Diary of a Marriage: Our Life, In Post-Its.

When did everyone stop writing love notes?

Another of Em's favorite notes from J. — currently being put to good use as her bookmark.

J. writes me love notes. Every day. Scrawled on scraps of paper, taped to our front door to welcome me home from work each night, written in thick black marker on my brown paper lunch bags. Sometimes the notes are accompanied by little drawings, or the charming little emblem J. created for me in the first few months of our marriage — an oddly shaped hexagon with “SW” in the middle, which stands for “SuperWife,” a title of which I am most definitely not deserving. After all, my note-leaving is somewhat sporadic.

I save the notes in a folder, now bulging and held together with a rubber band, and sometimes I rifle through them — the early ones written on Four Seasons stationery we swiped from the hotel on our honeymoon, later ones jotted on blank index cards. The best ones I’ve papier-mached onto a big canvas which hangs in our bedroom, a collage of little squares of paper with the decidedly un-Shakespearian prose we’ve written to each other (“Morning! Sorry I stole all the covers last night.” “I hope your meetings went well today!” “Thanks for making dinner last night, XO.” ). The story of our life, summed up on Post-Its. I’ve even framed my favorite, a stick figure drawing of the two of us, little square high heels drawn at my feet. I am wearing a triangle red skirt and I have a scribbling of hair.

I’ve had boyfriends write me dramatic poems: My sister still chides me about the poem a high school boyfriend once penned for me, which contained a particularly dramatic verse in which he noted that my “almond eyes” were food for his soul. I think I probably cried when I read it. J.’s declarations of love are less over the top, for sure — but they’ve got more … staying power.

I do my best to sneak a note into his workbag every night, since J. leaves for work before I do, but sometimes I forget, or wake up too late. But J. never seems to forget. It’s his thing. If the notes stopped, I fear that it would be a slippery slope. We’d stop saying “I love you,” or we’d stop holding hands or kissing each other good night. I don’t tell him this, though.

My friends have assured me that our little routine of notes isn’t exactly typical, especially in a marriage. But I think it should be. “I love you” so easily becomes just a phrase, a rote bookend to a conversation: OkayIloveyoubye. Writing it somehow makes it feel more thoughtful, more deliberate. I don’t quite know how, but I hope they never stop.

What about you? Do you and your fiance or husband write each other notes? If not, do you do any other little signature thing just between the two of you to show you love each other, week to week? Tell us in the comments!

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