Don’t do the Marriage Pact if it’s only as a joke

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, dreaming of meeting someone in a bookstore who just happens to be my soulmate.

I try to stay away from dating apps in the hopes of cultivating a relationship the old-fashioned way, but I still have a lot of trouble meeting people I am actually compatible with. 

So, every year when the UVM Marriage Pact is announced, my hopes and heart rate rise at the idea of getting matched up, even if it’s by an algorithm and not fate.

The UVM Marriage Pact is an online form UVM students can fill out to be matched with their best possible match on campus, according to the UVM Marriage Pact website. 

The algorithm is designed to match you based on things like your plans for a family in the future, your alcohol and drug intake and even if you tend to take the scenic route or not when you’re on the go.

It’s a cool way to meet someone whose interests and goals align with yours, something that can be hard to find naturally or on dating apps.

However, for the past few years I’ve had little-to-no communication with my Marriage Pact matches. They just don’t seem at all interested in talking to me even though they went through the trouble of filling the form out.

If you don’t want to talk to your Marriage Pact match, let me make a suggestion to you: don’t fill out the form. 

The Marriage Pact provides an opportunity to meet someone without the weird judgments and implications that come with many dating apps because, with the Pact, you’re just filling out information about yourself without making decisions about other people.

On Tinder or Hinge, you make judgments based on people’s photos and a few words of a bio that often give you very little information about who someone actually is.

If you’re looking for something casual, this can definitely work. 

However, as someone completely uninterested in hookups and more interested in meeting people who share my values, these apps consistently prove to be the wrong call for me.

To be clear, I’m not expecting to meet my future spouse through the Marriage Pact or anything. I’m not even necessarily looking for a relationship. 

I just think it’s a fun way to meet people, and if something more comes of that, great. 

So, each year, I excitedly email my match, and each year, I don’t get any response. Each year, it sucks.

For a while, I wondered if it was something about me that was making my matches avoid me. Was I too enthusiastic? Did I seem too nerdy or weird in my email? Should I have waited for them to reach out first?

But the more I thought about this, the more stupid it seemed. If this person is supposed to be my best match on campus, I shouldn’t have to dial back my personality in hopes that they will like me.

Instead, my matches—who also voluntarily filled out their form— just don’t see it through. While that’s not my fault, it still sucks.

In spite of past problems I still filled out the Marriage Pact this year and hopefully I’ll meet someone interesting. If you’re filling yours out this year as well, try to stay open to talking to your match. Who knows—you could make a friend, or even something more.