One person who believes in the predetermination of relationships likes to talk about the notion of "soulmates". He tells me that somewhere out there in the world my soulmate waits—and it's just a matter of time before our paths cross. He says my soulmate could be in Indiana, London, or Sydney. It is this notion of predetermination—and the idea that we all have a perfect mate—that gives birth to the "Prince Charming" fairy tale. And frankly, I don't really disagree that this is how things work.
However, there are two key problems with the Prince Charming phenomenon:
The soulmate is probably right in front of you (or at least in your own backyard)
First, if we want to believe in pre-determination, then we must also accept that where we currently live has also been predetermined. I think this is especially true if the reason we ended up in a particular location was because of a particularly salient, definite, difficult, or unusual circumstance. People who live where they do "just because" ("just because" they were born there, "just because" they've always lived there, "just because" that's where they haphazardly chose to live) probably weren't "predestined" to live there. Anyway, it would stand to reason that if our homes are predetermined, then so is the fact that we will find our "soulmates" somewhere in the vicinity of our homes (especially if the circumstances surrounding the meeting of our soulmates are particularly salient or unusual).
By this line of reasoning, it is not likely that we will find our soulmates half-way around the world, in a parallel universe, at some predetermined future time. Rather, we will find our soulmates right in our own backyards. In fact, if more of us stopped to look in that backyard for a second, we would find that the people we already know—perhaps people we consider to be only friends—are the very people who will become soulmates the longer and more deeply we get to know them. It is notable that, in retrospect, a large proportion of people end up coupling with people who were in their own backyards for a long time but whom they did not initially consider to be suitable as romantic partners.
We cannot passively wait for Prince Charming because life is not so predetermined as to mean that we don't have to do something to make our paths cross in the first place
The second problem with the Prince Charming idea is that not everything in life is predetermined; only certain wider parameters are. Human beings have agency—and must exercise that agency—within those predetermined boundaries. If I were to live with complete passivity, I would never be able to accomplish anything in life—let alone find my soulmate. While the existence of my soulmate may be predetermined, the footwork I have to do put myself in his/her path is not predetermined—especially if I have not already met my soulmate by a reasonable period of time. An analogy would be this: I may have been predetermined to be put on this earth, but I was not predetermined to have food put into my stomach; taking care of myself and making the most of what has been predetermined (my life) requires that I take care of myself and make use of the life I was given.
One could easily wait for one's soulmate well into one's 80s. The problem here is that death might ensue before that seemingly predetermined soulmate comes knocking on our door (or comes visiting by our deathbed). Certain things we just must pursue on our own, because it is only in very rare circumstances that the person of our dreams will just fall into our laps. Going out, socialising, and cultivating romance from our special friendships is something that is in our capacity to do—and something that we are called upon to do if we are to fulfill our half of the bargain in life.
While I recognise that the idea of Prince Charming may seem, indeed, very charming, I think it can be very dangerous, and can lead to lots of emotional heartache. If we resign ourselves to the fact that we will just "find" our perfect partner when the time is right, then we put ourselves in a position where we don't move on with our lives. We forever pine for the perfect person—which is often manifest in the pangs we feel when we see a "perfect" person on television, across the street, or on the bus. This can be especially self-defeating for the person for whom there may not be a soulmate somewhere out there. Fantasies can be good if they energise us and help us exercise our agency, but they are dangerous when they lead to false expectations and dead ends. I'd like to close with a quote from British physicist and author, Paul Davies:
It is important to realize that determinism does not imply events occur in spite of our actions. Some events occur because we determine them. Determinism must not be confused with the doctrine of fatalism, which asserts that future events are entirely beyond our control. “It is all written in the stars,” declares the fatalist. “What will be will be.” The soldier who behaves recklessly on the battlefield in the face of a hail of bullets while thinking “if my number is on it, no precaution will avert death” is a fatalist.——"Free Will and Determinism", God and the New Physics, 1983.