There are few things more heartwarming than a carefully crafted love letter. And to be the reciever of such a letter? What bliss! But as more people say “I love you,” online, it seems fewer are writing and getting handwritten love letters. Does a love letter have the same emotional weight when it’s in the form of a text message or an email? And if we treasure digital love notes, how can we preserve them? After all, love correspondence between your grandparents, or even your parents, can provide a lot of insight into how people lived, where they traveled or into major events like wars.
We’re thinking about doing a story about this, and we want to hear from you.
If you send or receive digital love notes, tell us if you keep them and how you preserve them. Do you print them out and file them in a trusty old shoebox? Do you have a special folder in your email inbox or on your cellphone?
Have you read love letters written by your grandparents or parents? What did you learn? Do you plan to share your love notes with your kids?
Or are we witnessing the death of the love letter altogether?
You can post a comment below, or you can send us an email with your story.
original photo by L. Marie.
When i was younger I used to keep all the notes I passed to friends in school. I can't remember the last true love letter I received. It seems as though in emails that intend to be love letters, usually end up being a mish-mash of thoughts and more like a memo. I have, however, made folders to keep the letters in, and printed a select few.
My wife and I don't keep love letters as such, but we do have all our old email and chats. We first met on the Internet via email, and it's really interesting to read those old messages. More than than, when we started dating we communicated mostly via IM because of geography. We have a complete archive of our early conversations… they aren't quite love letters, it's more like if you had a recording of your first dates. Love letters are composed intentionally, I like the IMs better because it shows how we really were in those early days.
If you love somebody, than I think an old fashioned letter is the way to go. It shows that you've put time and effort in it, also handwriting seems also more personal than typeface. I don't think it gets much better than going out to your letter box, finding the letter, recognising who it is from and that giddy feeling of opening it.
There is something special in the idea of someone taking time out of their day to articulate an idea specially for you, that by writing to you, you are getting a little peice of the person sending the letter. With electronic distribution, it doesnt seem quite the same.
Love letters are artifacts.
The only thing special about the handwritten love letter is the thought of a loved one scratching pen to paper, which I don't think really gives the letter itself any more emotional weight than a carefully worded e-mail. After all, a poorly crafted letter will still not convey the right feelings and stir the same emotions whether in digital or analog form. The articulation of love has no correct medium. All that matters is that the person receives it on the other end.
I keep my old e-mail correspondence in folders with the person's name. Not for everyone, but for those particularly close to my heart. Loose paper is my nemesis, and defies foldering. I'm messy in analog, as it were, but squeaky clean and organized in the digital world. I just can't be bothered to go to Staples to get the necessary items to properly catalogue my love letters, if I had any.
I am a writer of letters. Emails are for logistics and general life updates. Letters are for relating. I find that when I write letters (which I do about once a month, with the lights turned down and a candle lit), I am more thoughful and more reflective. It takes longer to finish a sentence, and so I can spend a little more time finding just the right word. I also know that the letter will take some time to arrive, so I don't even bother with trying write down all the timely news about how I've moved on from one set of classes to the next. If it won't be important in six months, it isn't worth writing down in a letter that will take a week or two to arrive. Instead, the content of the letters tends to focus on little details that say something about my state of mind or what my life has been like. It is short on facts but long on experience.
When I send the letter, I feel more certain that its physicality will somehow convey what I feel more truly and with greater depth than an email. The people who recieve my letters inevitably tell me how surprised and delighted they were to find something nice in the mail. I don't think I'll ever be able to get by on just electronic communication.
I was in a six year long relationship that started, and mostly conducted, on-line. We sent over two thousand email messages, and a surprising proportion of them would be described as good old-fashioned love letters. (Albeit in good old-fashioned ASCII with proper interposting of replies and four line signatures files.)
Most of the "love emails" were composed carefully and with great thought. They conveyed feelings every bit as effectively and deeply as a paper letter, and the catch in my heart just as great when I saw one in my Inbox was as great as discovering a love letter intermixed with the telephone bill.
The relationship evolved into something else, something also good, and I have kept those messages. They are treasured keepsakes, they are not defined by their format, the emotions they represent are far to powerful for that.
I used to write love letters to this women I dated. There is something about writing your thoughts and feelings down in ink and paper that electronic type-writing just cannot seem to replace, or even match. I personally believe it's because that when you are writing something in pen, you naturally put more thoughts into the task, including sentence contruction, content, and language, because it takes more work to fix if you made a mistake writing something. On a computer, mistakes are easily fixed by the backspace key, therefore there isn't any pressure on the writer to really think about the letter while writing. The difference between the two translates into something you've put thoughts and effort into (letter writing), and something you do for dozens of other people (email), and ultimately, adding a personal touch to your writing. Call me old-fashioned (I am only 28!!), but a love letter isn't a love letter unless it is written in pen and paper.
Perhaps I'm excessive, but I have pretty much every email my partner has ever sent me. I hold on to everything. I don't have any particular way of highlighting the lovey-dovey ones, but they're they if I want to read them.
I also save some of the sweet texts he has sent me over the years. I lock them so I don't accidentally delete them. When I'm going through deleting other old texts, I see those and they make me smile. I don't know what I'll do when I get a new cell phone — probably throw them to the wind and wait for new ones to arrive.
Perhaps I'm excessive, but I have pretty much every email my partner has ever sent me. I hold on to everything. I don't have any particular way of highlighting the lovey-dovey ones, but they're there if I want to find and read them.
I also save some of the sweet texts he has sent me over the years. I lock them so I don't accidentally delete them. When I'm going through deleting other old texts, I see those and they make me smile. I don't know what I'll do when I get a new cell phone — probably throw them to the wind and wait for new ones to arrive.
Perhaps I'm excessive, but I have pretty much every email my partner has ever sent me. I hold on to everything. I don't have any particular way of highlighting the lovey-dovey ones, but they're there if I want to find and read them. Since hard drives only get larger and larger, I figure I'll keep them indefinitely.
I also save some of the sweet texts he has sent me over the years. I lock them so I don't accidentally delete them. When I'm going through deleting other old texts, I see those and they make me smile. I don't know what I'll do when I get a new cell phone — probably throw them to the wind and wait for new ones to arrive.
I agree there is no substitute for the care that goes into a handwritten letter, but what if there is no other way or it's just darned impractical. For six weeks (two years ago), my boyfriend toured South America and the best way to keep in touch was by email. After all, by the time I would have received a postcard, he would be back in Canada. And when a loved one is away it feels better to communicate often to ease the longing. I found I looked forward to each email as much as a letter or postcard – and found them to be as romantic as love letters. Or maybe the longing is part of the letter's mystique..
@meredi: When I wanted to move texts to my new phone, I would send them to myself. I have one or two I keep and I smile each time I read them. I think there is also an online service for saving text messages. It's called Treasuremytext .
I live with my lover (husband) of nearly thirty years so romantic love letters aren't necessary … but I do keep the 'love' emails from our adult offspring. While most of them are just notes about daily life, sometimes we have really good communication sessions about issues that really matter between us. We are still at the stage where communicating in writing allows us to broach topics we would avoid in face to face discussion. (In another 10 years i hope there will be no taboo subjects face to face … but they are only young adults as yet!) In emails we weigh our words, challenge and probe in ways we wouldn't in the living room over tea or beer.
To the point and an excellent article.