True Love. Just the thought of such a connection warms our hearts, inspires us, and gives us hope. The ultimate unity between man and woman; the ultimate acceptance of each other for who we are. Wow, what a beautiful fantasy!

My first run-in with true love was in the eighth grade. Playing the evil “Noah Claypole” in our community theater production of Oliver Twist, I soon fell in love with the lead, Oliver, who was played by the cutest girl I had ever met at age 13. Soon, we started hanging out, going to the mall, and talking for hours on the phone. I was in love — not just any love, but True Love with a capital “T.”

Despite our deep soul connection (at least on my side), it didn’t take long for her to realize that she was out of my league, coming from a much higher-class part of town and used to associating with the more elite boys and girls. With my K-Mart jeans, generic sneakers, and no-name tee-shirts, I couldn’t keep up. She left with some flimsy excuse and gave me my first broken heart. Ouch, did that hurt, like a sucker punch to the gut.

But she also gave me a valuable life lesson. She taught me that our relationships include more than our heartstrings, no matter how pure or how strong. Our culture, values, background, goals, and character are all complicated puzzle pieces that unite two people. Our strong attraction may suffice for a date or two, but we aren’t going far without a more profound symmetry. We need to connect on many levels because we are naturally layered as men and women, and all those layers need to fit.

And it is no surprise that part of what attracts us to each other is our differences — not just differences in personality and upbringing but differences in what we need from each other. On the most biological level, it’s obvious — men want a healthy woman who can bear him children, and women want a man who can protect her and their kids. And, like most things we want, the more, the better for both him and her.

And as our physical life merely reflects our spiritual one, our attraction, male and female, has its roots in our spiritual gifts.

In Kabbalistic terms, the divine masculine centers around Daat, which refers to our stoic, rational, and solution-oriented demeanor. In contrast, her divine feminine is primarily found in Binah or her intuition and understanding, especially concerning emotional matters of the heart. So she’s looking for a strong man who stands firm in guidance and protection, and he seeks a woman who can create and nurture with compassion.

It’s tempting for us to point fingers, especially when hurt, that the opposite sex knows no True Love. That their desires, needs, and wants are selfish and transactional in light of the feelings you two share. That because she’s unwilling to sacrifice her need for security, provisioning, and protection, she’s shortsighted and superficial — perhaps even a “gold-digger.” Likewise, because he won’t budge on her age or fertility, there must be something broken about him, and he must be “insecure.” But this is just your childhood wounds coming to the surface — your desire to be loved unconditionally projecting itself on the reality of male-female committed, purposeful relationships.

On a deeper level, recognizing and accepting each other for who we indeed are, with our innate limitations and needs, allows us to love and embrace each other authentically and only aids us in finding our soulmate with whom we can share our life with, forever. 🙏💚