You’ve gotten to know this person that you love to spend time with. You’ve become great friends and can talk about anything and everything. You find yourself thinking of this person all the time, and you start to wonder if maybe this person is no longer just a good friend, but something more. You begin to wonder if maybe this person is your soul mate. So how can you tell?

That’s a good question. People are different. They act, think, live, and love differently. To happen upon a person that seems to be such a great match for you isn’t something that happens often in life, hence one of the reasons for so many divorces. A person marries someone that they don’t really know. Sure, they know a name, a favorite color or favorite food perhaps, but they don’t truly know the person deep inside. So they marry and live with someone they don’t know and when it ends, they are often left wondering what happened.

Soul mates love deeply, without condemning for past or present failures or mistakes, without judging. A soul mate is the person that completes you, a person that you cannot imagine your life with her or him, a person that thinks and feels on many levels in the same way you do. A soul mate is the person that truly seems a part of you, down the the very core of your being. It’s been said that a soul mate is the extension of oneself.

Finding your soul mate is about much more than obtaining sexual gratification. It’s about an intimacy that goes far beyond sex and so much deeper in emotions and feelings. A soul mate is someone that totally understands you, even when you think you are beyond understanding about some things. A soul mate hears not only what you say but more importantly, they hear what you don’t say.

A person that mistreats you, is hateful and rude to you, disrespectful to you, who doesn’t care about your feelings is not probably not your soul mate. A soul mate is the one that loves you more deeply than anyone except God, on so many levels, that it’s almost impossible to comprehend the magnitude of the love and compassion they have for you. A person that is not good to you probably is not your soul mate.

When asking yourself, is this person my soul mate, ask yourself: Is this the person or kind of person that I want to spend my life with? Is this the person or kind of person that I deserve? Does this person truly love and care for me and do they complete me? Can anyone possibly love and care for me more than this person does? Do I want this person for who they are or just how they look?

Only you can truly determine if someone is your soul mate. Don’t settle for someone who isn’t everything you want and need. Good things come to those that wait. And at the same time, don’t overlook someone because they don’t fit your idea of how a person should look. Looks fade, the inside stays.

Dating can be fun and exciting, and can lead to more dates with a wonderful man. But there are some things a woman just should not do if she hopes to have another date with that wonderful man. Following are just a few tips on things that a woman should never do when on a date.

A woman should never nag a man. Nagging a man has got to be the biggest turn off. What man will want to go out again with a woman who nags him while dating him? If she nags while on a date, what will she do if things became more serious? Let the man be himself. You either like him just as he is or move on. Never be a nag!

Don’t spend the entire date talking about your ex boyfriend. If all you do is talk about him, that only tells the man that he is on your mind just a wee bit much. Not only does it make you insensitive to your date, chances are he isn’t going to want to date you again to listen to more drama. Leave the talking about the ex boyfriend to share with your girlfriends.

Most women love to talk. It seems to be part of being a female. But it’s not a good thing to hog the conversation when dating. Most likely your date will be bored quickly when he is unable to get a word in because you won’t stop talking long enough to let him get a word in edgewise. Instead of constantly talking, close the mouth, open the ears, and listen to him. Not only will you learn more about your date, he will probably feel a lot more appreciated because you actually take the time to listen to him instead of constantly talking.

Don’t try to be someone or something that you are not. Don’t lie to your date and don’t be dishonest with him. If the date turns into something more serious at a later time, you’ve got some explaining to do when it’s discovered that you were not honest to begin with. Rather than take the chance of losing what could be a good thing, just be yourself from the beginning and be honest.

Stay off the cell phone with your girlfriends while on a date. Don’t be so inconsiderate while on a date with a man and make him feel left out because you can’t stay off the phone while with him. Either leave the cell phone at home or turn it off. You are on a date with this wonderful man, not your cell phone.

Don’t expect your date to be a mind reader. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you won’t say what you are thinking or feeling, he isn’t going to magically know what’s going on inside your head.

Toxic relationships are a fact of life for many people, men and women alive, both young and older. Often family and friends can see the effects in the relationship but the one living in it cannot or will not. Some want someone to ‘love’ them so badly they think most any type of attention is love and fail to see that they are in a toxic relationship, one that may not necessarily be abusive, but one that is dragging them down and is not healthy.

One of the first steps to healing is to admit there is a problem. There is always a chance and hope that the spouse will change, but the reality is that change is unlikely for someone who only knows how to hurt another person. It can be said that some spouses do not realize what they are doing, and they can be helped. It can also be said that some know exactly what they are doing, leaving getting out of the relationship as the only healthy solution.

A spouse that loves you is not going to spend their time tearing you down, making you look foolish, talking down to you, or saying hurtful and derogatory things. Rather the one that loves you will want to be near you, they uplift you and encourage you, and they never seek to hurt you or make you sad.

Signs that you might be in a bad relationship:

You and your spouse spend the evening with another couple. Your spouse goes out of his way to make jokes most of the evening, using you as the main target in all of them. When back home, he says he is sorry, yet this isn’t the first time he has done this.

You make it a point to have dinner ready and waiting when your husband comes home from work. He never misses an opportunity to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with the meal. When the two of you visit his mother’s home and there’s a meal served, he always tells her what a delicious meal she served.

You work hard to provide for your family. Sometimes that means working overtime and not being able to spend as much time as you would like to with your spouse. Your wife constantly nags you that you work too much. In front of mutual friends, she makes comments to them about how you don’t ‘really’ love her, criticizing how you dress, going on about how you love your job more than her, making it a point to make you look bad every chance she gets.

You’ve gained some weight and are working on losing it. Rather than be supportive and encourage you, your spouse tells you how fat you look and makes wise cracks in public about your appearance. She tells you that she won’t make love to you until you lose weight, in front of mutual friends.

Your spouse makes it a regular habit to check your cell phone to see who you have called and who has called you. He checks your email, opens your mail before you are allowed to see it, goes through your purse when you are sleeping.

Your spouse makes it a point to bring up things that will make you cry, knowing that saying certain things will hurt you.

You work at saving money and planning for a vacation with your wife. You’ve had the time off planned for six months in advance and she has known the dates for the vacation all along. Two days before you are to be off to take the long planned trip, she announces she is going to the beach with friends during the vacation time. You’re not invited.

You sit down to talk with your spouse about how you feel about certain things, being open and honest, pouring out your very soul and heart to them. Your spouse laughs at you at almost every comment you make, demeans you, and blames you for their bad behavior. Instead of listening to you, the spouse makes a joke of your feelings.

Perhaps the most hurtful thing about a toxic relationship is the fact that this is the person that is supposed to love you and care for you, but instead they seek to hurt you and cause you emotional distress and pain.

A person in a toxic relationship might have a difficult time letting go of it. Sometimes they feel as that there is no one else for them, thinking that they aren’t good enough for someone that will truly love them and care for them. Often a person caught in a bad relationship stays because even though it is a terrible relationship, their spouse has convinced them that no one else could possibly want them.

This cycle of thinking has to be broken. There is hope and there is healing. In order to obtain the happiness that is waiting, the person living in this type of relationship must make the decision to get out of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope.

A healthy relationship can be obtained once the person in the bad relationship recognizes the need for a better life and gets out of the abusive relationship. The first step in healing is removing yourself from the relationship.

A loving relationship allows no room for toxic behavior. In a healthy relationship, a spouse listens to the other. The spouse doesn’t seek to hurt you, to make fun of you, to use you as the joke of the party. The spouse in a healthy relationship wants to be with you, doesn’t check up on you all the time, doesn’t use any excuse to make you look bad, doesn’t seek to embarrass you in front of family and friends, doesn’t try to control you.

A healthy relationship finds a couple who are happy with each other and understand each other, who know the other isn’t perfect but accepts and loves the person as they are. They don’t seek to change each other, they stand with each other through anything and everything, and the only tears they want to cause the other are tears are happiness.