"In a soulmate we find not company, but a completed solitude"
About this Quote
Brault’s line twists the usual soulmate fantasy into something quietly more exacting: the goal isn’t to be rescued from loneliness, but to have your aloneness fully honored. “Not company” is the bait-and-switch. Company can be anyone’s warm body in the room, an antidote to silence. A “completed solitude,” by contrast, suggests solitude as a deliberate architecture - a self with edges, habits, and private weather - that doesn’t get demolished by intimacy. It gets finished.
The subtext is almost anti-romantic in the best way. Brault implies that the healthiest love doesn’t function as distraction or dependency. It’s not two half-people making a whole; it’s two whole people whose wholeness becomes more legible in the presence of the other. That word “completed” carries a craftsman’s pride: love as a final coat of varnish, not a structural repair.
There’s also a subtle rebuke to the social script that equates partnership with constant togetherness. Brault is arguing for a relationship that can tolerate interiority - the parts of a person that remain unshared, unperformative, even unexplainable. A soulmate, in this framing, isn’t the one who fills the silence, but the one who makes silence feel like a room you’re allowed to inhabit.
Contextually, it lands in a modern emotional economy where being “alone” is treated as a problem to solve and being partnered is treated as proof of stability. Brault offers a different status symbol: a love that leaves you intact.
The subtext is almost anti-romantic in the best way. Brault implies that the healthiest love doesn’t function as distraction or dependency. It’s not two half-people making a whole; it’s two whole people whose wholeness becomes more legible in the presence of the other. That word “completed” carries a craftsman’s pride: love as a final coat of varnish, not a structural repair.
There’s also a subtle rebuke to the social script that equates partnership with constant togetherness. Brault is arguing for a relationship that can tolerate interiority - the parts of a person that remain unshared, unperformative, even unexplainable. A soulmate, in this framing, isn’t the one who fills the silence, but the one who makes silence feel like a room you’re allowed to inhabit.
Contextually, it lands in a modern emotional economy where being “alone” is treated as a problem to solve and being partnered is treated as proof of stability. Brault offers a different status symbol: a love that leaves you intact.
Quote Details
| Topic | Soulmate |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List











