Everybody has a timeline of when they want to get married, have kids, etc. For these couples, they decided if they couldn't find someone else, they'd at least want to be with someone they'd known all their lives.
“Wouldn’t It Be Funny If…?”
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“My wife and I dated during that awkward summer between high school and college and then she went her way and I went mine; we sort of joked about such a thing — didn’t really say, but a, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if? Yeah, you know, that would work.’ I think I saw her for lunch like one time when we were 20ish(?) Anyway, ran into her again at a friend’s party when I was 28 and we hit it off. She’d just gotten divorced from a two-year marriage and I was just back from law school. It was nice as we both knew the other wasn’t a psychopath — more or less got on with one another’s families, had many of the same friends.
Anyway, here we are almost 20 years on from running into one another again, married 16 years, couple of kids, life in the suburbs — all’s good.”
They Both Had Their Issues
“My good friend made me sign a bar napkin marriage agreement. I laughingly told her that we were both too messed up, on top of our drinking problems, to be getting hitched, but she was very adamant about it. From time to time she would remind me of it and when I would haha, and hem-haw around, she would dig in her purse and produce this very fragile bar napkin, and I would relinquish any protests for her sake and agree, haha, yes, ok, ok, we will at this age, blah, blah.
Then one day she took her own life. Her suicide was sketchy. Mysterious death – hands behind back, tied, bag overhead, boyfriend sent her to ER the week before. But regardless, this wasn’t out of the question for her to try. She had tried to kill herself before. One time she put on her high school prom dress, got in the tub and slit her wrists and remembers nothing about it and was laughing about how messed up it was.
She had problems, pills and bad clove choices, but was beautiful inside and out. I felt so guilty because I had been in a bad place and she had been texting to check in on me. I would say I’m fine, hope you are well, etc. I should have been checking on her. Maybe she was reaching out and I failed her.
A week or so after her passing, her sister calls me assuming we were very close. She, the sister, had found the bar napkin and felt obligated to contact me. We talked for a long while on the phone. Another week proceeds and I attend a small gathering/tribute for my friend. Took me about a year to stop beating myself up over it.”
Who Really Knows About Love So Young?
“We met online playing a MUD (online text-based roleplaying game for the normies out there) when I was 12 and he was 13. He lived in eastern Canada and I lived in the Western US. We flirted a little and internet ‘dated’ off and on every few years, but for the most part, we were just internet friends who could always find something to talk about. We jokingly made the exact pact to marry if we weren’t already by 30. No matter what, we always kept in contact.
So when I was around 20, I got into a bad relationship and ended up having an unplanned pregnancy. During this time we lost contact for about a year. The father and I broke up before I even had the baby, and after I gave birth and was recovering at home, I hopped on the computer and opened up my old messenger.
He was online, and we talked. A little at first, then some more. This worked up to hours a day, updates on everything we were doing and sharing in each other’s despairs and triumphs – we became best internet friends again.
When my son was about a year and a half old, I suggested that he come and visit me. We were both working, he had vacation saved up, why not? But he resisted me. I couldn’t figure out why, and I would later learn he was staying away as a precaution because he thought maybe I just wanted someone to take care of me and didn’t want to take a chance of being used.
So a couple more years passed. We were still best friends. I didn’t push him to visit me again, and one day he got his tax return back and suggested it to me this time. At that moment a whole world opened up to us. We really, really loved each other as friends but had never really thought being together was a true, real-life thing we could do. We got giddy over it. We promised we wouldn’t say ‘I love you’ until after we’d spent a total of one year in person with each other.
Well, we met and had explosive chemistry. We’d really been together in spirit, more or less since we were 12. We said ‘I Love You’ the end of the first visit. That was 2 years ago, and we’re celebrating 1 year married this November.
He’s my person, and I’m his. I’m happy every day he’s with me and leaving after our visits made me never take his presence for granted. I’m happy every day to come home to my son and my husband, they are my life.”
He Dodged A Bullet With This Old “Friend”
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“I made a marriage pact with my very good friend in 10th grade – around 1988 or so – that we’d get married at 27 if we were both still single. We had every class together for three years straight, got along famously, and were just greatly compatible. She went overseas for college and I joined the military, and she just stopped responding to letters after around 9 months.
1993, I get engaged, and suddenly run into her in a mall. I introduce my future wife, and my old friend loses her freaking mind. Right in front of my future bride and all, middle of the shopping center, screaming at me about how I betrayed our agreement, I belonged with her, yadda yadda yadda. Calm as can be, my wife asks her why she stopped writing me then?
Like a light switch flipping, old friend starts bawling her eyes out and plops down on the floor. We hurried the heck out of there, and I never saw her again; bullet dodged.”
He Told Her He’d “Never Fallen In Love With Anyone Else” And…
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“We met in college and were instant best friends. I was 20; she was 18. We spent all our time together and were briefly lovers. We dated other people on and off, but we talked about it and agreed that a committed relationship between the two of us would be an all-or-nothing kind of thing. Since neither of us wanted to give up our hedonistic, promiscuous, irresponsible lifestyle, we made a point of not committing to a relationship. A few years went by that way, and we were very happy, right up until her sisters died.
It was a car accident. They were 16 and 18, and both were killed in the crash, dead on arrival at the hospital. My friend was utterly, completely devastated. It still hurts me to remember it, even now. Her father, though, was even more devastated, to the point where he was legitimately willing to let himself starve to death rather than try to go on living. She moved home, out of state, to take care of him. She cut ties with everyone for a while, even me. I didn’t see her again for two years. She was so different after that. Before the accident, she’d always been the most joyful, exuberant, positive person I’d ever met. After she came back, she was quieter, sadder, maybe wiser. I wanted to be there for her more than I’d ever wanted anything in the world. Not being able to fix things for her, not being able to make it better, that hurt more than anything I could ever remember. I guess that’s when I realized how in love with her I was.
I told her that I loved her, that I wanted to be there with her, and she told me that she couldn’t handle the idea of any kind of emotional connection for a while; maybe a few years, she said, maybe never, maybe she’d never be able to open up emotionally again. She said she needed space from me, particularly from me. She said she needed to figure out what it meant to be alive in a world where her sisters were gone. She asked me to give her time, and I told her that I’d give her anything she wanted. She told me that she’d never been happier than she was when we were together. I told her the same. I told her that I understood, and that’s when we made our pact. I was 25 then, and she was 23. We agreed: if she turned 30 and I turned 32, and if she had learned to heal, and if she hadn’t fallen in love with someone else, and if I hadn’t fallen in love with someone else, then we’d get married. So that’s how we parted ways.
She moved to Wyoming, to be alone. I moved to Germany, to get as far away from her as I could. We didn’t keep in touch at first, but over the next few years we built up a correspondence. We wrote letters because we both liked writing letters. Sometimes we’d mail each other books that we thought the other would like. Years went on, and we became closer and closer. When I turned 30, I half-jokingly brought up our marriage pact. I told her that I hadn’t ever fallen for anyone else (I didn’t mention this, but I couldn’t have fallen for anyone else, I always compared every other woman to her, and in my memory she was perfect). She replied that she was still very serious about our agreement and that she’d never fallen in love with anyone else either. I asked her if she thought she had begun to heal, and she said she had, as much as a person could ever heal from something like that. A year later, she told me she’d like us to meet and spend some time together to see if the spark was still there. It was. She was living in California at that time, and I found a job there; I’d always wanted to live in California anyway. I proposed to her six months later, and she smiled and told me ‘no fair,’ that I had to wait another few months when she’d be turning 30. I thought it was silly, but at that point, things were going so well that a few months didn’t seem like they could matter at all. But I’m crying now, so I’ll have to wrap this up quickly.
She died. That’s how the story ends. She was hit by a driver who’d been drinking and spent 2 days in the ICU before her body gave out. I went to her funeral. I spoke to her father but I barely remember what we said. I’ve never spoken to him since. I don’t have the willpower to make myself find out how he’s doing. That will be four years ago this November. I’m in therapy and trying to learn how to have feelings again, other than blank, mindless, miserable rage. I often wonder if this is what it felt like for her. She made progress, she learned to feel again, that thought is what keeps me going; she did it, and she’d want me to do it.”
He Never Thought The Popular Girl Would Want Someone Like Him
“I had a real close friend in high school that was a social butterfly and, for whatever reason, liked to hang out with awkward nerds like me. One day she suggested a marriage pact if we were both still single at 35, and I agreed with a laugh because, hey, I didn’t expect her to remember me among all her other friends and there was no way she’d still be single by then.
After graduation, her family moved clear to the other side of the country and I figured I’d just be another Facebook friend. We stayed in touch and actually started talking more — I’m talking constant Skype webcam and phone calls way too late into the night. Turns out I was one of the few people that actually bothered to put anything into a continuing relationship, and about a year after graduation, she confessed that she had fallen in love with me.
That was seven years ago. We’re getting married in 29 days.”
A Long, Storied History With A Dramatic Ending
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“We met in high school, I was a sophomore, she was a freshman. I student taught her Japanese class and it was fun and a great experience for me. We bonded hard and ended up dating. It only lasted a few months, but we stayed good friends as we realized we were just better friends.
We went every year together to the annual Cherry Blossom festival in DC and we always caught up. That trip, just for 3 days out of the year, was like a little time bubble – nothing back home mattered, none of the drama, the troubles, stresses that a high schooler could or would have, all of it washed away, and we got to spend 3 heavenly days together.
The first time we were together was when the marriage pact was made. At first, it was at 25. We settled on it, then a week later renegotiated to 30. Every year we reminded each other; every year made it more real for me, and something awesome to look forward to while simultaneously knowing we could still do what we wanted to before then.
Then I graduated and we fell apart a bit. She went downhill a bit, pills and drinking, until she got pregnant at 18; I drank heavily and slept my way around trying to fix my crippling depression. I remember hearing about it. It didn’t shatter my dreams of marrying her – if she was single at 30, kids or no, I was putting a ring on it, it never bothered me.
Kid 2 came a few years later. A few years after that, we bumped into each other and caught up. It was like no time had passed, and we were right back into our old friendship, incorporating all the things that had happened over the years. She was 24, I was 25. We spent the next two years trying to put a relationship together before the pact was due; it worked between us, but what didn’t work was that we both had established, busy lives apart. I worked 50-60 a week, she was a full-time mom and social services worker. We tried, we really did, but it always came down to, ‘Work needs me another night this week,’ or ‘The kids are sick so I’m on full nurse duty.’ Still, I loved her more than anything.
She died two months ago. We never got to carry through with our pact, but we’d gotten so close. She was getting over a bad injury during her time in the military, time was again working against us, then she was just gone. Blood clot from her lungs to her heart.
I would have carried out the pact; I would have married her anytime between the past few years and 30, but I didn’t. I beat myself up a bit for it, even if I had just had a few years to call her my wife. She’ll always be in my heart and that voice in my head that stops me from treating myself poorly. She has become my voice of reason, and maybe that makes me a little crazy, but it keeps her close to me, knowing full well I’ll never smell her hair again or feel her hand on my face.
She was my Sunshine, and I was her Buoy – that’ll never leave me.”
Meeting In Kindergarten, Their Relationship Took Many Turns
“So I met this girl in kindergarten, she was my best friend, my childhood ‘girlfriend’ until we were like 9 when she moved to a different city and lost contact; 9-year-olds in the ’90s didn’t have the means to keep in touch. Years went by and I met her again at a party when I was 15, she was on a trip to visit her family and started talking again. Two years later she moved back for her last year of high school, we started dating like a month after she came back and guess what? I moved for college and we went on different paths again, she moved to another country, we had sporadic conversations from time to time, mostly on birthdays for years. Sometimes she would call me at 1 am after months without talking to complain about her life, boyfriend and that kind of stuff for hours. This was kinda problematic for me since I had a girlfriend I lived with and she wasn’t happy with a girl calling me in the middle of the night even if she had a boyfriend and lived 2000kms away.
Years went by, we had this weird sporadic relationship and thanks to the internet I was able to stalk her a bit.
3 years ago she called me on my birthday and told me she broke up with her boyfriend and was moving to the same city I was living in. This was kinda weird for me since I’ve been in a relationship for the last 5 years and in that moment I realized I’ve been in love with this girl my entire life and didn’t know what to do.
Well… nothing happened. She moved, we didn’t talk at all, I broke up with my girlfriend, moved on with my life and started doing plans from the future since I had the opportunity to move to a different country.
One day I was looking for clothes and I ran into her on the street. We went for a drink, talked for hours, realized we lived 9 blocks away from each other and things happened.
We talked every day and met again the week after for what was probably the saddest conversation I had in my life. We realized we had spent the last 10 years stalking each other, we had taken really different paths in life and ended up with pretty much the same interests but we never did anything. I told her I was going to move again, she told me she was moving too, 11000kms away and it was kinda sad how life had constantly taken us on different paths. We made a pact that by the time we are 40, no matter where we are, we are meeting again to be together.
Well, here we are, a year and some months after, 11000kms away still talking every single day for hours, regretting our reality.
My contract ends in February and I plan to go see her for her 30th birthday next year to tell her I don’t want to wait another 10 years. She might think the same, she might not. Truth be told, if I have to wait my entire life, I probably will.”
He Took A Bold Step
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“My last semester of college I met this girl and fell in love. I told her how I felt but she said we could only be friends, but I just loved being around her so much so I took what I could get. After we graduated we went our separate ways and stopped talking. Then about a year later we ended up somewhere else together. She was really into me and I still liked her but I was dating someone else and she had just broken up with someone else and she had told me no before so I decided I didn’t want to try to be something more with her. We moved apart again and lost touch. Then about a year later she called me and told me she was sorry for what had happened the first time and that she really missed me and she appreciated me a lot more after she had dated some jerks. I told her I missed her too. I was about ready to go to law school and I told her I’d stop by where she lived on the way there and we could hang out. I ended up staying with her for about a month. We did everything together – it was amazing! We even went on a trip to New York City and while we were driving back to her place we started talking about how much we loved being around each other and how both of us had wanted to be together at different points but there was always something in the way. We decided if we weren’t married to anyone else then we’d marry each other when we were 30.
Eventually, I had to leave to start law school but we kept talking. I would visit her every chance I had and then the next summer we went back to New York City for a week. We loved being together. The next week we stayed up all night on the phone and talked about being together. We decided we would try to date each other. A few months later we got engaged. Then the next summer we got married when we were 24 and 25. We’ve been married four and a half years now and we have two kids and we love each other. Last month she turned 30 and I wrote in her birthday card how I am so happy we didn’t wait or else none of the life we’ve had together would have happened.
So yeah, my wife and I made a marriage pact to get married when we turned 30 and we ended up getting married about five years early. Love my life, love my wife.”
His Young Confession Changed Their Lives Forever
“My grandparents were neighbors in a village with maybe 500 inhabitants. They went to the same school and my grandmother was best friends with his younger sister. One day when they were like 8-10 and alone my grandfather said out of nowhere, ‘I will marry you one day.’
Time went by, they lost each other, my grandfather went to the military and my grandma went to university and became a teacher.
When they were like 25 they met each other again randomly, recognized each other and got together. A few years later they got married and moved back to their old village.
Both still live there happy and together in their house and next year is the 50th anniversary of their marriage.”
One Online Request Started It All
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“Google Mystery Missions was a site where you put in a request and other people had to fulfill that request. Each time you reloaded the page you’d get new ones to look through. I stumbled across hers looking for someone to talk to, this was about a decade ago we were both 14.
She was from Memphis, I from Chicago. We instantly became best friends. For years we talked every single day. Around 17/18 we made a marriage pact saying by 30 we’d marry if we were still single. At this point, we knew we both had strong feelings for each other but the thought of being in the same place didn’t seem possible at the time.
Since the pact, we lost touch here and there. It felt like a big piece of me was missing whenever that happened. We both had relationships that didn’t work out. About a two years ago we started talking about being in a relationship and just being together. I met her for the first time about 18 months ago. We’re engaged, and she found a new job in Chicago.”
“Don’t Stick With Crazy, You’ll Know When You Find The Right One”
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“We were best friends. I was in a terrible long-term relationship with a crazy ex. I had to choose a summer internship and knowing that my ex was going to be in Taiwan, I chose to move across the country to be in Charlotte (furthest I could get away from her on this planet). My friend and I talked every day and although we wouldn’t date for another 2 years, we made a promise that if weren’t married by the time we were 30, we’d marry each other. Didn’t think anything of it, lost touch with her for 2 years. The summer before my senior year of college, my she asked me to join her as the finance lead on a school consulting competition in Hong Kong. My ex flipped out and vowed to never talk to me again if I spent all semester practicing and going. I knew that if I went my 6-year relationship would be kaput with the crazy one and I’d be choosing my best friend. Best decision of my life. Got married last February and took 15 months on our honeymoon to travel to 31 different countries. Don’t stick with crazy, you’ll know when you find the right one.”
Who Said Playing Video Games Couldn’t Help You Find Love?
“I met my current girlfriend on World of Warcraft 11 years ago. I lived in Maryland and she lived in Missouri. I told her one day a long time ago ‘I’m going to marry you one day.’ Years went by with on and off talking. I didn’t speak to her for the entire year of 2015. I messaged her last February and soon after, I was living there by July 1st, 2016. Then during one of our get-togethers, I got down on my knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes!!!!”
The Internet Helped With This Love Connection
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“My husband and I met on ultima online, just two kids playing video games but swapped email addresses, AOL instant messenger, then Facebook in college. He always said we’d end up together one day and I was just kinda like yeah, yeah. I flew from SC to PA to visit him after graduating college and we started dating, got engaged and married all within a year and a half. We never actually thought there would be a scenario in life where we’d meet face to face let alone end up together. We’ve been married 7 years this coming weekend.”
This Story Is Straight Out Of A Rom-Com Film
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“So I dated this girl 10 years ago in high school in Australia. She was my first, I thought I was going to marry her (young and dumb, but maybe onto something) and then she dumped me. She considers it a dumb decision now, but it needed to happen that way – I just joke about it.
We didn’t talk for 8 years.
While I was on exchange in London earlier this year, I visited Barcelona. I knew she lived there at the time, so I messaged her for advice on where to go. It was the first time I’d felt comfortable messaging her.
She had flown to Australia the day before but offered me advice. We also started catching up and ended up messaging nonstop every day since.
Turns out, while I was walking around Barcelona, I mega fluked taking a photo of her apartment, which she told me weeks later when I uploaded the pic. I just liked the paint job on the building. Out of all the streets, in all the cities in the world, one of 20 photos I took of buildings was hers – I still can’t believe it.
When I got home from studying, we caught up. Kissed within 3 hours and slept together within 4. Then it just grew from there. The entire time I was saying, ‘This is literally as best it can go for two ex’s,’ as we went from ex’s, to friends, to potentials, to dating.
We also realised that in our 2002 primary school photo, from when I was 10, I was standing directly behind her. I liked her then when I was 8, but only spoke to her when I was 15. Also realised we lived within 100m of each other for years during the time we didn’t speak. My Dad also works with her housemate and is ‘the crazy dude’ from work.
Like a moron, I had organised a second semester abroad before we started dating. We kinda decided it as I left the country. Now I have 4 months of purgatory in Canada, while I wait to meet up with her in Barcelona.
In true wild style, I asked her to marry me, because trust me, it’s just something I know. She said yes, but I need to ask in person. I bought the engagement ring last week, on my 25th birthday, and now I just have to look at it for another 3 months.”