A nice quote I read today: "I think that my husband is my soul mate, but that has come about from knowing each other for 25 years and being married for 19, from going through hard times, being skint, illnesses but also having our 3 kids, wonderful times,homemaking together and always sticking with it through thick and thin. There are probably a lot of people out there who could have been my soul-mate, but my husband is because we've made it that way".

I am not quite sure how this is entirely relevant, but in the process of trying to explain to myself why my depressed xDSO very suddenly no longer loved me after loving me rather desperately only days before becoming depressed I have thought a lot about whether his love was "real", whether this is "depression talk".

There's no question from what I have read that most depressed people experience a sense of emptiness, a loss of joy, a lack of emotions, a numbness and it's perfectly easy to understand why they might "feel" less in love than they normally would - after all they feel less positive about absolutely everything.  The question in my mind has always been "well if he knows he is depressed and he KNOWS it's made him not love anything -why on earth would he believe it?"

I always believed my xDSO and I were soulmates, but this quote reminded me that a soulmate is not someone who magically appears cosmically destined for you.  It is a person who is wonderfully compatable with you, who enjoys an amazing relationship with you - but also it is someone who CHOOSES to be your soulmate.  Who chooses not to give up, or to leave.

Love is a choice.  It's a verb.  It's something you don't always "feel" but you are always committed to trying to feel it.  To trying to get back to it when it gets lost along life's journey.