For years, I believed in soulmates. Then, I lived my own great romance, which ended in a quiet realisation. Love, I learned, is not about destiny, it’s a choice. Sometimes, choosing yourself is the most romantic decision of all

I grew up in a generation that read books on Wattpad. Nearly all stories on the platform were a reimagination of Romeo and Juliet set in 2010s middle America. No distance, circumstance or sharp-jawed teenage boy could threaten the relationship between the central star-crossed lovers. By the age of 20, I had long swapped Wattpad for Booker Prize winners, but the impact of years of inserting myself into these narratives was irreversible. I was a hopeless romantic. My perception of love was one of unwavering faith and dedication to another person – aka: a total work of fiction.

At 21, seven months into my Erasmus Exchange in France, I met the man I thought was my soulmate. He was the only student to attend my first week of spoken English lessons. As we walked out of the class that day, and in the weeks after that, the tentative impulse to linger by one another became certain familiarity.

Across four months, we discussed politics, religion and the coffin-shaped lifts in nursing homes. We would walk for hours home from bars rather than take public transport, sheltering from the snow by kissing in doorways only to be tutted at by old French ladies. I spent evenings watching him diligently scan the selection of mortadella in the supermarket. I could sense micro-annoyances or embarrassment over obvious displays of vulnerability from the way his shoulder blade would jerk up his back. This natural intuition for one another’s sensibilities, combined with our similar approach to life, made my head shout about the destiny of two souls coming together.

But it all ended when I moved back to the UK to finish my final year of university. We both decided to protect what we had rather than dilute it with the constant simmerings of frustration that a long-distance relationship brings. Yet, the following nine months were a tangle of missed phone calls, crying on the bus, and indignation in the misfortune of a love not fully afforded the chance to grow, to settle into itself like crumbs squished into the corner of a handbag.

Those nine months of entanglement finished when he called to tell me he was moving to London and wanted to get back together. 

“Do you have time to talk?” he texted one evening. 

“I’m with friends right now,” I replied.

“I don’t want this to be a call when you’re in a hurry.” 

“Let’s talk. I will be free in 20 mins,” I responded.

I moved from the sofa to my bedroom, the distant laughter of my housemates wafting through the walls as the phone rang in my ear. 

“I don’t love you anymore,” I lied. “Thank you for your honesty. It’ll help me move on,” he replied.

Those nine months apart, however painful, had revealed an incompatibility between us, which I noticed only with the space to dedicate time to myself

Listening to the person whose presence you have missed so deeply tell you they want to end that separation should feel like a dream. But my response was robotic. As he spoke about his gratitude for the time we shared together, I looked around my room – clothes strewn on the floor, black mould creeping in corners – and felt an acute desire to crawl back onto the sticky leather sofa with my friends.

To lie to the person to whom I had once committed my whole self was like beating a child at a board game. But those nine months apart, however painful, had revealed an incompatibility between us, which I noticed only with the space to dedicate time to myself.

He wanted to live in the French countryside. I wanted to dart from city to city like a wasp refusing to be trapped under a glass. He would get annoyed when I turned up to a date on a Saturday morning hungover. He wanted a family; I was too young to know. I didn’t want to commit seriously to a life with another person at an age when writing something down in my calendar felt momentously concrete. Our plans for the future would forever clash. I realised that our love, which still felt cliché and real, was not enough.

I no longer believe in soul mates. This idea that fate dictates the one person you are destined to end up with feels restrictive in a way that ignores the complexity of life

Perhaps by ending it in that way, I had still managed to fulfil my quota of romantic tragedy. But I know now that to perpetually imagine a fantasy future with somebody is to overlook the beauty of the mundane reality you share.

I no longer believe in soul mates. Instead, I believe in the power to choose the people you love. This idea that fate dictates the one person you are destined to end up with feels restrictive in a way that ignores the complexity of life. 

Love cannot conquer EasyJet delays. It cannot overcome caverns in career ambition. It cannot surpass a total incompatibility in clubbing habits. It cannot be the entire reason you choose to relocate to a new city; these dreams, these habits, and these plans you envision for yourself make up the person that you are. To give all that up for somebody would change you fundamentally, and that is not love.

I have fallen in love again, and it may be that I fall in love after this. What I take with me now is an authority of choice that is so freeing. Begone with the star-crossed lovers; I want to dance in the reality that is 45 per cent kisses in pub corners and 55 per cent spats over when to set the alarm in the morning.