Believing in soulmates is not the issue--the issue is how our over-romanticized cultures define soulmates. You two absolutely were soulmates, fated (which is not the same as destiny — fate + free will = destiny (https://marcus17043.medium.com/are-we-puppets-bc4baa1bfd09)) to meet in this incarnation, for karmic lessons of learning. Not the way too many define karma--not to learn a lesson for some past indiscretion in this or a past life. https://medium.com/channspirations/revisiting-karma-and-the-law-of-attraction-997965601b65 Simply to meet to learn any number of possible lessons that we and our soul groups and guides and gods improvisationally scripted into what some call soul contracts. https://medium.com/illumination-curated/life-is-school-for-the-soul-9b081dbe8453
As DL Nemeril wrote and I quoted in my essay on karma:
"Here, we would like to add that we do not agree with karma meaning you have to ‘pay’ for what you did in another lifetime. That is a very human perception, of life being a court system meting out reward and punishment. Karma is a vibrational level that draws the experiences needed for healing and growth to a soul. Nothing more."
The learning experience that jumps to my mind is how to detach with love. https://marcus17043.medium.com/when-should-one-detach-with-love-f63180af8c8d You may have held on too long, but I can see that you finally received the lesson. Yet, you do everyone a disservice by telling this lesson from the POV of don't believe in soulmates as opposed to redefining the popular and misguided definition of soulmate. We all incarnate over numbers of life cycles that are unimaginable to most and play more soulmate roles than most can imagine. As White Feather wrote in an essay quoted in my Life Is School for the Soul essay:
"What if every single person you meet in your life you’ve met before in other lives? Imagine that for a moment just for fun. No one is a stranger. Everyone is a soul-mate acting out every conceivable sort of relationship. [emphasis added]
It is like taking two actors and putting them on a stage then giving them a few hundred different plays to act out together. In one play actor A is a father and actor B is a daughter. In another play actor A is a soldier and actor B is also a soldier who happens to kill actor A. In another play actors A and B fall in love and have seven kids. In another play, actors A and B never meet until right before they die. In yet another play actor A is a wife who is beaten by her husband who happens to be actor B. In still another life actors A and B end up being a songwriting team as well as gay lovers who write several Broadway musicals together. Then there is the life A and B lived together in the jungles of Sumatra. It was primitive times and A and B were hunting together. A slipped on a steep ledge on the side of a mountain and breaks his leg. B is afraid to climb down to save A and he leaves A to die."
Later he writes:
"So if there is someone in our lives who appears to be an enemy, they may have been our lover in another play (life). And our lover may have been our slave master or murderer in another life (play). If someone trusts us completely they may have betrayed us in another life and those who betray us may very well have been betrayed by us before."
