The science of soulmates: Is there someone out there exactly right for you?

The science of soulmates: Is there someone out there exactly right for you?13 February 2026ShareSaveAdd as preferred on GooglePallab GhoshScience CorrespondentBBCListen to Pallab read this articleOn Valentine's Day, there's the temptation to believe that somewhere out there is "The One": a soulmate, a perfect match, the person you were meant to be with.Across history, humans have always been drawn to the idea that love isn't random. In ancient Greece, Plato imagined that we were once whole beings with four arms, four legs and two faces, so radiant that Zeus split us in two; ever since, each half has roamed the earth searching for its missing other, a myth that gives the modern soulmate its poetic pedigree and the promise that somewhere, someone will finally make us feel complete.In the Middle Ages, troubadours and Arthurian tales recast that longing as "courtly love", a fierce, often forbidden devotion like Lancelot's for Guinevere, in which a knight proved his worth through self-sacrifice for a beloved he might never openly declare.Getty ImagesPlato (left) imagined humans were once whole, with four arms, four legs and two faces, before Zeus (right) split them, leaving each half searching for its otherBy the Renaissance, writers such as Shakespeare were talking of "star-crossed lovers", couples bound together by an overwhelming connection yet pulled apart by family, fortune or fate, as if the universe itself both wrote their love story and barred them from a happy ending.In more recent times, Hollywood and romance novels have sold us fairy tale love stories.But what does the latest science say about soulmates? Is there a particular special someone out there for us?How we fall for 'The One'Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), in Cambridge, has traced our contemporary European understanding of romantic love back to medieval Europe and those stories of Camelot, Lancelo...