Praner Bondhu 👫🏾👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏾

I think we have been a little unfair to the word “soulmate”.

We have dressed it in romance, wrapped it in declarations of love, and reserved it, almost exclusively, for the person we hope to marry. The one who will make us believe that all the waiting was worth it. When someone says, "I have found my soulmate", our minds immediately begin to arrange a wedding, select colours for the aso ebi, and imagine all the beautiful things that come with finding your person. Yes, romantic love is great, but who decided that soulmates must be romantic?

What if some of the people who are meant to find us are not coming to be our spouses but our friends? What if there are people who will know us, love us, challenge us, and walk with us through life without ever becoming romantic interests? What if there are people whose souls seem to speak a language we have known all our lives, even though we have only just met them?

I think we have limited the idea of soulmates for far too long, and I would like us to consider another possibility. Maybe you can have a soulmate who will never give you butterflies, except when they send a message saying, "We need to talk”; even then, those butterflies are probably fear. The kind of person who feels like home, but not in the way we have been taught to expect. The friend who can read your face across a room and remembers the little things you mentioned in passing three months ago. The one who knows when your "I'm fine" means you are actually fine and when it means you need someone to sit beside you until you find the words. The person who celebrates your wins without secretly competing with you, tells you the truth without trying to humiliate you, and loves you through seasons when you are not particularly easy to love. The friend who sees you, really sees you, and somehow makes being yourself feel like the easiest thing in the world. The people who make you wonder how you ever lived without them, even though you were doing perfectly fine before you met.

Surely, there is something soulmate-like about that.

Have you ever met someone and felt like you had known them for years? You just clicked. The conversation flowed, the laughter came easily, and before you knew it, you were sharing things you would normally need three to five business days to gather the courage to say. Someone who gets to know you beyond the first impression, beyond the version of yourself you present to the world, beyond the things you have figured out. They get to know the real you. The one who has doubts, makes mistakes, overthinks things, gets excited about the most random stuff, and sometimes needs to be reminded that one bad day is not the end of the world.

These are the people who make friendship feel effortless, even when maintaining the friendship requires intentional effort. These are the friendships that grow into something extraordinary. They survive distance, misunderstandings, changing circumstances, and the different versions of ourselves we become over the years. Those friendships that make room for who you were, who you are, and who you are still becoming.

They are the people who know your history without insisting that you remain the person you used to be. They can remind you of your growth without making you feel ashamed of your past. They have seen you win, lose, start again, and sometimes make the same mistake twice, and they still believe there is something good ahead of you.

And somehow, they stay…

Not because they think you are perfect, but because they understand that you are a work in progress, just as they are. Maybe that is one of the beautiful things about finding your people. You do not have to be a finished product to be loved by them.

Maybe we struggle to appreciate platonic soulmates because we have been taught to think of romantic love as the ultimate expression of human connection. Friendship is important, of course, but somewhere along the line, it became the waiting room where we sit until our real love story begins. We talk about finding your person, and everyone assumes you are looking for a spouse. We talk about wanting someone who understands us, supports our dreams, prays for us, and stands by us through difficult seasons, and we immediately picture a romantic partner.

But what about the friend who has done all these things?

What about the person who has seen you through different seasons of your life, celebrated your wins, listened to your complaints, and reminded you of who you are when life gets overwhelming? The person who has been there through the good, the bad, and the downright embarrassing? Surely, they deserve some recognition too.

This makes me wonder why we find it easier to describe deep friendship by comparing it to another relationship.

"She is more than a friend. She is a sister to me”.

"He is like family”.

These are beautiful expressions, and I understand what we mean when we use them. I use them also. However, I have come to see that friendship deserves to be appreciated in its own right and stand on its own feet without borrowing titles from other relationships. A friend can be a friend and still be one of the greatest romances in your life. You can miss them when they are away. You can look forward to sharing your good news with them. You can worry about them, pray for them and make sacrifices for them.

You can have inside jokes nobody else understands, conversations that stretch into the early hours of the morning, and memories that will make you laugh even when you are old and your knees have started reminding you that you are no longer twenty. You can love them deeply without being in love with them, and feel genuinely hurt when life takes you both in different directions.

I believe there is something incredibly beautiful about finding a person who understands you without needing a romantic relationship to explain the depth of your connection.

Platonic love has its own beauty. It isn’t a lesser version of romantic love but a different kind of love, with its own language, responsibilities, tenderness, and beauty. It may not come with romantic dates or anniversary celebrations, but it can come with midnight conversations, unannounced visits, honest corrections, shared meals, practical help, and the comfort of knowing that someone is rooting for you even when they are not physically present.

Sometimes, it looks like a friend who sends you money when you need it without making you feel like a charity project. Sometimes, it is the person who checks on you after everyone else has moved on. Other times, it is someone who remembers the thing you were worried about last week and asks how it went. And a few times, it is simply having someone with whom you can be quiet without feeling the need to explain yourself.

I think we underestimate how meaningful these things are because they do not always look dramatic. There may be no grand declarations or elaborate gestures. Just ordinary, consistent acts of love that remind you that you are not navigating life alone. However, there is nothing ordinary about having someone who genuinely cares about you.

Now, things can get interesting, especially when the friendship is with someone of the opposite sex. We have somehow become experts at turning every meaningful connection into a potential love story. A man and a woman get along beautifully, and suddenly, everybody wants to know what is going on between them. They laugh together, and people begin to investigate. They care about each other, and someone is already asking when the wedding will be.

Truly, not every great love story needs a wedding. In fact, not every person you connect with deeply is a potential spouse. A friend can be one of the most important people in your life without there being any secret romantic feelings involved. You can love someone deeply, want the best for them, pray for their future, and genuinely enjoy building memories with them without wondering whether you could marry them. Some people will be your partners. Some will be your friends. Some will be part of your life for a season, while others will walk with you for decades. Friendships truly do not need to progress into something else to be valuable. Even after marriage or being in committed relationships, meaningful friendships can still exist within healthy boundaries.

Now, what makes someone a platonic soulmate? Very good question, but I do not think there is a perfect checklist for this. If there were, some of us would have turned it into a spreadsheet, colour-coded the columns, and started interviewing potential friends. Still, I think there are certain things that make a friendship feel particularly special.

It is the safety of being known without feeling judged at every turn. It is being able to disagree without wondering whether the friendship will survive. It is knowing that the friendship can accommodate growth. That you can change your mind, learn new things, make mistakes, and become a different version of yourself without having to pretend that you are still the person you were when you first met.

Most importantly, the love is mutual. You are not the only one making an effort, initiating conversations, remembering birthdays, checking in, and trying to keep the friendship alive. Both of you are willing to show up, even when life gets busy.

Sometimes, love is choosing to call when you would rather send a quick text. Sometimes, it is having the difficult conversation instead of allowing resentment to grow. Other times, it is making room for your friend to be unavailable without assuming they no longer care. A few times, it is accepting that you are both in different seasons and learning how to remain connected in a way that works for you both.

Finding your person is beautiful. Learning how to love your person well is just as important. We celebrate weddings, anniversaries, engagements, and all the milestones that come with romantic relationships. We make announcements, take pictures, buy gifts, and tell people how much they mean to us. But how often do we tell our friends what they mean to us when it's not their birthdays, the end of the year or International Friendship Day? How often do we pause to appreciate the person who has stood beside us through seasons when we barely recognised ourselves? The one who has been there so long that we have started treating their presence as a given?

I think we sometimes forget that friendship is not sustained by history alone. Just because someone has been in your life for ten years does not mean they automatically know how much you value them. Just because you have always been there for each other does not mean you should stop being intentional.

I do not know if there is one predetermined person for every one of us, whether romantic or platonic. I am not even sure we need to settle that question to appreciate the beauty of these connections. I do believe, however, that there are people with whom we experience an unusual depth of understanding, a remarkable sense of ease, and a love that makes room for us to grow. People who challenge us, comfort us, make us laugh until our stomachs hurt, and remind us that we do not have to navigate life alone. I believe some friendships become part of the architecture of our lives, where if we remove them, the structure would look different.

We should be careful not to overlook these gifts because they do not look like the love stories we have been conditioned to celebrate. Maybe your soulmate is not the person you will exchange vows with. Maybe it is the friend who has been beside you through every version of yourself, the one who knows your heart and still chooses to show up. Maybe you have more than one. Maybe you have already met them and are so busy looking for the next big thing that you have forgotten to appreciate what is right in front of you.

Well, today, call your friend. Send that message. Plan the visit you have been postponing. Tell them you appreciate them. Pray for them. Celebrate their wins without comparing them to yours. Make an effort to show up, even when there is nothing particularly exciting happening. Do not wait until you are writing a tribute to realise that you had someone wonderful in your corner all along. Stop assuming that they know, simply because they have been around for so long.

If you are lucky enough to have a friendship that feels like finding a missing piece of yourself, treasure it. Nurture it. Give it the time and intentionality it deserves. Not every relationship will last forever, but the ones that do deserve to be nurtured.

Not every soulmate is a love interest, not every great love story ends at the altar, and not every person who changes your life is meant to marry you. Some people are simply meant to be loved by you, and to love you in return, in the beautiful, ordinary, extraordinary way that friendship allows.

That, to me, is more than enough.

On this note, happy birthday, my soulmate, Flight Lieutenant A.I. Alkasim!

I love you now, forever and always ❤️