If you found this post by typing soul ties into a search bar at some strange hour, I want you to know you are in good company. Usually the woman searching is not doing a theology project. She is trying to understand why she cannot stop thinking about someone she knows she is supposed to release. Why the connection outlived the relationship. Why prayer helps everything else but this. So let us talk about it honestly, what Scripture actually says, what it does not say, and what to do with a tie you are ready to let go of.
First, the honest part: the phrase is not in the Bible
You will not find the words soul tie in any translation of Scripture, and I think it matters to say that plainly, because a lot of teaching on this subject skips it. The phrase is modern. The concept, though, is ancient, and the Bible describes it more than once.
When Jonathan met David, Scripture says the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. That is 1 Samuel 18:1, and the word picture is exactly what it sounds like: two lives woven together like thread. That was a holy connection, a covenant friendship that strengthened both men. Souls being knit together is not a flaw in the design. It is the design.
Then there is Genesis 2:24, the two shall become one flesh, which Paul picks up in 1 Corinthians 6:16 and applies in a direction that makes modern readers squirm: physical intimacy joins people, he says, even when there is no covenant underneath it. Paul is clear that the joining happens whether or not we meant it to. You cannot un-know that verse once you have lived it. Many of us learned it the long way: the relationship ended, and the connection did not.
So what is a soul tie, really?
Putting the Scriptures together, I would say it like this: a deep bond formed between two people through intimacy, covenant, or long shared life, one that carries real spiritual and emotional weight. Some are gifts. The friend whose soul is knit to yours in a Jonathan and David way is not a problem to solve. Marriage is a soul tie on purpose, sealed in covenant.
And some are chains dressed up as connection. The relationship that ended two years ago but still owns a room in your mind. The person whose approval still steers your decisions from three states away. The one you reach for in your weakest hour even though every reach costs you another month of healing. If a bond keeps pulling you away from who God is making you, back toward who you were surviving as, that is not love with history. That is a tie that needs releasing.
Why you cannot just think your way out
Here is what I wish someone had told me sooner: you cannot logic your way out of a bond that was not formed by logic. It was formed by intimacy, by memory, by a thousand small moments of your heart deciding this person was home. That is why the advice to just move on lands like a paper cup in a house fire. The tie is real, so the release has to be real too.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!2 Corinthians 5:17
How to release a soul tie, biblically
Name it without shame. Healing starts with honesty, not performance. Tell God the truth about what this person was to you, what the connection gave you, and what it is costing you now. He is not scandalized. He was there.
Repent where repentance is yours to do. Not for being human, and not for having loved. But if the bond was built outside of God's design, bring that to Him plainly and receive what He always gives the honest: mercy, not a lecture.
Forgive, and release them from the debt. Forgiveness is not saying it did not hurt, and it is not reopening the door. It is deciding they no longer owe you the ending you deserved. Unforgiveness is itself a tie, and it binds you to the person tighter than memory ever could.
Say the goodbye you never got to say. Write the letter you will never send. Tell them what the connection meant to you and what it cost you. Tell them you are letting go. Nobody reads it but you and God, and something in you unties when the words finally leave your body and land on paper.
Renew your mind, daily, not once. Romans 12:2 is not a one-time event. The tie was built by repetition, and it is unbuilt the same way: every time the pull comes, you bring it to God again, you speak what is true again, you choose the new creation again. Slower than you want. More permanent than you can imagine.
You are not weak for needing help with this
I wrote an entire Soul Tie section into The Loved Girl, my workbook on love, loss, and learning to be loved right, because this work needs more than a blog post. It walks you through naming the tie, the unsent letter, the release process, and the renewing that comes after, with Scripture holding the whole thing steady. If this post found you in the middle of a letting-go, that workbook was written for exactly where you are sitting.
A tie that took years to form may take seasons to release. That is not failure. That is a soul doing honest work. And the God who knit souls together in the first place knows exactly how to untangle one without losing a single thread of you.
With you on the journey,
Autumn