Are Soul Ties Real?

And Is This Purity Culture Belief Harmful or Helpful?

The idea of soul ties was commonly taught at the height of purity culture.

It was all over Christian literature for teenagers.

And in our initial survey of 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue, we found that this belief was highly correlated with a lot of terrible things—including sexual pain disorders. We’ve written about that in our peer-reviewed article in Sociology of Religion, and just this week we’ve submitted two other academic papers on sexual pain which include the soul tie belief.*

This week on episode 285 of the Bare Marriage podcast we explained it all, and I thought I’d take today to lay out the idea behind soul ties, and what the results of it are.

*And thank you to our supporters who donated money to give us the funds to be able to write and publish our academic papers! If you’d like to join us, tax deductible receipts are available within the United States.

What is a soul tie?

When people use the term “soul tie”, what they usually mean is that, in the spiritual realm, our souls are united to someone else, and that “tie” is binding us to a person we don’t want to be bound to, and is hampering our efforts at moving ahead in life.

Most commonly, they are seen to develop in the sexual realm, though that’s not the only way to see them. Here’s an example of how this might show up in Christian books:

When you get attached to someone, you will always keep a part of that person with you, tucking those memories into your trunk of emotional baggage, and eventually dragging them into your marriage where you may be tempted to compare your husband to one or all of your previous boyfriends. - Every Young Woman’s Battle

“Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone your body makes a promise whether you do or not?” The bottom line is that you get “addicted” and “bonded” to the people you have sex with, even if they are “just friends.” - And the Bride Wore White

“Demons can be transferred through sexual intercourse.” - Soul Care

“If we sexually join our bodies to another person outside of the context of marriage, we become one flesh with that person. (1 Corinthians 6:16) This creates a spiritual bond that leads to spiritual bondage.” - Neil Anderson, Bondage Breaker

In essence, people are taught that sex bonds them to someone, so that they aren’t able to bond as well once they are married. They are taught that demons can be like STIs, passed through sex. This can happen whether the sex was consensual or not. And this will affected them forever, until the tie is broken.

The biblical basis for all of this is supposed to be 1 Corinthians 6:15-20, which I’m going to quote here in the New Living Translation:

Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.”But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

Here’s just verse 16 in the NIV:

Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

Now, at first glance, this doesn’t seem to have much to do with soul ties. After all, the verse says you’re one with her “in body”, not “in soul”. But I do believe that this is where the concept came from, because I remember as a teenager sitting in a youth rally, and the speaker explaining that when you have sex with someone, God makes you into one flesh. You are joined together. Essentially, you are now “tied”.

That’s what a lot of the purity talks that we give youth are based on, too–if you have sex, you join with someone. You form a bond. And when you break up with that person, you break that bond, even though it’s still there in your soul. Then, when you have sex with someone else, the bond won’t be as strong, because part of you is still tied to someone else.

However, let’s remember that this was being written at a time when Christian believers were still using temple prostitutes, and Paul was trying to tell them to stop. And in those days without contraception, “the two shall become one flesh” can also just mean babies can come! It doesn’t have to have a connotation of demonization from sex.

There is no evidence that people needed deliverance from soul ties

Even in this case in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul does not then turn around and say, “so now we have to pray exorcism prayers to deliver you all from the soul ties you have with the prostitutes.” He makes a case against using temple prostitutes in very clear language, but he says absolutely nothing about them all needing deliverance now.

He says nothing about all of their marriages being doomed because of soul ties.

When Paul sees thousands come to Christ, he doesn’t then do massive exorcisms on all the soul ties. Instead, they are baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, and are told they’re new creations.

Evangelicalism’s resources for teenagers, and evangelicalism’s deliverance ministry books, all give different tactics that are needed to break soul ties. In some cases it’s going through a ceremony to burn stuff and pray. In some cases it’s an exorcism. In some cases it’s just a big prayer time where you confess everything and bring up every memory.

It seems to never the same—and none of it comes from the Bible.

So people are told they have a soul tie that they can get through abuse or consensual sex; that this soul tie will impede their ability to bond with their future spouse; that this soul tie is very, very powerful and dire; but no one can agree on what to do about it.

Does that sound like Jesus to you?

What if we’re using spiritual language that muddies the waters?

Absolutely we can feel a bond through sex. In fact, there’s a hormonal reason for that. When we have sex, we release a hormone called oxytocin, or regularly called “the bonding hormone”. It makes us feel close to the person that we’re with, and produces feelings of affection and belonging.

And because we bond, when we break up with someone, that can hurt. A lot. It’s easy to call this a “soul tie.”

When it comes to abuse, people go through major trauma that often is very debilitating. It’s often easier to blame this on demons and demonization too, rather than understanding PTSD and trauma’s effects on the body.

But by obscuring the reality that a lot of us have heartaches at breakups, or a lot of us have trauma from abuse, and calling it all soul ties that need to be broken in the spiritual realm, we’re adding a level of shame to people who are already hurting, and often denying them the help they really need.

Why is the belief in soul ties so negative for women?

Soul ties tell you that the act of a man putting his penis inside of you can steal something from you. It can make it so that you can’t bond with anyone else well anymore. It can take something away from you.

Rather than stressing the sacredness of sex, the soul tie theology stresses the dangers of sex.

And this can all happen whether you want it to or not. So even if someone sexually assaults you, the way that God made the universe means that demons will now be able to hurt you. So the sexual assault isn’t just from the man who assaulted you; it’s really from God Himself who didn’t protect you spiritually.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that we found that the belief in soul ties leads to lower marital and sexual satisfaction, but also much higher rates of sexual pain disorders, including those with obstructed penetration (where the pain is severe enough that intercourse is impossible).

One of our big areas of study in the Bare Marriage team is sexual pain, since evangelical women suffer from it at roughly twice the rate of the general population. Talk to any pelvic floor physiotherapist, and they’ll tell you that most of their clientele are evangelicals. While this has been widely known in the literature since the 1970s, what hasn’t been understood is why. It was assumed it was just shame of sex, but as we’ve looked more closely at it, we’ve seen that this is not the case. Instead, sexual pain disorders are highly linked to beliefs in things that limit women’s autonomy over their bodies. And anything that makes our bodies or sex seem dangerous leads to higher rates of sexual pain.

And this is true even for women who marry as virgins. Even if they’ve done everything “right”, the belief in soul tie theology is enough to make sex seem dangerous and threatening.

Who does soul tie theology hurt?

To sum up, I think soul tie theology has ramifications for five groups of people:

1. Those who did everything right

They can still internalize that sex steals something from them, and means they’ll never be whole people again

2. Those with a broken heart

Rather than realizing this is a normal part of a breakup, and they may just need time and healing, they may think they’re cursed forever, or won’t be able to get over this person.

3. Those with trauma

Rather than seek out licensed professional help to deal with PTSD, they may just believe that they have demons.

In addition, we interviewed so many women for our book She Deserves Better who ended up marrying their abuser because they felt that they were already “tied” to him, and they had no choice. They would never be able to bond properly with anyone else, and it wouldn’t be fair to another man to marry him since they were now damaged goods.

4. People merely with memories

Those who had past relationships before the person they are currently married to may occasionally remember a past partner. This is normal. When you have a functioning brain, you will have memories.

But rather than simply learning strategies to compartmentalize so that these memories don’t impede your current relationship, people can feel that these memories are due to a soul tie, and give them far more attention than they are worth.

5. Spouses of those with past partners

Many people have had sex in the past that really didn’t mean much at all. In the evangelical church we don’t like to admit that this is possible, but many people have past sex lives and it doesn’t impact how they see their spouse.

But when you grow up believing that soul ties are real, it’s often hard to stop doubting a spouse who has a past, even if they’re not bothered by it at all.

We can give the message that sex is sacred without the soul tie theology

We don’t need the fear tactics. We don’t need to create a theology that isn’t even in the Bible. We don’t need to keep teaching things that are hurting people.

Yes, teach that sex is sacred. Yes, teach that sex is meant for committed relationships.

But don’t teach this whole soul tie package. It hurts people. And we all deserve better than that.

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You may also enjoy:

1. Our podcast this week which was all about soul ties!

2. Our book She Deserves Better, where we go into the ramifications of this belief, especially for abuse survivors

3. Our Great Sex Rescue toolkit, with handouts on the negative beliefs we measured, and how that affects people