She Was Always On His Mind
“When I first laid eyes on my wife, I could tell she was special. I instantly liked her. She was loud and didn’t sugar coat anything. She was abrasive and very matter of fact. We became very good friends. I had feelings for her but she was in a relationship so we just hung out and I never said anything. But we just clicked. Always did. We stayed friends for a couple years while she was with her boyfriend. Then I moved away for about 5 years. While I was gone she split with her boyfriend. We talked on the phone maybe once or twice a year, not much. I’d come back home to visit everyone usually once or twice a year. But I really just wanted to spend all my time with her. We’d just hang out and catch up and it was always like I never left. On one of the trips back home I kinda jokingly made this pact with her because I really liked her and it seemed so far-fetched it could only be taken as a joke. She agreed, much to my surprise, even though I assumed we both just kinda were ‘playing around.’
I went back to the city and she stayed. I outgrew big city life and I never stopped missing my best friend even when we rarely spoke to each other. So I went back and she picked me up at the bus station. I stayed the night at her house. In separate bedrooms. She was out of my league as far as I was concerned. After a few months of blind stupidity on my part I guess she was tired of me not seeing the obvious signs that she was interested and basically told me to get with the freaking program. I ended up proposing to her on the deadline for our pact. We’ve been together 10 years now, married 6.”
One Obvious Complication
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“When I was 17, I made a pact with a guy from college (I went to college really young). We kept joking that if we are unmarried by 35 we should hook up and marry. For the 3 years we were together at school we would always chide that we were each other’s fiancée. Though I did have a crush on him, we never really dated or come close to hooking up.
We just hit the 36 mark, both single. He is actually a successful fashion stylist and is currently in Paris right now on a photoshoot.
Also, he’s gay so that killed the chances of our pact coming to fruition. He’s very happy right now with his singlehood. I never brought up our pact again.”
A Lifetime Of Tragedy
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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.”
“The Stuff Of Movies”
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“A few years ago when I was still a teenager, I met a girl. She was gorgeous!
Turns out that she had a troubled past and I was one of the first people she let in in a long time. We spent a few months going against the world, Just the two of us. Always meeting after school to go skateboarding to random places. But like every good day, it had to come to a close. She moved after only one year of knowing each other.
But before she left, we made a promise. A promise to find each other once again sometime in the future and go out for a ride to reminisce about our past. And if we were still single by then, we would marry each other. If we weren’t, we would continue being best friends. We exchanged e-mails and promptly forgot about each other after a few months.
But 3 years ago, I received an email from her. An address. It was the stuff of the movies. I went to the address and met her at a cafe. Just last year we tied the knot. We’re married legally now. I wouldn’t choose to face the world with anyone else.”
The Future Is Unwritten
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“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 to 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 at 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, 11,000 km 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, 11,000 km 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 for my entire life, I probably will.”
What Was And What Would Never Be
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“In college, a good friend of mine and I made a marriage pact. When we were both 30 (she was like three months older than me), if we weren’t married, we’d marry each other. That way we could focus on having fun and our careers without getting bogged down in relationships. Or so we rationalized to one another. We never dated; we were just friends. Drinking buddies, really.
And then, 10 years later-ish, I turned 30.
At that point in my life, I was engaged and getting married in a few months. my fiancée and I had been dating for years. My fiancée had met my friend from college before.
Didn’t matter.
My friend called me up. ‘Happy birthday!’ She was a very thoughtful friend. And then, ‘So… You’re not married yet, right?’
I feel like it was a half-joke, half-sort of a sad statement. I don’t think that my friend was waiting for me to suddenly marry her (though if I’d been completely single I probably would have). Really I think that turning 30 a few months earlier had made my friend really sad about her romantic prospects. Women, I have found, get very weird about their age. I think it’s foolish, but I also have never been subject to the insane amounts of societal pressure that we put on women to stay young and pretty. I don’t actually get older; I get more distinguished. So what the heck did I know about turning 30 compared to what my friend knew about it?
Anyway, we had a very awkward conversation that danced around the fact that I was getting married and the fact that my friend was excruciatingly single. At some point, I said, ‘Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,’ and she sniffed and said ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Happy turning 30.’ And then she hung up.
We’re still friends, and we’re now both happily married to other people, but sometimes I think about that sad phone call, congratulating me on my birthday and simultaneously lamenting that real life is never quite as perfect as the movies. And I wonder what life would have been like if I’d made a different choice. How life would have been different. I tried to explain it to my wife once: I don’t wish I’d made a different choice; I’m just curious how that choice would have ended up. She understood. Sometimes, she told me, she wonders if she’d be as happy with anyone else, too. I love that woman.”
She Can Only Blame Herself
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“My friend Jerry and I made a 5-year-marriage-pact in 2012. In 2014 I introduced him to a friend of mine, they hit it off, and the marriage pact dissolved when they got married. But, we had been completely serious up until that point.
I would have been 34, and he would have been 44 when the deadline came. And those respective ages seemed like the last good time to start a family with someone you care about.
On the bright side, while I’m not married, my dude and I celebrated our 5th just last week.”
How Social Media Changes Things
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“I made this a pact with someone in high school. I’ll call her Emma. We pledged to get married if we were both single at age 30. She was a few years older than I was.
Fast forward to my 30th birthday. I wasn’t married or engaged, but I was dating the woman I would eventually marry. The day of my 30th birthday I got a Facebook friend request from Emma. We hadn’t talked since high school.
Some light e-stalking revealed that she was single and never married. I declined the friend request because I over-thought the situation and convinced myself she was going to try to hold me to our agreement. We never spoke again.
In hindsight, I feel a bit bad about the whole thing. It’s not like these pacts are legally binding. Chances are she just wanted to catch up (if anything), and I missed an opportunity to reconnect with an old friend.”
Like It Was Always Meant To Be
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“My brother and I (also a guy) grew up next to a brother and sister. The brother was the same age as my older brother and she and I were also the same age (I’m a week older). Our parents were close friends and we spent a lot of time together. Our brothers grew apart a bit due to interest but I stayed close with both of them, especially the sister. She was a tomboy and I liked that about her. We could just hang out like dudes but with a level of attraction as we got older. We were each other’s first kiss and even dated a little in high school but we agreed that it was too weird. We liked each other but it felt like there was pressure even though no one ever said anything. It was like we were expected to stay together forever and that was a lot for a couple of teenagers. We decided that we would take a break and date other people but would get married at age 30 if neither of us found the right person.
We went our separate ways after high school. We are both from New England but I went to college in the Midwest and she went to the West coast. She ended up getting engaged and having a son and stayed on the West coast while I moved back to New England near our hometown.
She ended up leaving her fiancé due to abuse. He had severe PTSD and she took a lot of the heat from that. She left the moment it became physical and came back to New England to stay with her parents while she got things sorted out. We ended up talking and hanging out more since we were close again and eventually started dating. Things escalated, I proposed, and we were married at age 29. We have been married for 12 years and our kids are 15, 9, and 6. It’s been a wild ride but there’s no one else I’d rather experience it with.”
It Was Always Meant To Be
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“When my boyfriend turned 18. I was just shy of 16. We made a pact that if we weren’t married by 25 and 28 we would marry each other.
At 17 & 19 we broke up for 2 years. We spoke exactly one time in those two years. Fast forward to 19 & 21 when I was eating with family in a local restaurant when he casually strolled in and made conversation with my dad. A month and a half later we were engaged, and six months after that we were married. We will be married 11 years next month.”
No Time Like The Present
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“My now-husband and I made a pact that if we were both single at 50, we would just get married to each other. Then I realized that was silly and he was perfectly willing to have a relationship now. In fact, he’d been ready for 8 years for the chance, but hadn’t let on how much he truly cared. I just had to get over the distance (coast to coast in the US). One year of long distance, and two years in the same city, and we were married at 28 instead of 50.
We’re just about to hit our three year anniversary and it has been an amazing journey so far. My two cents: if you’re willing to be with that person in the far-flung future, why aren’t you with them now? That will tell you what it will be like.”
It Worked, But Not Without Work
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“My former neighbor did had made a pact to marry his best friend if they were both not married by the time she was 30 (he’d be 32). They married and she moved across the country, far away from family, to be with him – they were the sweetest people, and for years seemed to be really truly happy.
Then he started drinking, and things rapidly declined (despite being the nicest guy when sober, when he drank he was atrociously verbally abusive). They ended up splitting up after an altercation, and it was enough to finally convince him to get help. They reunited (never officially divorced) a few years later and seemed really happy again. The only thing was that his wife never really felt she could wholly trust him to stay away from drinking (he had a brief relapse or two) so they never had kids. Which was sad, because they both (assuming he was to stick with the AA plan) would have made amazing parents, and both had really wanted kids.
They recently moved to a fairly remote acreage to ‘get back to nature’ (something they both wanted), and last we heard it seemed to be working well for them.
So…I guess it was really rocky, but they both seem relatively satisfied with their marriage at this point.”