A little note to say how much I love you...

TAKE A LETTER For Jessica Salter and her husband, real life often gets in the way of the romance of old but, with expert help, she found letter writing to be a therapeutic way to reconnect

My correspondence with my husband is pretty high on the romance scale. We bounce little love notes, via Whatsapp, back and forth all day, every day, the latest from me being: “I’ve gone to bed. When you get home can you hang the washing up – baby was sick on her sheets.”

It’s not all baby-related; he recently sent me: “I’m bored of always reading about Brexit, but do you think we should start stockpiling?” Shakespeare would be proud.

It wasn’t always thus. When we started courting, 11 years ago, we would send funny emails every day and occasional hand-drawn cards. On our wedding day, we’d each written private letters delivered to each other on the morning, before later reading out our respective handwritten speeches.

But since then, well, life has got in the way. It’s not uncommon for longterm couples to drop the ball when it comes to romance. The psychologist Esther Perel recently suggested that couples looking to relight the spark need to establish a separate messaging channel where they are banned from talking about children and chores, and just keep it about them.

But this year, I’ve decided to take it one step further – dig out my pen and paper and write a love letter.

I’m not the only one: the online stationer Papier says that sales of correspondence stationery has had its biggest increase among 25-35-yearolds, with notecards in particular selling more than double in the past year.

I’m no Keats or Byron when it comes to romantic outpourings, but I do write for a living, and I’m pretty religious about sending birthday cards to friends and family with long missives. But as I sit down to write to my other half, I find I’m totally paralysed. As I struggle to think past clichés, I wonder perhaps whether we are just not the love-letter kind of people…

But then, you don’t think of Napoleon Bonaparte as the love-letter type. He is considered one of history’s greatest military leaders, but also, when you look up his steamy letters to his wife, perhaps one of the greatest love-letter writers, too. “Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart… in three hours I shall see you again. Till then, a thousand kisses, mio dolce amor! But give me none back for they set my blood on fire.” Wow. But he was French; he had a head start in the language of love.

Lucy Edmonds, owner of the stationery shop Quill London, says there’s an enduring appeal to a love letter. “We’re all so busy these days, and so writing a letter to someone – especially a note of love or appreciation – goes such a long way to show someone that you’ve taken time to show care. Most forms of Letters, wrong,” she says. “If clichés are all you have, it’s better to write them in a letter than not. No one gets tired of hearing how beautiful their eyes are. Just the same as if you received a letter full of mistakes – if you’re crazy about that person, you don’t care.”

As I sit down to write my letter – pushing aside the feeling of total absurdity, it starts to flow quite quickly and I allow myself to be more sentimental than I might otherwise be if we were chatting in the kitchen. “The act of letter writing can provide a format for a more open and honest conversation than can perhaps happen face to face,” Espin agrees.

As O’shea recommends, I start with a really strong memory that I know we both share and then reminisce over days when we didn’t go to bed at 9pm, exhausted husks of people. I write about the experience of having our daughter, but of our relationship beyond her and how I want us to keep nurturing that. But keeping in mind Edmonds’s advice that “it doesn’t need to be long and gushing”, I stick to one side of paper.

Endings are always hard. A letter in the Postal Museum written by Robert Abbott in 1845 to his sweetheart ends “yours in unalterable love”. But it’s hard to beat the utterly beautiful letter I read on Letters of Note (lettersofnote.com), written by a pregnant wife to her dead husband in June 1586, and found on his chest in his tomb by archaeologists four centuries later. Raw with grief, she ends her letter: “There is no limit to what I want to say and I stop here.” It’s a heart-wrenching reminder that there’s no need to agonise over what to write – we just have to tell those we love just how much we do. PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESSREADER Pressreader.com +1 604 278 4604 ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY COPYRIGHT AND PROTECTED BY APPLICABLE LAW

‘Most forms of communication are ephemeral, but a letter is a tangible treasure’

Sunday 10 February 2019