“Perhaps Someone Else Will Precede Him by Praying for Mercy”
The foundation laid at the beginning of the book — that the connection between husband and wife runs incredibly deep and constitutes a most inner dimension, inasmuch as they share the same soul (as explained at length in the introduction) — gives rise to the following issue regarding the degree of alacrity with which one is to approach marriage:1
The Gemara explicitly states2 that a person should act with haste and alacrity in finding his future wife. He should do so, for “Perhaps someone else will precede him by praying for mercy.” 3 Our Sages also state4 that each and every individual should pray to G‑d that he find his correct match.
Why should one have to worry that someone else will marry his intended before he does so himself? After all, the match has already been Divinely preordained, for half his soul is found within the particular woman who is his intended. Ostensibly, she cannot be married to anyone else, as she is not that individual’s half of a soul. How then is it even possible for someone else to precede him and take possession of his rightful future wife?
The act of divorce also becomes extremely problematic:
How can husband and wife separate and sever their reunited singular soul? Moreover, how is it possible for a person to marry again; i.e., that a divorced or widowed man or woman should remarry? Surely, won’t either one of these marriages — the first or the second — lack the critical soul connection?
Marriage That Lacks the Soul Connection
However, it is explained in our sacred writings5 that although marriage as a rule occurs between two people who share the same soul, it is also possible that a couple could marry without possessing this soul connection. In this instance, the connection between the couple exists only on the external bodily level and not on the internal soul level.
[A marriage that lacks this soul connection can result from any number of factors: either because of a Divine decree or as a result of the iniquity of one of the marriage partners, for which reason it was decreed Above that someone else marry their true match, or as a result of a person’s prayers, and so on.
However, such a marriage can only last for “a limited amount of time,” after which the marriage will dissolve and the couple will divorce. It is then possible that they will remarry their true soul mate.]
David and Bas Sheva
We find an example of the above concerning King David:
It is written in the Kabbalah6 that Bas Sheva was the second half of King David’s soul, except that for various reasons she first wed Uriah for a period of time. After she received a bill of divorce from Uriah,7 she married her true soul mate, King David.
Consequently, although marriage is the union of two halves of the same soul, one should not sit with folded hands and calmly wait until he becomes much older before getting married. Rather, a person should energetically seek out his mate with haste, in keeping with the analogy offered by our Sages:8 “It is analogous to a person who lost an object....” An individual who loses a valuable object will not sit at home and calmly wait for someone else to return his lost object to him. Rather, he will leave his home and “search for his lost object.”
If he does not act with alacrity, the potential exists for him to lose his true soul mate — the other half of his soul — for the possibility does exist that “someone else will precede him” and marry her.