10 'If We're Not Married By...' Pacts That Actually Panned Out

10 'If We're Not Married By...' Pacts That Actually Panned Out

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In sitcoms and rom-coms, there's no shortage of marriage pact plot lines in which on-screen friends promise that if neither one of them is married by a certain age, then the two of them will get together. (Ted and Robin from "How I Met Your Mother" are one notable example.) Seems unlikely, right?

We thought so too. Turns out, this kind of thing does actually happen in real life. Below are 10 accounts of marriage pacts gone right, according to Redditors.

1. "My sister did. Her now-husband was in the navy and she dated other guys. Then the age struck and they got married. No shit. I was at the wedding. They're expecting their first child in two months."

2. "My wife and I met in high school at the age of 16. We told each other that if we weren't married by 30, then we'd get back together and tie the knot. I moved off to a different state for college and after graduation I moved to Chile for four years. I moved back to the states when I was 28, we started dating again and just got married this past May before my 30th birthday. But not because we said we would, but because it just happened that way."

Courtesy of Andrew and Kristen

3. "My relationship with my husband started with one of those pacts. We'd been friends for ages, and made one of those daft marriage pacts. I guess it made us think about what it might be like to be married to the other, and it wasn't a bad picture. Became a couple soon after that, and have now been together 12 years."

4. "Made the pact at 17 or 18 with my best friend. I loved her since the moment I met her on a school bus when I was 10 years old. It was one of those 'the world stops' moments when I first saw her. Around the age of 25, we started exploring the possibility of getting serious. The risk was almost too great. The feeling was that, 'If we f**k this up, we lose each other.' I was more than willing to take that risk but she was really scared. After five years of dating with one or two serious moments where we almost didn't make it, we got married in 2010. We now have two girls and I couldn't imagine it any other way. Sure, it wasn't exactly 10 years, but we had to do it our way."

5. " My uncle went through with it. He has two kids and is extremely happy. Funny thing is, he didn't tell anyone about this pact and one day called my dad up and said he was getting married in a month out of the blue. But he's happy so that's all that counts."

6. "When we were 18 my best friend and I said that if neither of us were married by 30, we'd marry each other. We ended up dating at 26 and married at 28."

Courtesy of Eamon and Charlotte

7."This happened with my brother. He made a pact with a girlfriend when they were 19 because she was leaving for America and a breakup was inevitable because of the distance. They stayed friends and eventually got married earlier than expected at 26 instead of 30. They're now expecting their first kid."

8. "I had a similar pact with a girl I met in 2006. We agreed on 2016 as the date we would get married. The interesting twist in our pact was that we agreed that only ONE person needed to initiate it (i.e. if one of us shows up at the other person's doorstep in 2016 and asks to be married, then the other person would be obligated to leave everything -- including any current wife, kids, etc.) We fell in love shortly after making that pact and got married in 2009."

9. "I had one of these pacts with a girl. Then we started dating each other a couple months later and then ended up married. Still together more than 10 years later."

**Some responses have been edited or condensed. Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Weddings on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Sign up for our newsletter here.

10. "My ex-roommate's story from my recollection: They were in college and it wasn't the right time to settle down. They went their separate ways with the joke that, in 10 years, if they weren't already committed, they would marry. They kept in contact with occasional emails when they remembered, like you do with old friends. She happened to remember the pact and sent him an email laughing about it. She was in the first few weeks of dating someone else so she didn't think he would take it seriously. He sent back an email saying he was going to be in the U.S. in late summer and they could start to plan things then. They got married the next summer and had a child about a year ago. From my view, they seem to really love each other and have a very happy life."

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