In a world where you can take a test to find your soulmate, this week’s episode asks: what if the love of your life has a different soulmate?
Libby (Lais Costa) returns home to her husband Adam (Shamier Anderson) after both of them have spent the night with other other people. As they prepare for bed they tell each other about their respective dates, until Libby gets too detailed about what her and her date did in bed for Adam’s liking.
At work the next day Libby’s coworker tells Libby that her husband would never let her sleep with another person, and Libby explains she doesn’t want to grow old and resent Adam, plus it keeps them exciting to each other. They also have rules in place to prevent them from falling for other people. They only meet their dates through an app, and only meet up with them once. ‘Honestly, I think we’ve cracked monogamy,’ Libby tells her co-worker.
It’s interesting that dating apps, even ones purely designed for hookups, still exist within the world of Soulmates. Soul Connex pairs you with your soulmate, so what are other dating apps for? Perhaps people use them to explore before they consider themselves ready to settle down, or like Libby and Adam, to keep their sex lives interesting. The discussion of monogamy, however, suggests that perhaps Soul Connex isn’t so perfect after all. The concept only works if two people are willing to only be with each other for the rest of their lives, or alternatively, both agree that sexual relationships can occur outside their relationship. But if a couple’s opinions differ on this, well, does that mean they’re true soulmates? Or is Soul Connex just as useful as any other standard app?
At home Libby gets a notification on her phone from Soul Connex saying that she has a match. Adam is upset, and Libby admits to taking the test while they were on a break years ago – when she told she might not want children. Adam tells her that they’ve worked on that and whatever she decides he is fine with. Adam asks who her match is, taking the phone off her.
It turns out her match is Miranda (Georgina Campbell), and Libby and Adam have her over for a very weird drink. Apparently she’s not gay or bi, having only kissed a couple of girls in college. Adam says it’s cool she came, and she tells them she’s on vacation and is a substitute teacher so she has a lot of spare time. Coincidentally, Adam is a teacher as well. Libby suggests that her and Miranda go get a drink – alone.
So another big philosophical question: does your sexuality determine your soulmate? I assumed that Soul Connex’s test to find one’s match involved answering questions about your sexuality. Even if it does, in the case of Libby and Miranda it, at the very least, ignored Miranda’s sexuality. Does that mean two straight people can be soulmates? And assumedly not have a sexual component to their relationship?
At a bar Miranda tells Libby that the longest she’s been in a relationship is a year, and that when she walked in on him shopping for wedding rings she panicked and suggested they do the test to prove that they were soulmates. She basically did the test so she didn’t have to break up with him. Libby asks Miranda if she was annoyed at finding out she was her match. Miranda says the idea of having one person for everything gives her the chills, but when she found out that it was Libby thought it made sense. She always thought of her soulmate as a best friend, not a partner.
Libby arrives home and tells Adam it’s like she’s known Miranda for years and that she was so easy to talk to. Adam asks if he should be worried and she says no, because they’ll be like best friends. Adam tells her that she’s not allowed to sleep with her. Libby says not that she would, but that they do that all the time, and Adam tells her it’s different because it would mean something. She tells Adam he has nothing to worry about and should get to know Miranda better.
Sometime later, Libby wakes up and finds Adam and Miranda spending time together, Adam showing Miranda his and Libby’s wedding photos. Libby tells Adam it felt disrespectful to her and Miranda’s relationship to show her them. Adam tells her he has been incredibly respectful, having agreed to the app and now meeting her soulmate. She kisses him and leaves.
Miranda leaves after having stayed with Libby and Adam, the couple sad to see her go. Later she calls them to tell them that she has a new boyfriend, a parent of one of the students she teaches. Libby is quietly jealous, which puts her in a bad mood at work, and later suggests to Adam that they should have a foursome with another couple.
A distraught Miranda rings Libby saying that she was just using her new boyfriend as a distraction because she wants to be with her all the time. When Miranda arrives Adam is still at work, and she passionately kisses LIbby and they make love. Adam arrives home, catching them in the aftermath, having brought the couple Libby saw on the app with him. Adam asks Libby if she loves her, and she says she loves him too, but he says she can’t have them both, and gives her an ultimatum: him or her.
Up until this point in the episode Libby had been presented as quite selfish in comparison to Adam, him being right in saying he is the more giving and understanding in the relationship. But giving Libby the ultimatum shifts that dynamic, and now he seems a little unreasonable. His relationship with Libby was already quite different to the average one, why not consider a throuple? Perhaps enough was enough and he finally wanted Libby to know his worth.
Three months on, Libby and Miranda are living together and are very much in love. Libby has convinced Miranda to present her art in an abstract exhibition, but after the show Libby becomes jealous at the attention Miranda is receiving from female admirers. Her thoughts drift back to Adam, she considers messaging him, and gets her co-worker to drive her past his school, and she calls her a ‘psychopath’.
Libby returns home one day and Miranda has those female admirers, who are now her friends, over. They leave when hearing Libby is unwell, and Libby and Miranda argue. Miranda asks Libby if it’s not enough that she moved there and changed her career for her, and that she’s not Adam. She doesn’t know how to be in a relationship, and she thought having taken the test might change that, but it hasn’t.
Having driven Libby to Adam’s school once again, Libby’s coworker convinces her to go see him. Libby apologies to him, saying that she was wrong to choose Miranda and that she should have tried to make it work with both of them. Adam says he felt like fighting for her, but knew he’d already lost. Libby tells him that he’s her home, her heart, but he has taken the test. His match is English and flying over next week. ‘Isn’t there a way to make it work?’ she asks.
Adam’s match arrives, and he greets her. With Libby, and Miranda too. They explain their situation to her. How Libby is Adam’s wife, and Miranda is Libby’s soulmate, and that ‘it’s kind of crazy to expect one person to be your everything’. They tell her they understand if she doesn’t understand, and she tells them that they should start with a coffee.
For a moment it seemed Soulmates was going to admit that Soul Connex wasn’t perfect, that perhaps jumping head first into serious relationships after knowing each other for such little time doesn’t always work in this world, but they didn’t. At this point in the series it seems unlikely that it ever will. While a throuple would have made sense as the ending of the episode, to add in Adam’s soulmate last minute seems like an unnecessary extra. We don’t actually know if this relationship worked out, but the episode ended so positively (especially compared with the previous two), regardless of its outcome. Libby still gets her best friend and her soulmate, whether or not she deserves them is another story.
