Other People's Love Letters Read online

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  Come. Ravage me with your wine drenched mouth and carpenter hands.

  If you were here now

  we'd get in trouble.

  The stewardesses

  would have to pull us apart.

  We both thought

  we’d have more

  time, and then I

  left. I’ll always be

  sorry for that.

  Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.

  I just don't have any enthusiasm

  for engaging with a man who is

  in a relationship with another woman.

  I’m thinking about that time

  you tied me down to your bed

  and unbuttoned my jeans.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The Letters

  Reopening the Envelope

  Postscript

  Text of Selected Handwritten Letters

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  Other People's Rejection Letters

  INTRODUCTION

  The first time I read a love letter that wasn’t addressed to me, my heart danced a guilty little dance.

  A confession: Not only wasn’t the letter mine, but it was written to a woman I was dating. She was in her bedroom, deciding on shoes; I was killing time in her kitchen, nibbling almonds. On her counter, the usual mess: a few photos, an address book, small piles of bills. Perhaps I looked a little more closely than I should have, but atop one pile, seated like a king, was a love letter.

  I picked it up, I did, and I can’t say I’m proud of that. But once I did … well, there was no turning away. That love note, rough-edged and wrinkled, had a curious effect on me. Confusion, yes, and a hint of vulnerability, but something else too. What her other man had written—a year ago? ten years ago? I had no idea—felt strikingly similar to a note I’d scratched out to her only a few weeks before. Not the words, exactly, but that flood of emotion, the playfulness, the optimism. It all seemed so familiar. A question twittered in my mind: Was our relationship as special as I had thought? At the same time, his note was clearly his own, with its inside jokes and (vividly) spelled-out desires. In fact, I could hardly believe it was written to the woman I thought I knew. I read it twice.

  Three times, actually.

  I WONDERED WHY SHE HAD LEFT IT THERE. IT WAS PROBABLY BY ACCIDENT. But it also could have been by accident-on-purpose, in which case what was she telling me? Had he touched something in her that I hadn’t? Did he mean something to her that I didn’t? And then the bigger questions swooped in: What role did this letter play in her life? Was it something she had unearthed to remind herself of how good love can get … or how fleeting it can be?

  Why, in short, had she saved this nine-line scrawl? And was she so different from everyone else? I began to consider what these much-folded pieces of paper might symbolize for us, emotionally; why some we toss within moments, why we hang on to others for decades. Is it because each letter from an ex represents a road not taken? And each letter from the person we’re still with reminds us of what brought us together? Or could it be because a love letter recalls that moment in our life when someone saw our best self?

  SO I STARTED COLLECTING OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE LETTERS. I contacted everyone I knew, and asked if they would send me any they’d been keeping. Eventually, I even assembled a team of researchers to do more legwork (these brave souls went so far as to call their exes … who called their exes) until the web expanded far beyond our own circles.

  I wasn’t interested in the kind of correspondence typically found in love letter collections. Not the quill-tip pen variety that Ben Franklin sent to Mrs. F during their courtship. I sought love letters, e-mails, text messages, and postcards written by regular people in relationships probably much like yours. And who wants to look only at letters that present bouquet after bouquet of love’s red roses. Modern love is complicated. It bobs and weaves, takes two steps forward, one step back. I wanted letters that not only captured the whispered promises of endless love, but also candid moments of uncertainty, bitterness, and regret. The thorns.

  Envelopes began to arrive, each holding what, until the moment I opened them, had been a very private message. Inside the first, a tender apology. The second brought two single-spaced pages of triple-X lust. After that: “I’m not feeling what you’re feeling.” In the end, I had hundreds and hundreds stacked in my living room.

  HERE’S SOMETHING I LEARNED ABOUT LOVE LETTERS: MOST DIE AN IGNOMINIOUS DEATH. They’re torn up, tossed out, and fed to the dog. Burned, buried, and flushed. The letters on the pages that follow are the survivors. They were saved and savored. And, now, they’re shared: Every letter here is reproduced with permission from its writer.*

  Who wrote these letters? You name it: helicopter pilots, musicians, sociologists, sales reps, students, retirees, housewives, computer programmers, consultants, construction workers, architects, teachers, kids, lawyers, store clerks, filmmakers. The faithful and the adulterous. Maybe someone you know. Maybe your lover.

  Gathering these letters provided me with a rare opportunity: the chance to freely poke through other people’s intimate correspondence and not feel the least bit ashamed about it, as you might one day should you let your eyes wander for too long on someone’s kitchen counter. After all, while almost everyone will get a love letter at some point in his or her life, it’s unlikely to be passed around the dinner table. More often it will be squirreled away in the back of the file cabinet in a folder falsely labeled “auto insurance.” (Note: If this is where you’ve been hiding yours, now might be a good time to rethink that.)

  Like those still-hidden letters, the notes collected here were written only for a lover’s eyes; they are unflinchingly honest. Reading them is like picking the lock on a stranger’s heart and peering inside during the most intense moments of his or her life. But the fascination here is more complex than a simple case of voyeurism. Because, on a deeper level, the heart you’re looking into is your own.

  *In a handful of cases, the letters are reproduced with the permission of the writer’s closest living relative. Also, some letters have been slightly altered to protect the writer’s identity or that of the recipient. One more thing: Not all letters are reproduced in their entirety.

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  REOPENING THE ENVELOPE

  A few contributors reveal how it felt to search through their closets, garages, and hard drives—through time itself—and wander into their romantic back pages. Some were overcome by warmth and nostalgia; others experienced heartbreak all over again. But nearly everyone said that, within the envelope, they found a little peace.

  i regret some of what i wrote

  “I thought digging up these old letters would be no big deal. I thought I’d mourned, healed, and moved on from all of my serious and not-so-serious relationships over the last ten years. But apparently not: I was completely surprised by how painful it was to look at the permanent record of all these lost loves.

  “I noticed a couple of things: I’m blessed in that I have some gift with words, and that I can use words to inspire joy in someone or to comfort someone. But there’s this dark side that when I’m hurt or in pain, I can draw blood with my words. And I regret some of what I wrote out of anger or hurt. I feel real shame from this. Did I cause harm to someone? I’m seriously thinking about going back to some of these guys after all these years and apologizing.”

  it was first love

  “I hadn’t read the letters since I’d received them—that was about fifteen years ago. It was a college relationship, my first love.

  “As I read them, I had this sudden desire to feel that intensity again. I wanted it back in my life right now. But when I thought about it, I came to realize that you can never re-create those feelings because it was the first time, the first love. And that’s actually the beauty of it: If you could experience those feelings again, then they would be worthless.

  “After I read the letters, I e-mailed her. We hadn’t talked in five years. We had a laugh over our letters because they were so gooey and naïve. But I felt a little different about them than she did: I was probably more nostalgic, more romantic.”

  a great honor

  “My mother and I went through stacks and stacks of my grandparents’ letters. They had corresponded for four years, sometimes three times a week. It was a great honor to be able to see the intricacy of their courtship and that they truly adored each other until their parting breaths. My mother and I were both touched by their love. I don’t mean that in the cliché sense—we could see that their love affected all of us as developing people.

  “We spent days reading and organizing them, and then my mother decided to assemble a book of all of the letters. We gave one to everyone in my family. They, too, were entranced.”

  who was i then?

  “Reading them again was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can’t touch those feelings. It’s like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don’t even know. I’m aware, in an intellectual way, that I felt all of those things about her, but those emotions are far away now.

  “What’s so strange to me is that I can’t even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all-consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who was I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now?”

  i cried my eyes out

  “When I read a few of the letters, I just cried my eyes out. It was like I experienced the end of each relationship again.”

  a nice surprise

  “I didn’t know these letters existed. My grandmother died before I was born, so this was the first time I’ve ever heard her voice, heard how she constructed her thoughts. It was an amazing experience. Sometimes she seemed demanding, sometimes she seemed scared. The stories I’d heard about my grandparents were that they were so different, but to have a glimpse into their sweetness and excitement about love was a nice surprise.”

  my love comes in many shapes and sizes

  “By going through my old letters I saw that my love comes in many shapes and sizes: Some are free-falls in a mad, passionate way. Some loves have been more friendship-based, sweeter and warmer. Looking at these letters reminded me that I’ve had the opportunity to experience many types of men and relationships, and that all of these romantic adventures make me who I am.

  “I saw progress in how I dealt with rejection and pain over the years. When I split up with a couple of these men, I was in my closet thinking I could never come out … but here I am. Looking back gave me a sense that I had survived.”

  POSTSCRIPT

  How did the lovers meet? Did they live happily ever after? Here’s the story behind a few of the letters, as well as an update on how the relationship fared.

  Where do you stand on chains?

  The writer walked by a shop window and saw her: a beautiful salesclerk. So he stopped in, bought something he didn’t need and, quite intentionally, left his glasses on the counter. When he returned to pick them up, he also got her e-mail address. They flirted for two weeks (exchanging dozens of notes) and dated for four months, during which time he found out exactly where she stood on chains.

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  Peace. Sweat. Everything!

  It took her about two hours to create this illustration and, as she remembers it, perhaps a bit longer than that to pick out the perfect color of red lipstick for the pucker. The couple met in college in ′92—she liked his Morrissey shirt—and have been together ever since.

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  I love you, Gary

  The couple met on JDate. Her note was written one morning when he had to leave for work and she stayed in his bed. She knew this note would make him smile when he returned that night. She was right, and they’ve been married for more than two years.

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  Thank you, I hate you, I’m sorry

  She gave this note to her boyfriend just before moving to New York City—without him. They spent two years apart—“growing up and living life,” she says—but never stopped thinking about each other. Then, on his own, he moved to New York and they began seeing each other again. She says they don’t for a minute regret the decisions they made—to go, to stay—that brought them to where they are now: sharing an apartment.

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  6:35 A.M.—Gone for my walk

  Donald and Mildred were married in 1937 with only $17 in the bank. Two years after celebrating their Golden Anniversary, Don underwent open-heart surgery; unfortunately, his aorta ruptured, leaving him in a coma for two months. He awoke with compromised mental and physical abilities, but recovered enough to draw Mildred a love note before his morning walk—which he did every single day until he died, five years later.

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  Hi Lauren

  She left her small New England university to spend her junior year at a school about an hour outside of London. Early on, she met a guy, a Brit, and was, she says,
“quietly in love with him” the entire year. The night before she returned to the States, they finally kissed. As she was leaving for the plane the next morning, a mutual friend handed her this letter. They e-mailed now and then but after a couple of years fell out of touch. Recently, she was flipping through a stack of old letters, read this note, started wondering … and decided to reach out to him. They e-mailed about five times before he hopped on a plane. She hadn’t seen him in ten years but they had “the most beautiful, romantic weekend. He’s coming again soon.”