Can you Fall in Love in Heaven if you Haven’t Found Someone on Earth?

Here is a Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Amy:

Lee, do you think we will be able to fall in love in heaven? Let’s say I have never been in love or with anyone on earth, will I still have a chance to be in love with a soul in heaven? Even if it’s with someone I’ve never met here on earth? Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully respond to my question. God bless.

Thanks for the great question, Amy! There must be millions of other people out there who are wondering the same thing.

So for all you members of the Lonely Hearts Club Band, let’s get to the good news right away:

The answer is Yes!

Wedding Rings

If you long for a partner, soulmate, and lover, but just haven’t found anyone here on earth, after you die you will find someone, and will fall in love. And you’ll spend the rest of eternity sharing your life with him or her, growing closer and closer together, and yes, even making love. There is marriage in heaven, and it has everything that marriages on earth have, and more!

So fear not. Even if you may be lonely and longing, if you don’t find someone to share your life with here on earth, you will find that special someone in heaven after you die.

How does this happen?

For that, we’ll turn to what Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) tells us in his book Marriage Love.

Finding a Marriage Partner in Heaven

Here is what Swedenborg says about finding a marriage partner in heaven if you haven’t found one on earth:

For people who long for real marriage love, the Lord provides partners who are similar. If this doesn’t happen on earth, then the Lord provides them in heaven. That’s because all marriages in which there is real marriage love are provided by the Lord.

Here is something I heard from angels about how God provides marriages in heaven:

The Lord’s divine providence about and for marriages is both very broad and highly detailed. You see, all the joys of heaven flow from the joys of marriage love like sweet water from a running spring. For this reason, the Lord provides for marriage partners to be born, and under the Lord’s watchful care they are continually prepared for one another. Neither the boy nor the girl has any idea that this is happening.

After some time has gone by, and she is now a young woman old enough to be married, and he is a young man ready to get married, they encounter one another as if by fate, and notice each other—and they know right away, as if by instinct, that they belong together. The young man inwardly thinks, as if hearing an inner voice, “She is my mate,” and the young woman thinks, “He is my mate.” After this has settled into their minds for a while, they make a point of talking to one another, and promise themselves to each other in marriage.

I say, “as if by fate, instinct, and an inner voice,” but this really means that it happens by divine providence. When we are unaware of the workings of divine providence, it does seem as if things happen by fate, instinct, and an inner voice because the Lord opens up our inner similarities so that we can see them within ourselves. (Marriage Love #229)

Here Swedenborg beautifully describes how couples meet in heaven. And many couples here on earth have the very same experience of meeting one another as if by chance, and immediately knowing in their hearts that they are meant for each other.

God is preparing someone for you

But Swedenborg says something else in this passage from Marriage Love that should be a comfort to all people who are single, and who long for a deep and loving marriage.

It is not just coincidence, fate, instinct, or even an inner voice that brings this meeting about. In fact, Swedenborg says, the Lord provides for couples to be born for one another, and to be raised and prepared for one another the whole time they are growing up.

People who die in infancy or childhood and grow up in heaven meet their partner just as they reach young adulthood and are ready to get married.

However, as many of us know all too well, it doesn’t always work that way here on earth.

• Many of us get married to the wrong person in our younger years, and have to learn the hard way what it means not to have found our true partner.
• Many of us don’t find our true partner until we are middle-aged, or even in our elder years.
• And many of us don’t find anyone on earth at all, but spend our lives longing for love that seems not fated to be ours.

For everyone who is longing for true love, and who struggles with loneliness and even despair about ever experiencing it, this passage from Marriage Love offers a ray of hope and assurance.

You see, no one is born in heaven. Everyone is born to human parents right here on earth. If the Lord provides for marriage partners to be born for one another, this means that those marriage partners are born for one another on earth. And Swedenborg assures us that “the Lord’s divine providence about and for marriages is both very broad and highly detailed.”

The message is clear. Even if we have no idea that it is happening, the Lord has provided for someone to be born who will be our marriage partner—and we will be theirs. And even if we don’t meet that person as a young man or woman the way couples meet in heaven, sooner or later the Lord will bring us together with our eternal partner “as if by fate.”

If that doesn’t happen on earth, Swedenborg assures us that it will happen in heaven.

So as painful and lonely as it can be to go through day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year wishing and longing for our true love, take heart! The Lord has not forgotten you. Even if it turns out that you must spend your life here on earth as a single person, you will not be left out forever. You will find your true love! And you will spend eternity growing more and more in love with him or her as you share your lives together, forever.

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted by a reader.

For further reading:

• Didn’t Jesus Say There’s No Marriage in Heaven?
• How does Marriage Fit In with a Spiritual Life? Is There Marriage in Heaven?
• If You’ve been Married More than Once, Which One will you be With in the Afterlife?
• How to Know if Mr. or Ms. Right is Right for You: Pointers from Gloria and Emilio Estefan
• Beyonce and Jay-Z Reveal the Secret: How to Start a Lasting Marriage
• How to Attract the Opposite Sex—and Keep ‘Em

About Lee

Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.