The anniversary comes around, or it's the night before you sign the lease on a new place, and you sit down to write something. Not a card. Something that lasts longer than the day. And it's harder than you expected, because you tell this person everything (or you think you do), so what's left to say to someone who'll be there tomorrow and the day after?
Time is what changes it. A letter your partner opens in a year isn't there to tell them anything new. It's there so that, a year from now, someone can look back at who the two of you were right now, before you knew how any of the things you were starting would turn out.
Which letter are you writing?
"A letter to my future husband" (or wife) can mean three different things. They look alike on the surface and have very little in common underneath.
To the person you're with, opened later. You write to them; they read it on a date you choose. A message with a deliberate delay. Most of this post is about this one.
To yourself, about the relationship. Nobody else sees it. People write these when they're facing a big question (move in or not, can this be fixed, is this tiredness or something else) and want an honest record of how they saw things before deciding. It works precisely because it's private.
To someone you haven't met yet. "Dear future husband." There's no one to send it to, so it's really a way of putting in writing how you want to love and what you're not willing to repeat. It reads more like a letter to yourself, just written in the second person.
If you came for the second or third kind, most of what follows still works. Just swap the recipient.
Good moments to write one
- An anniversary, especially the in-between ones nobody makes a fuss about.
- The night before you move in together, or the first week in the new place, while there are still boxes everywhere.
- Before a wedding. A letter opened on your first anniversary outweighs almost any gift.
- A pregnancy, an adoption, any wait for something that will change how you are together.
- A stretch apart: a job in another city, a deployment, a contract abroad.
- A random Tuesday when you notice things are good, and that this gets forgotten too.
That last one is the best moment by far, and the most wasted. Calm stretches don't leave memories. They overlap and blur until all that's left is "we were good that year," without a single scene inside it. Writing in the middle of a good stretch is the only way to keep one.
What to say
Describe the present in boring detail
The apartment you're in now. The construction outside that's been going on for four months. The coffee maker you have to run twice. What you eat on Sundays when neither of you feels like cooking. The neighbors' names. This season's running joke that won't be funny in two years.
It feels like filler while you're writing it. It's the opposite. Feelings get remembered in general; details don't get remembered at all. In three years, that paragraph will be the thing that brings the whole era back.
Admire with an example, not an adjective
"You're so generous" says nothing about her and nothing about you. "That Tuesday I came home late and wrecked, and you didn't ask me a single thing until I'd finished eating" says both, and it actually happened. Adjectives fit two hundred people. Scenes fit one.
Say where you are, even if it's not comfortable
A letter that pretends everything is perfect becomes a strange object once time passes. Relationships have rough patches and arguments that keep coming back in different costumes. Describing that ("we've been tired for a few months and bickering about small stuff; I think it's work") is what makes the rest believable. Blame doesn't belong here, though. If there's a complaint to make, make it today, in person.
Ask questions
The most underused part. Do you still go to that place on Saturdays? Did we end up moving? Do you still hate the movie I love? Whoever reads it will answer out loud, probably with you right there. A letter with questions doesn't get read. It gets answered.
Leave a line for the day it's opened
Just one. "If you're reading this, it's been a year since we moved in, so I assume you've finally hung that picture in the hallway." It lands the letter on its date instead of leaving it floating in some vague future.
What to leave out
- Impossible promises. "We'll never fight about this again." Written with total sincerity, read a year later with a mix of tenderness and cringe. Promise smaller, real things: that you'll keep telling them stuff, that you won't let a week go by without asking how they are.
- Homework dressed up as wishes. "I hope by then you've talked to your boss." They open it and find a list of expectations signed by someone who isn't around to discuss them.
- Writing for an audience. If you're picturing how it'll sound read aloud at a party, it'll come out solemn and empty. Write the way you talk when nobody else is in the room.
- Things you wouldn't say to their face. A delayed letter arrives without tone of voice and without a chance to reply. Delicate things get talked about. What you save for the future is what you want to last.
How far ahead?
One year is the comfortable choice for a first letter. Three years is where it gets interesting: by then something big has usually changed, whether it's the home, the job, the city or how many of you there are. Five or more turns it into more of a document than a message, so lean hard on concrete details. They'll be the only part you can't get back.
You can also pick a meaningful date instead of a timeframe: your wedding day, your kid's first birthday, the anniversary of the day you met.
And if you're not together by then?
Worth saying out loud, because it stops a lot of people before they start: the letter might arrive at a home you no longer share. That's not a reason to skip it, but it is a reason to write it a certain way. "Today I'm happy with you, and this is what we built this year" stays true no matter what, because it's about something that happened. "I know in three years we'll be exactly the same" gets very hard to hold if things go differently. Write about the present. Don't sign contracts on the future.
An example
Written for this post, and deliberately ordinary, because the ones that work usually are.
For you, a year from now.
I'm writing this on a Sunday in October at the kitchen table while you nap on the couch with the TV on, playing something neither of us was watching. We've been in this apartment seven months and there's still one unopened box in the hallway. We don't even see it anymore. I think neither of us wants to be the first to ask what's in it.
This year was harder than we expected. You started the new job in February and you've been coming home late with your head somewhere else, and I've been whinier than I'd like to admit. We've argued about groceries, schedules and once, stupidly, about dinner with my parents. I don't think any of those fights were really about what we were fighting about.
But if I have to keep one image from this year, it's the Thursday I came back from the ER with my wrist in a cast. You were in a meeting, you hung up, you walked from the office because you couldn't get a cab, and when you got home you didn't mention the meeting or the walk. You asked if it hurt and made dinner. That's who you are when you're not trying to be anything.
Questions for when you read this: Did we open the box? Are you still at that job? Did we finally visit your grandma like we've been saying for two years? Are we still arguing about groceries?
I'm not promising I'll be a better person in a year. I'm promising I'll keep telling you things, even if it's late and in the kitchen.
If you're reading this, it's been a year since this Sunday. Wake me up and I'll tell you what it was like.
Two practical things
Decide whether it's a surprise or a pact. Both work. A surprise has more impact. A pact, where you each write one and open them on the same day, tends to become a tradition, and traditions outlast gestures.
And don't over-edit. Polished letters lose exactly what makes them valuable: the half-finished sentences, the clumsy phrasing, the messy order you really think in. In a year, that's what will sound like you.
Stuck on the first line? Try "Today is [date], and here's what's going on in our home:" or "There's something you did a few months ago that I never told you about." There are more writing prompts here that work just as well with a different recipient.
When you're ready, you can write it and schedule the delivery date on Letter to the Future.
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