Riker and Deanna Troi were supposed to be "imzadi" soul mates, right?

[urrutiap]

each of them were supposed to be their imzadi for each of them.

yet Riker was going around flirting and trying to hook up with other random strange alien women including the weird non gender "female' alien

 

[Finn]

Because he can't get close to anyone except Deanna. He's playing around instead of facing his feelings and ending their relationship when he got promoted. Something was holding him from getting back together until Insurrection.

He always wanted to be with Deanna, but never really was willing to go for it for a long time due to...reasons.

 

[Forbin]

Didn't they agree to cool it as long as they were serving on the same ship, in the same chain of command?

 

[Starflight]

Always felt like a huge missed opportunity to me, their unique link is something that could have come up much more often. The dreamy weirdness of how they were set up in "Farpoint" doesn't really gel with the show's later tone, I suppose.

I love that bit where they speak into each other's minds in the pilot, which literally never comes up again as far as I remember. I think the only hint of it after that is that she can feel his mind when he's trapped in The Royale.

 

[Nerys Myk]

each of them were supposed to be their imzadi for each of them.

yet Riker was going around flirting and trying to hook up with other random strange alien women including the weird non gender "female' alien

They were on a break

 

[Set Harth]

Anyone else immediately flash back to you-know-what?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And as we saw in PIC, they did end up growing old together.

 

[Michael]

I’m not sure why I even bother, but here goes …

yet Riker was going around flirting and trying to hook up with other random strange alien women

Why are you singling out him, considering Deanna was shown to have a few male encounters during the run of the show as well.

As for the nature of their relationship: as they mentioned in a couple of episodes, even though they meant a lot to each other, they allowed themselves to have relationships with other people as well.

the weird non gender "female' alien

What an odd thing to say. Pray tell, what was “weird” about Soren? Also, the major plot point of the episode is that she identifies as female, so there‘s really no reason to put it in quotes.

 

[Ragitsu]

Star Trek: The Next Generation is set in the future, the United Federation of Planets is supposed to be a near-utopia (strongly implied, in part, because the participants are broad-minded) and Deanna is half alien; taking all of that into account, the open nature of their relationship is tame.