Strong electron correlation is ubiquitous in chemistry and physics. The importance of strong correlation in diverse chemical systems and the failure of traditional electronic structure methods to capture it motivate the current work. We highlight the role of electron pairing in strong correlation and introduce conceptually appealing wavefunction ansätze that can accurately describe strong pairing interactions. Our work builds the foundations of a new generation of quantum chemistry methods which would expand the space of many-electron systems that are accurately understood.