Fate often works in mysterious ways. Occasionally, a person might pop into our life at an opportune moment. Other times, we might share a season of our lives with someone before drifting apart. But more often than not, the people we end up with are the ones whose paths ran parallel to ours long before crossing.
Both Tufts class of ’22, Leah and Robbie had never officially met before taking the Marriage Pact survey last fall. But they’d come close — more than once.
Leah: We had never met each other, but we have a ton of mutual friends. So I knew of him, and I think vice versa. Initially, I was like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that person.” But then once people started asking around about matches, every single person I told was like, “Oh, that’s such a good match.”
Robbie: It was the exact same thing for me. Like, we’d never met, and it’s surprising we hadn’t because our friend groups are very adjacent to each other. But everyone who asked me who my Marriage Pact was was like, “Oh my god, Leah, I love Leah! You guys would get along so well.”
This wasn’t even the first time an algorithm paired Leah and Robbie together.
Leah: This past summer, I got a Tinder, and he had one already. And funnily enough, he was the first person I matched with. Neither of us reached out to each other, but it was more just a comment of like, “Wow, algorithms love us.”
After receiving his long-awaited Marriage Pact email, Robbie was the first to reach out, albeit unconventionally.
Robbie: I reached out first. But the way I found out wasn’t by looking at my email. I’m very good friends with my ex-girlfriend, and she is very invested in everyone’s lives. And she actually found out before I did. I still don’t know how.
Leah: I don’t know either, because I wasn’t going around telling everybody in my house who my match was. But I guess someone told someone who told someone –
Robbie: And then my ex-girlfriend called me and was like, “Oh my god, Leah!” And she was the one who told me.
Leah: And I’ve never met her.
They both laugh lightheartedly at the absurdity of the situation.
Robbie: And my ex-girlfriend was the one who wrote that text that I sent to Leah, which is a very weird way to reach out to someone. She was like, “Here, just say this, it’ll be fine.”
Leah: But it was a really good text.
Robbie: It was a good text.
Leah: He said, “How does a June wedding sound?” It was actually a very approachable way to start a conversation without just being like, “What’s up?”
The two immediately hit it off, heading off campus to grab breakfast for their first date. They saw each other frequently in the weeks leading up to winter break.
Leah: We just started hanging out here and there, at each other’s houses, for a few weeks or so. But it was super low pressure because it was right before winter break. But I thought, “should we still keep in touch?”
Robbie: And we did. I didn’t know if anything was gonna come from it long-term, because she was planning on staying in Hawaii for the semester and not being a student. So I tried to temper my expectations a little bit. But we ended up FaceTiming a lot over the break.
Leah: And when we came back, his whole house, who all have significant others, were going on a ski trip, and he invited me to come. We weren’t dating, but I do love to ski.
She laughs with Robbie, admitting that it was a difficult offer to pass up.
Leah: It was really fun, and we just kept hanging out. Eventually we had a conversation where he was like, “I would date,” and I was like, “Not right now,” because I was still going to Hawaii. But eventually I thought, “Screw it, I really like this person. I can do distance for a bit.”
The two made it official a couple of months into the new year. Leah returned from Hawaii at the end of April, and she and Robbie picked up right where they left off. Since reuniting, the pair have had their fair share of adventures, including a camping excursion in Vermont after getting fully vaccinated.
Robbie: We both just got fully vaxxed, and had waited for our two weeks, so we thought, “let’s take a trip!” We agreed that we’d try to do a couple more trips like that this summer.
As I talked to Leah and Robbie, they both noted how coincidental their match was, given how many times their paths converged but narrowly missed. Nonetheless, the two deny their pairing was the work of destiny.
Leah: I don’t think I believe in soulmates. I think I believe in fate, in the sense that you find people who are interested in similar things and do similar things, more because of proximity… I think [Robbie and I] would have met up at some point anyways, since we have so many overlapping friends.
Robbie: Yeah, I think I agree. That isn’t to say that I don’t want to get married someday, and that I won’t really love the person I marry. But since there’s so many people out there, I don’t think there’s only one person in the world you can ever love.
Whether or not Leah and Robbie were destined for each other, they sure do make a near-perfect pair. Perhaps fate isn’t so mysterious after all.
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