The ego trap of special relationships contains, as a presupposition, the concept that you can have a shared life or experience with anybody.
This is an outright lie.
This was one of the things I was shown on my recent big journey and as the resonance kicked in, it made so much sense and made so many other pieces fall into place.
The lesson is all about the culmination of a few big spiritual lessons, like external validation, ego responses and mitigation, understanding the role that society, ethics, morals, principles and religion play, relationships, special relationships, twin flames and soulmates.
As you're moving towards the breakthrough point while on your journey, you'll experience it as the need and desire to start spring cleaning the relationships in your life and you'll find your overall circle of connections you interact with decreasing. It gets more rapid over time.
At the same time, you'll often place much more focus on romantic special relationships, either pushing them away totally or placing too much importance on them. This happens because you're seeking deeper meaning and sexual attraction is a recursion of the urge to oneness.
Over time you'll find yourself becoming more of a hermit. Einstein says it well (paraphrased): it amazes me that the more I understand society and human interactions, the less I seem to need contact or people in my life.
The last stages of this journey are therefore lonely, and the dragon you have to slay is loneliness.
The reward is being complete alone :)
It's been interesting how this has played out since I crossed the threshold - I certainly need even less contact than before. Even the places where I did put in effort previously have diminished to almost nothing.
This whole withdrawal and complete alone experience brings its own challenge in society: you need to interact with people in order to survive on the physical level.
We don't have a choice about society or living in it - we have to participate in order to survive and continue the lightwork.
If you're at this stage of your journey, hang in there. The reward is well worth it... but the test period is measured in decades.
Don't get disheartened.