A:  Our site is exclusively devoted to the teachings of The Urantia Book , and my reply will be taken from its teachings.

You want to know if love can happen twice…of course! Love can happen many, many times. “Love is the secret of beneficial association between personalities…” This kind of general “love” is of the Divine variety—the kind of love that spills over into the person’s life who is sure of God, and who passes that divine love unconditionally to others. About this kind of love, The Urantia Book teaches:

156:5.11 You are destined to live a narrow and mean life if you learn to love only those who love you. Human love may indeed be reciprocal, but divine love is outgoing in all its satisfaction-seeking. The less of love in any creature’s nature, the greater the love need, and the more does divine love seek to satisfy such need. Love is never self-seeking, and it cannot be self-bestowed. Divine love cannot be self-contained; it must be unselfishly bestowed.

There are many varieties of love—love of parents for children, love of country, love between siblings, etc…However, I suspect that the kind of love that you’re talking about is that kind of love found between a man and a woman…? This is the kind of love that leads to marriage and family with that special one, and is often human love of the “reciprocal” kind…although it, too, can have divine value in its human bestowal. If this is your question, my answer would still be “yes.” That kind of love can happen twice, or even more…but even once is a blessing, if one is lucky enough to find it!

The next part of your question—whether one can continue this kind of love with two souls at once…well, I would say that is not an ideal situation. Obviously, the particular kind of human love that recognizes the other as a potential marriage/life partner may start as a general feeling of attraction and love, but it requires a considerable commitment on the part of both parties in order to grow it, and make it work. Diluting the relationship with another of equal value would make both relationships suffer, so that neither would be successful.

The love relationship that leads to the marriage bond must be a mutually exclusive and intimate one… although, even while enjoying such an intimate bond, one can still practice a healthy attitude of divine love towards all. This practice will go far in bringing happiness to each individual, even the stranger, or the “man on the street”:

100:4.6 You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor’s motives and sentiments. It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man.

I hope that this reply has been helpful…please write back at any time!”