Just imagine, your love letter could be the first thing in the recipient's entire life that lets them know that they have some specific gift that they bring to another’s life. And every time they notice that detail about themselves, the thought will be linked back to you and your thoughtful letter.

Really sit and brainstorm with this one. What are the teensy tiny, detailed things that your love letter recipient does/is that make your heart light up? It could be the way that they laugh, the way they eat, or the way they tear up when you’re watching a certain movie together.

I wish I could give you a laundry list of 200 things for you to pull from but you know your love letter recipient infinitely better than I do. Really give this specific exercise time. The few nuggets of gold that you mine from your brain will pay dividends in your relationship for years to come if you do this one right.

Discuss your plans for the future.

I like to finish my love letters with this element, but you can put them throughout your letter as you see fit. Let them know that you’re in the relationship for the long haul by alluding to some imagined future plans that you want to see come to fruition.

Maybe it’s the fact that you’ll have children one day, or a trip to Paris that you want to take in a few years, or kissing each other’s wrinkly old faces. Whatever it is, make it something that you’re authentically excited about for your shared future.

I was going to include some real-life love letters that I have sent out to my girlfriend, close friends, and parents in this section, but having read through the dozens of letters that I’ve written over the past few years, I’ve found that they’re all SO highly calibrated that they wouldn’t make much sense to people that didn’t know the letter’s recipient.

So I’m going to just write out a simple sample structure following my own advice just so you can see what a love letter would look like following the above points:

My love,

These past few weeks have been relatively challenging for me, as you know, and you have been such a blessing to me. I can’t always express my innermost thoughts as accurately as I want to in the moment and so I wanted to write you this letter to tell you how much you mean to me.

As amazing as I thought my life was before we first crossed paths, I couldn’t have dreamed of how much better my life would become after we first met. Since then I’ve felt healthier, happier, more accomplished, and more love day today than at any other point in my life. I feel so grateful to be able to wake up next to you every day, and am so happy that yours are the lips that I get to kiss before I nod off every day.

From the craziness of white water rafting in Georgia to the silly fun at the trampoline park in San Francisco, we always seem to make fun situations out of otherwise challenging moments. I couldn’t feel luckier to have you by my side through all of the trials and tribulations of my life.

I don’t tell you often enough but I have such unending respect for you and how you carry yourself throughout your life. Your integrity is admirable. Your heart is so expansive and kind. Your eyes are like pools of green silk that I love getting lost in.

I love how you are with your family. You are so loving and patient with them and they obviously all look to you for advice because they value you and your opinion so much.

I love how considerate you are. You do so many little things for me that only ever add to my already never-ending list of things that I love about you. Whether it’s something as thoughtful as filling up my car’s gas tank, or something as seemingly insignificant as offering to give me a quick shoulder rub while we wait in traffic, you are such an amazing person and I’m so thankful that I get to be yours.

I’m so looking forward to kissing your old wrinkly face one day.

Love,

Me!

Remember, this is meant to be a guide, a starting point, a skeleton structure that you can now make your own. And even if you copy and paste certain parts of this article to use in your love letter (which you are totally free to do), make sure that you modify the sentence a little bit so that the recipient couldn’t just Google the words and find out that you borrowed them from someone else.

Bottom line: whatever you write and however you deliver it, make sure it’s from your heart. If it’s authentically you, they will love it just as much as they love you.

-YourTango


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