The Scam Of The Soulmate

I know a thing or two about scams. I’ve spent the past five years studying grand-scale frauds like network marketing, the supplement industry, and parts of the self-help movement for my podcast The Dream. At the end of each season, we brainstorm what to investigate next and always consider the topics of love and marriage — or more specifically, the wedding industrial complex. That’s the industry where a tiny plate of mediocre food costs $150 and dresses without actual whale bones in them run into the tens of thousands. And although I would die to spend a year digging deep into the layers of bajillion-dollar cakes and crinolines, every time I’m about to pull the trigger, I stop short. I mean, it’s love. I love love. How can I feel indignant toward people who also love love and want to make a huge deal, and huge money, out of it?

But recently, a perfect villain has entered the mix: Twin Flames Universe. As explored in a Vanity Fair exposé and twin (coincidence?) streaming documentaries on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, Twin Flames is a matchmaking cult that promises to help its followers find and achieve perfect happiness with their one true love (or “twin flame”). Members are encouraged to ruthlessly pursue their supposed soulmates, who are sometimes selected for them seemingly at random, cut off unsupportive friends and family, pour thousands of dollars into classes to help them capture romantic bliss, and even change gender identification at the whim of the leaders — who, by the way, are insufferable little jerks, and insistent that their group isn’t a cult or a scam. It’s wild that anyone would listen to them. Wild, but understandable. Let me explain.

Scams of this scope — the kind designed to make someone rich by decimating participants — all have one important thing in common: the promise of a cheat code for life. They are predicated on the idea that your American dreams are within your grasp, if only you know what the experts knew about how to seize them.

The American dream doesn’t promote the belief that we’re entitled to an ideal life, exactly. But it does suggest that we should be able to attain one through sheer willpower and hard work, despite the growing data to the contrary. When this rugged individualism falls short, the charlatans swoop in, offering a workaround. Join a multi-level-marketing company and you can build wealth with sheer sweat equity, and without any experience or education. Apply for this adjustable rate mortgage and become a homeowner, never mind if you can’t afford it. Drink cabbage juice instead of going into debt to pay for healthcare (it’ll make you skinny, too!). Sign up for our relationship coaching and you’ll find your perfect mate without even getting to know them.

I’ve fallen for a couple of these more workaday scams — the house, the relationship. As someone who has been engaged four times and married and divorced twice, I’m clearly a sucker for love. And despite those — I don’t want to call them failures, maybe false starts? — I know full well how alluring the idea of the soulmate is. Just find the right person, and everything will magically work! No fighting, no uncertainty, no ups and downs, just all-consuming, head-over-heels passion.

There’s been a lot of talk online lately of an idea called limerence. It’s the seemingly uncontrollable feeling that you cannot live without another person. That your attraction to them is irrefutable, irreplaceable, permanent, and potentially requitable if you play your cards right. (Just plug it into TikTok and you’ll either flush with shame or feel validated for users’ descriptions of falling hard in love at first sight.) As reported in Pioneer Works Broadcast, people who claim to experience limerence often describe it as a disruptive, even debilitating force, which compels them to seek validation from someone who may be oblivious to their existence. But in an online Cosmopolitan poll that asked how readers felt about “falling in limerence,” 87% picked the answer: “Give me an all-consuming romantic infatuation or don’t waste my time.” There is tons of research dismantling this idea, and yet, it still has a hold over us.

Such a broad gap between fantasy and reality leaves an extra-wide window for the aforementioned charlatans. We pay for Tinder Plus in case we accidentally swipe left on the love of our life, and now for the $499-a-month Tinder Select in case the algorithm is keeping them hidden from us. We invest thousands of dollars in diamond rings that act like relationship insurance, maybe because some part of us knows it's all hooey? Ditto expensive weddings.

Still, these small-scale grifts have nothing on the big-daddy scam that is Twin Flames Universe. The organization’s married leaders, Jeff and Shaleia Ayan, now using the last name Divine, purport to be in a “Harmonious Twin Flame Union” — basically their term for “all-consuming romantic infatuation” — and have built a series of businesses on the promise that they can help others achieve the same, from Twin Flames Ascension School to the food purveyor Divine Dish to the Church of Union. (Jeff also now claims to be the Second Coming of Christ. You know, normal stuff.) As Jeff says in one video, “There is nothing outside of you that prevents you from being with your love. Only you.” Watch even one of their YouTube videos and you’ll see a grinning Shaleia nod along, wordlessly submitting to most of these declarations. Hopefuls spend thousands of dollars on the Ayans’ offerings, provide free labor or below-rate labor for them in the form of recruiting and coaching others, and in turn receive dubious advice. (For example, continue courting the guy who took out a restraining order against you.)

Like, what the fuck? Who do you know who’s experienced total bliss for the duration of a decades-long, monogamous relationship? That is idiotic, and harmful I’d argue, at least to young women in this country as we’re often the ones left holding the diaper bag. No wonder that when people fail to find this mythical perfect relationship, or fail to make the limerence last, they fall for insufferable little jerks like the Twin Flames leaders.

To this day, followers are giving time and money to the Ayans. Entry-level “classes” — I put that in quotes because they feel more like sermons — cost a couple hundred dollars a month, and former members talk of spending tens of thousands over time. (In a media statement, Twin Flames Universe denies that they wield inappropriate control over their members, writing that the allegations of manipulation “not only distort our true aims, methods, and curriculums but also misrepresent the autonomy of our community members, who are free to engage with our resources as they see fit.”) But the saddest part about watching the documentaries is listening to the former members talk about why they started watching the Ayans’ videos or joined their Facebook group in the first place: “I was desperate to figure out why I couldn’t get over this person,” “It was the only thing that had any sort of assurance of positive things out there for me,” “I want that next level of connection,” “The only thing that was really missing from my life was love,” they say in interviews and in recordings of online classes featured in Netflix’s Escaping Twin Flames. Given that they’re now speaking out against the Ayans, it’s safe to say Twin Flames didn’t deliver on its promises, to say the least.

One of the best parts of actual love is not magical at all.

I’m not saying that romantic love isn’t worthwhile; quite the contrary. As part of my research for my podcast, I learned that one of the best parts of actual love is not magical at all. You know when people say they wish their partner just knew what they wanted? Like, “I wish they’d want to get me flowers instead of me having to tell them.” That would be sweet, sure. But there’s something extra-special about telling your partner, during the getting-to-know-them stage of the relationship, that you love getting flowers and then having them appear because they heard you and want to make you happy. Seeing someone actively love you in the way you’ve made clear is important to you — is there anything more romantic than that?

So, if any too-good-to-be-true, twin flame-like promise is made, either by your parents or your pastor or your guru, stand your ground. You’ll find better love elsewhere, and it probably won’t be easy, or easily bought.

Jane Marie is the author of the forthcoming book Selling the Dream, which hits bookstores on March 12.