As a member of the Nara clan, Shikamaru was under certain pressures that no one else was. From the time he was old enough to understand what a soulmate was he was encouraged to try his hardest to find them. It wasn 't that other people didn 't care about soulmates, although many people never found theirs and lived perfectly full lives without them. But being from the Nara clan was different.

A Nara without a shadow was no Nara at all.