He Wasn't Your Soulmate, Just a Pisces

A Complicated Beginning

A few years ago, I found myself in what I lovingly (and traumatically) refer to as a “complicationship” with a Pisces. If you’ve ever dated one, you probably already know where this is going. He was dreamy, sensitive, romantic, and deeply wounded. We were best friends, lovers, and self-proclaimed “twin flames” which, let’s be real, is just astrology’s way of labelling a codependent, emotionally turbulent situationship with a flower crown.

We met just days after I had closed the door on my marriage. I’d left my ex-husband behind in Scotland, packed up the remnants of my life, and was clinging to the hope of starting fresh. So when Pisces floated into my world like a wistful sea breeze with a guitar and tragic backstory, I mistook it for destiny. But spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It was just my unprocessed trauma trying to find comfort in someone else’s.

At first, everything felt magical. We laughed until we cried, had endless late-night chats about the meaning of life, and made grand plans for a future that neither of us was remotely equipped to build. The problem was, I started healing. And he didn’t. Which meant I stopped needing the chaos, but he clung to it like a life raft.

The Mirror Effect

One of the most painful things about healing is realising that some people only feel like soulmates because they mirror your pain. When we’re not fully healed, we don’t always attract love. Sometimes we attract reflection. And in this case, Pisces was a mirror I wasn’t ready for. He held up every ache, every wound, every unresolved hurt I hadn’t yet faced.

I thought we were meant to be. Turns out, he was just a Pisces with a penchant for poetry and poor boundaries. I was drawn to him not because he was right for me, but because he made my own pain feel seen. He understood my sadness because he lived in his own. We weren’t two halves of a whole. We were two broken people trying to patch each other up with duct tape and desperate kisses.

I wanted him to heal. I really did. But the truth is, I wanted it more than he did. I became his sounding board, his therapist, his emotional crutch. And every time I tried to put myself first, he made it feel like abandonment. But here’s the thing: love isn’t sacrifice. It’s not giving up your stability to fix someone else’s chaos. That’s not romance. That’s martyrdom.

When You Mistake Chaos for Chemistry

There’s something intoxicating about emotional chaos when you’re still in your healing era. The highs feel euphoric, the lows feel like Shakespearean tragedy, and the whole thing convinces you that it must be love. Because who else could make you feel this deeply, right? Wrong. That’s not love. That’s a trauma bond in glittery disguise.

With Pisces, every conversation was either a deep soul connection or an emotionally manipulative monologue. One minute he’d talk about our future kids, the next he’d ghost me for a week. He called it being overwhelmed. I called it emotional whiplash. But because I was still raw from leaving my marriage, I let it slide. Over and over.

The drama felt like passion. The chaos felt like intensity. But all it really did was drain me. I started shrinking myself to keep him steady. My boundaries became blurry. My self-worth eroded quietly under the weight of his moods. And still, I told myself this was special. That we were twin flames. That if I just loved him harder, he’d rise up to meet me where I was.

The Slow Realisation

Eventually, you reach a point where you can’t lie to yourself anymore. For me, it came one morning not long after I’d moved to Adelaide, where he also lived. He’d ignored me for the two weeks leading up to my move, and by the time I arrived, I had stopped caring. His silence had already shown me who he was. He wasn’t healing, he wasn’t ready, and I was more than done.

So when he messaged me one night, drunk as a skunk and full of feelings, I told him point blank the friendship was over. He begged me for another chance and promised to pick me up at 11am the next morning to talk things through. Instead, by 12:30 that day I was sitting in a hospital ward, where he lay with a concussion after passing out drunk in a park at the exact time he was meant to collect me. Apparently, he’d polished off a bottle of Jack Daniels for breakfast.

After that, I pulled back completely. And he didn’t handle it well. He started lashing out, the lies unravelled, and the dream of “twin flames” faded fast. We weren’t some cosmic connection. We were one giant red flag, on fire, and I was staring at it from across the hospital ward wondering how the hell I’d convinced myself this was love.

Letting go wasn’t a dramatic goodbye. It was quiet. Slow. Painful. It was realising that I deserved a relationship that felt safe, steady, and kind. Not just intense and consuming. And most importantly, it was understanding that just because someone feels familiar doesn’t mean they’re your forever.

So Was He Your Soulmate?

Here’s the truth: not everyone who feels cosmic is meant to stay. Sometimes people come into our lives to show us the work we still need to do. They’re not here to complete us, but to challenge us, push us, reflect us. And yes, sometimes they’re a Pisces with soft eyes and a sad smile who makes you believe in fate for all the wrong reasons.

When you’re healing, it’s easy to mistake intensity for alignment. But healthy love doesn’t feel like a rollercoaster. It feels like a Sunday morning. Calm. Comfortable. A little sleepy, a little lovely. And it doesn’t require you to abandon yourself to keep someone else afloat.

So no, that Pisces wasn’t your soulmate. He was your mirror. And once you’ve seen yourself clearly, you don’t need to keep standing in front of the reflection.

Loving Yourself First

The person you’re really looking for is you. That version of yourself that you’re becoming through all the chaos and the pain. The version who sets boundaries. Who chooses peace. Who knows that love isn’t supposed to feel like survival.

When you meet someone who feels like home, check in with yourself. Are they truly safe? Or do they just remind you of a feeling you’ve been carrying since childhood? That ache to be seen, to be chosen, to be enough. Sometimes we mistake recognition for connection. But one is familiar, and the other is right.

Healing means falling in love with your own wholeness. Pouring all the energy you gave to them back into yourself. Creating the life you thought you needed them for. And when you do that, soulmate or not, you win. And sometimes, as a delightful twist, you meet someone when you least expect it….*

*Like your Aries bestie who wandered into your life at a bottle shop after the $50 Uber ride from the hospital. You were shattered, salty, and not even remotely interested in meeting anyone new. But somehow, between the fluorescent lights and the overpriced cabernet, a new connection began. One built on laughter, kindness, and none of the chaos you’d grown used to. Proof that new beginnings really do show up when you’re ready for them, even if they smell faintly of whiskey and late-night chips.

Not every spark is cosmic. Sometimes it’s just two unhealed people striking each other like flint.

In the End

I look back now and smile. Not because I miss him, but because I understand why it all happened. He wasn’t my twin flame. He was a beautifully chaotic detour that brought me back to myself. Every red flag, every dizzying high and shattering low, all of it pushed me closer to the person I am now. The one who chooses herself first.

There’s something liberating about accepting that a relationship can shape you without defining you. I don’t need to romanticise what happened. It was messy. It was painful. But it cracked me open in all the right places and let the light in. And in the wreckage, I rebuilt.

And if you’re in that place now, wondering if the person making you cry more than laugh is your forever person, let me say this with love: probably not. But that doesn’t mean it was a waste. It just means it was a lesson. A stepping stone. A Pisces.

So thank him for the growth, block him if you need to, and keep going. Your peace is waiting.

And trust me, it doesn’t ghost you on Tuesdays.

We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In today's episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why we need to stop clapping for basic decency. You know the script. A man texts back within twenty-four hours and we're screenshotting it to the group chat. A man plans a date more than three hours in advance and we call him a unicorn. A man manages to listen, pay attention, and behave like a fully formed adult, and our nervous systems short-circuit because we genuinely don't know how to receive it.Here's the truth nobody is saying out loud. The bar has been dragged so low that Satan himself needs a chiropractor after a competitive round of limbo. We've been culturally trained to be grateful for behaviour that should not require gratitude. We've been told these things are bonuses when they're actually the entry requirement. And in the meantime, women have been quietly doing the basic decency thing forever, without applause, while men get standing ovations for outputs we generated for them.Today we're talking about why a great man is genuinely just an average woman, who benefits when the bar stays low, the invisible labour women have been performing for free for centuries, and the friend-test that cuts straight through every excuse we've ever made for mediocre men. Let's get into it.For more visit BryJaimea.com or follow over on IG @BryJaimea

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