Is love really our destiny in life? What do different cultural traditions tell us about predestined connection?
Love is often viewed as a mysterious force—one that many societies attribute to fate. The English word ‘destiny’ derives from Latin, meaning ‘determined.’ It suggests a cosmic or divine power that determines what happens in people’s lives and relationships, guiding individuals toward a single true love or a predetermined lifelong partnership. In this view, prospective partners are simply meant for each other—or not—a role that is increasingly transferred today to predictive code and dating algorithms (see Algorithmic Destiny and Choice Overload in Love).
The Cross-Cultural Universality of Fate and Love Destiny
In many cultures and periods of history, people have held the view that love and a long-term relationship are their fate and destiny. These are the traditional European romantic love ideals found in literature and scholarship. Anthropological and psychological cross-cultural studies have shown that these cultural beliefs exist in many African, Asian, and Middle Eastern societies (Karandashev, 2017, 2019).
These folk and literary perceptions are mirrored in words such as destiny and fate, which assume the existence of an ultimate agent that guides a person to perfect love and predetermined marital partnerships. True love is an unavoidable fate. It is beyond a person’s control. He or she just ought to succumb and accept it as destined love, with all that happens.
The Lexicon of Love Destiny Across Cultures
In many cultures and languages, there are words that express the meanings of fate, love destiny, or something similar. For example, the classical Greek word for an unshakable and binding destiny is anánkē (star-crossed love). The Japanese word for the feeling that love with a specific person is inevitable is koi no yokan. The Chinese word for a force impelling a relationship’s destiny is yuán fèn. The Korean word in-yeon signifies a fatalistic connection between two individuals, while sarang denotes a profound, lifelong commitment (Lomas, 2018).
We can see that the notion of predetermined love has appeared in a variety of cultures and languages. Here are detailed examples of cultural beliefs in fate and destiny in love and marriage.
The Burmese Cultural Idea of Love Destiny
In a Burmese cultural context, love is conceived as fate. Myanmar is a Southeast Asian country heavily influenced by Buddhist culture. Burmese folklore tradition teaches men and women that love is their fate.
The cultural myth tells people that shortly after one’s birth, the Hindu god Brahma writes one’s love destiny on the forehead. So, the destiny of love is what guides men and women in love and in their marital future, one for life. In traditional Burmese society, there is no customary practice of arranged marriages; instead, individuals follow their destiny.
Love is mostly involved in the marital relationship, along with sentimental affection, sexual attraction, sympathy, and attachment. However, despite its importance in men’s and women’s marital lives, love is exhibited in moderation (de Munck, 1998, 2019; Spiro, 1977). Like in other East Asian societies, Burmese spouses are traditionally reserved in their emotional expressions.
The Chinese Cultural Idea of Love Destiny
These are the cultural beliefs about destined love in Chinese society. People have traditionally followed their faith through relational fatalism. Predestined relational affinity is embodied in the Chinese concept of yuán or yuán fèn (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997; Yang, 2006).
Because individuals believe in a predetermined relationship affinity, they view the type of relationship, how long it will last, and how well it will work as being determined by affinity. The different types of yuán serve as external and stable causal factors determining the trajectory of various relationships. This external attribution of the relationship plays vital social-defensive and ego-defensive roles: if a relationship flourishes, it was meant to be; if it fails, it was simply lacking in yuán, thereby alleviating personal fault or guilt.
In establishing a relationship, Chinese men and women particularly appreciate relational harmony. They have a fear of disharmony in the relationship and strive for harmony for the sake of harmony itself. Due to the attribution of yuán, family relationships are supposed to be kept harmonious and stable (Yang, 2006).
The Japanese Concept of Destined Attraction (Koi No Yokan)
In Japan, fatalistic beliefs about romantic attraction are intertwined with subtle emotional nuances and traditional cosmology. Beyond the folk belief in the Unmei no akai ito (the “Red Thread of Fate,” a concept shared with Chinese folklore where an invisible red cord ties two individuals destined to meet), Japanese culture recognizes distinct phases of love destiny.
One prominent concept is koi no yokan, often translated as “premonition of love” (Lomas, 2018). Unlike the Western notion of “love at first sight”—which implies immediate, passionate attraction—koi no yokan refers to the quiet, inevitable intuition upon meeting someone that you will fall in love with them in the future. It reflects a calm acceptance of destiny, where time and relational growth will unfold what fate has already ordained. This fatalistic stance aligns with broader Japanese cultural models of interpersonal connections, emphasizing patience, indirectness, and deep structural harmony in romantic unions (Karandashev, 2017).
Hindu and South Asian Notions of Cosmic Karma
Across South Asia, particularly within Hindu cultural traditions, love destiny is intimately tied to the laws of karma and reincarnation. Relationships are rarely viewed as isolated events occurring within a single lifetime; rather, a romantic or marital union is understood as the continuation of bonds forged in past lives (janma).
In this cultural model, two individuals are brought together by karmic debt or alignment. Marital pairings—whether initiated by family arrangements or individual choice—are interpreted as predetermined by cosmic order (Dion & Dion, 1996; Karandashev, 2017). The belief in past-life connections provides spouses with a strong sense of duty (dharma) and commitment, reinforcing the idea that marital challenges are tests to be endured together to resolve shared karma.
Western Romantic Fatalism and the “Soulmate” Ideal
While Western models of love are frequently characterized as individualistic and autonomous, a powerful subcurrent of romantic fatalism persists in Western literature and folk psychology. Tracing back to ancient Greek philosophy—such as Plato’s Symposium, which mythologized humans as halved beings searching for their missing counterpart—Western culture has maintained a persistent ideal of “the One” or the “soulmate.”
Modern psychological research indicates that individuals holding strong “destiny beliefs” in romantic relationships evaluate potential partners against an ideal baseline (Knee, 1998). Those who believe in romantic destiny tend to view relationships in binary terms: a couple is either “meant to be” or not. When difficulties arise, individuals with high destiny beliefs may disengage more rapidly if they conclude the partner is not their true soulmate, whereas those in cultures with collective or external fatalism (such as yuán or karma) use fate as a mechanism to persevere through hardship and preserve relational stability (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997; Knee, 1998).
Conclusion: The Functions of Fate in Cultural Psychology
Across diverse civilizations—from Southeast Asian Buddhist traditions to East Asian relational models and Western idealizations of soulmates—the idea of love destiny fulfills important psychological and social functions. Attributing love to fate provides individuals with comfort in the face of emotional uncertainty, helps justify the unpredictable emergence of romantic passion, and offers a cognitive buffer against relational failure. Whether viewed as divine writing on the forehead, an invisible red thread, or past-life karma, love destiny remains one of humanity’s most enduring cross-cultural concepts for organizing intimate human connection.
📚 The Relational Fate & Destiny Article Series
- Foundations: How World Cultures View Destiny in Love: Fate, Karma, and Soulmates
- Psychology: Our Love Destiny in Life: The Psychology and Phenomenology of Relational Fate
- Mindsets: Destiny vs. Growth: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Relational Fate
- Digital Age: Algorithmic Destiny and Choice Overload in Love: Re-Engineering Romantic Fate in the Digital Age
References
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- de Munck, V. C. (2019). Romantic love in cultural contexts. In V. Karandashev (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives on the experience and expression of love (pp. 15–35). Springer.
- Dion, K. K., & Dion, K. L. (1996). Cultural perspectives on romantic love. Personal Relationships, 3(1), 5–17.
- Goodwin, R., & Findlay, C. (1997). Love, attribution, and the Chinese psyche. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 1(1), 53–66.
- Karandashev, V. (2017). Romantic love in cultural contexts. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42683-9
- Karandashev, V. (2019). Cross-cultural perspectives on the experience and expression of love. Springer.
- Knee, C. R. (1998). Implicit theories of relationships: Assessment and prediction of romantic relationship initiation and maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2), 360–370.
- Lomas, T. (2018). Translating happiness: Cross-cultural exploration of well-being vocabulary. MIT Press.
- Spiro, M. E. (1977). Kinship and marriage in Burma: A cultural and psychodynamic analysis. University of California Press.
- Yang, K. S. (2006). Indigenous personality research: The Chinese case. In U. Kim, K. S. Yang, & K. K. Hwang (Eds.), Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (pp. 285–314). Springer.