AskReaders: Has anyone ever gone through with a marriage pact? You know, like a “if we’re not married by 30 we’ll marry each other”. How did it work out?

A long time ago, we asked our regular contributors through e-mail, Has anyone ever gone through with a marriage pact? You know, like an “if we’re not married by 30 we’ll marry each other”. How did it work out? We got many interesting responses. Here are some of them. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way and most of the respondents have requested to stay anonymous, so no names will be published.

1-5 Marriage Pacts

1. I made this pact with my best male friend in high school. When we were about 20, he told me that even if he got married before 30 and I still wasn’t married, he would divorce her for me, which I found to be an odd statement. We went our separate ways and I didn’t hear back from him until I turned 31. By this time, he was married and I was not. We spent the day together and he asks me, “Remember our marriage pact?” He wanted to divorce his wife for me. I declined.

2.  Anyone remember Google Mystery Missions years ago?

If not, 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.

3. Kind of. I made one with my wife when we were kids, like 14-15. We lost touch because we went to different schools, had fairly different walks of life, etc. then randomly started talking on Facebook about 10 years later and ultimately got married about 3 years before the pact would’ve gone into effect.

4. In high school, my friend and I kinda had a crush on each other but nothing ever happened because he had a girlfriend. We promised that we would get married if we were both singles by the time we were 40. We lost touch after we finished school and I ran into him a couple of years ago, added him on Facebook. It turned out he became the biggest douchebag on my FB friends list and I’d probably rather die in a fire than hang out with him again.

5. I most definitely would have. 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 to 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 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 to her, yadda yadda yadda. Calm as can be, my wife asks her why she stopped writing me then?

Like a light switch flipping, the old friend starts bawling her eyes out and plops down on the floor. We hurried out of there, and I never saw her again. Bullet dodged. 🙂

6-10 Marriage Pacts

6. Sorta, kinda. My husband and I met on ultima online…just 2 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 yea. 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 we’d meet face to face let alone end up together. We’ve been married 7 yrs this coming weekend.

7. Made a pact with my first love/high school boyfriend. We just started dating again 3 months ago after 10 years of being apart and he just committed suicide on Monday. I’m devastated, I really thought we were going to have our happily ever after.

8. Kinda. My husband and I were best friends in 8th grade and were those kids that kinda hated everyone else at our school. We always said we were going to get married when we got older “because everyone else sucks” but never dated in high school because we just went down different paths, but stayed good friends. Started talking more again after high school, started dating, and are now very happily married. 😊

9. Some good friends of mine are both gay and lesbian (a gay man and a lesbian woman) – they decided if they didn’t get in serious relationships they’d marry.

They have two wonderful kids together they are amazing people.

They are still looking for their ideal same-sex partner, but it’s very clear that they love each other and care much for their kids.

10. I made a pact with a couple girls but forgot to tell them about it, so I’m single.