Then we need to separate and have our own identity, so if you can't separate and be your own person, you've also got problems. But soul ties have to do with bonding, a Godly bonding or joining together, husband and wife, parent and child, members of a church, good friends. For example, Jonathan and David were great friends. The heart of Jonathan knit, or was bonded, to David. They were great friends. We sometimes use the world soul mates, there's a feeling of connectedness, and to be separated would create distress - but soul ties can also be ungodly, and they can be demonic in origin, out of God's order, and when they're out of God's order, then stress, demonic activity, and pain and troubles start to take place. If a soul tie is ungodly, it's not in God's order, it's out of order, so for example, sexual relationships outside marriage, the two are bound or bonded together. That's an ungodly joining, and demon spirits can use it to harass people. A person can even be bound, or soul tied, to images. That's one of the deep problems with pornography, is the person gets bonded to sexual images, and there's a tie to an image that they see, a fantasy realm, or fantasising, and that whole realm, there's like a chord that's between them needs to be broken.
A person can be soul tied to a controlling person, so you get perhaps a father who's very abusive, controlling. There's a love/hate relationship goes on with that person. They're bonded, and the child often can't break away; or it could be a controlling mother, an insecure mother who just fusses over, and fills the child so much with anxiety, they can't seem to do anything for themselves. The result is the child is soul tied in an unhealthy way to the mother, and unable to break free. We call a person like that co-dependent, they're dependent on the approval of someone and they can't live their life out. They're soul tied to the one they're dependent on. Another one is if someone is abusive, sexually abusive, physically abusive or verbally abusive, the most extraordinary thing is to find how many women cannot break free of an abusive man. There has to be a reason apart from logical - I mean logic, you think why would you stay there? They just say I don't know. They just can't seem to break free, because there is a soul tie and a demonic power operating, and often a person who's in an abusive relationship needs quite some support to break free. Without the support of friends they just keep feeling obliged, or guilty, or duty-bound to go back.
People can even be soul tied to a dead person. What do I mean by that? Suppose someone has not bonded well to their parents, got a strong attachment with a grandmother or grandfather, and they die, and they never let go or grieve properly. Now one of the first phases of grief is shock and denial, so many times when a person comes into a grieving process, instead of journeying through grief, they actually stop and lock up at the first phase, denial, or the second phase, anger. They're just stuck in being angry, and denying the whole thing, so they don't journey through grief, through it's stages, to get to release, and they remain locked to the person they've lost. I have known of people who were soul tied to a dead child that they lost, to a dead spouse, to a dead parent or grandparent, even to a dead animal. They got so attached, and then the grief was immense, and then somehow their life just fell apart afterwards. So soul ties are very, very powerful, and if they're ungodly or out of order or distorted in some way, then demonic spirits can harass the person.
People can also be soul tied to an idol, so if someone's been involved in idolatry often a huge fear is of letting go of that idol, what will happen to me if I let go? People can be soul tied to a trauma, a traumatic experience, like an accident or an abuse. They can be soul tied to pornographic images. People can be soul tied through blood covenants they've made, they're soul tied to a demonic spirit or someone else, another person they've made a blood covenant with. Sometimes people can be soul tied through tattoos to the person who shed blood in the making of the tattoo. Tattoos can open the door for evil spirits. I'm not saying every person who's got a tattoo has got demons, but I have prayed for people, and when we broke the soul tie to the tattooist, and came against the spirits entering in through the tattoo, there was massive deliverance. Often it's because underneath it, there was a deep rejection or rebellion that was mobilising the person to get the tattoo in the first place.