How to Write a Love Letter

For the Dewey project, I read a book of love letters.  The book was composed of over a hundred different real-life love letters on different types of paper (note paper, post-its, napkins, e-mails, text messages, etc.).  It was so cool to see the scanned copy of the original love letter.  Some of the love letters I didn’t really think were love letters. Obviously the sender and recipient had some sort of relationship at some point, but some of them sounded more like casual notes or even hate letters.  

I’ll state the title and author of the book in my next Dewey entry, but I won’t here because I’m probably committing some kind of copyright violation by showing excerpts of the book.  But some things you actually have to see to understand. 

With no further ado, some examples from the book:

Cute method, but a love letter?

This counts as a love letter...?

Along the lines of the napkin...sorry for the fuzziness.  It is an interesting background if you could read it.

Seems more like a break-up letter to me

Now I’m not sure if I have an inordinate amount of love letters (and if you include the very broad definition of “love letters” that the book author uses, I have a buttload), or if I just kept a huge range of written correspondence instead of being picky.  I’m not sure how much the average person keeps.  I have about a 14 gallon full container after I condensed it this past spring.

I love, love, love written correspondence.  I enjoy seeing people’s handwriting.  I enjoy coming back to read their written word again and again and try to capture the feeling the author had at the time.  I like to take in the details like the type of paper, the way I’m addressed, whether the person crosses things out along the way.  I live for those sorts of nuances. 

Over the years, I dated guys who were very different from one another.  I wasn’t the type to date the same personality over and over.  Each was incredibly different, and therefore each relationship was totally different.  There was one I had no written correspondence with.  He’s easy to lose sight of based on my container of written correspondence because there is absolutely no written evidence of him.  In fact, I only think he ever wrote down one thing for me ever, and at the time I never thought to keep it, not knowing it would be the only tangible reminder of him.  Him and I really only interacted in person and on the phone.  Then there’s one who I have one piece of paper as a reminder along with a few printed out e-mails.  He’s easy to lose sight of too if it wasn’t for my memory. 

My first boyfriend was quite a prolific writer.  He takes up a lot of space in my box.  He was the brooding, tortured soul type.  He admitted upfront that he was a better writer than he was an in-person communicator.  His letters and cards were very nice, but they never resonated well to me.  He would say that he loved me “more than anything” after only having dated for two months.  His love letters really never talked about WHY he supposedly loved me so much; they just professed this undying love.  Which of course ended up dying, so I should just throw all of them away on the false premise. It may sound like I’m bitter, but it’s more that I’m annoyed at people who make grand claims about all of eternity when they don’t know what the next month will bring. It seems really disingenuous. 

After the first boyfriend, second place for most correspondence goes to a college boyfriend.  We had one very wonderful summer that somehow got elongated into dating a year after that.  He’s a dear person, I still am good friends with him today, but really we should never have dated.  We should have just kept our one summer as a special moment in time.  But no, live and learn.  When I think of our correspondence that I kept, I just sigh.  We were on two very different wavelengths and always will be, and it comes across in all that correspondence.

Then there’s assorted jumbles of correspondence along the way from friends, people I didn’t date very long, and of course I had to keep some Paul correspondence – particularly the time he sent me a love note and a hate note in the same week. 

My husband gets his own box within the container, and of course I kept the most from him.  What I appreciate immensely in the correspondence from him is that he always emphasizes what he likes about ME.  In contrast, many of them just talked about a general love, which doesn’t resonate well with me.  It feels good to know why he loves ME versus the other billions of people in the world. 

From the book I read, here’s a sample of a love letter that is comparable to one my husband would have written.  Again, it resonates because it’s about the person and not a vague sentiment that could be copied and sent to any number of people. Not that anyone would ever do that, right?  I also like that he stated the obvious in the first line.  Direct, to the point, my kind of guy.  

Primo example of love letter from book, at least in my estimation.  Or maybe I just like him because he likes naps.