Don’t get me wrong, some people you just ain’t compatible with and marrying them will lead to a life of misery. But the reality is that often times looking for “the one” who you think will satisfy all of your wants and desires with no effort on your part will lead to a life of misery and loneliness.
 
God knows who we will end up with, and His plan for us takes that into account, if you will. God did not pick one for us.
 
If there is “the one” there’s really no way of us telling it so it isn’t even worth considering. My sister and I were talking about this recently. I’ve been married 32 years and she’s been married 27 years. Both of us found that the type of guys we were strongly attracted to weren’t prepared to have chaste relationships before marriage. In the end we both married guys who were really into us and prepared to wait until marriage because they liked us so much. Consequently we both realise how blessed we really have been with these great guys who matured into great fathers and good men. Neither of us ever thought about our spouses as “the one” back in the beginning though.
 
Welcome to CAF, mc1991.

Hubby and I celebrate 30 years this coming October. When I met him, there was, indeed, the “you’re just too good to be true” experience, plus the “soul tug”.

“Soul mate”, however, is contary to church teaching of free will.

I’d had a calling to a particular monastery that closed. I visited them while they were in the process of suppression. The moment I set foot on the property, I realized that I had missed an opportunity when I first experienced the (terrifying) call there. My spiritual director at the time said he experienced the same thing when he set foot on the seminary property.

The late Dr Billy Graham and his wife had a practice of praying for their children’s spouses from the moment of birth. I think it helps, and needs to be promoted.

Blessings,
Mrs Cloisters OP
Lay Dominican
http://cloisters.tripod.com/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/holyangels/id9.html/
 
mc1991 said:
I am in my late 20s and have been talking with many friends from my church lately about the concept of God having picked out a person for you for marriage (commonly called “the one”). Many of my friends don’t believe in this idea anymore, but I was taught growing up that there was such a person that God had in mind for you.

I don’t even know at this point which one I’d prefer to believe and I feel very confused (and overwhelmed). I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this and their reasoning.

Thank you!
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My wife and I think this is true. We have zero doubts that was the case. God put us together. That was 50 yrs ago and still going great. 😎 👍
 
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