We Should Bring Back Love Letters

For centuries, the love letter has been a staple of symbolizing desire – a simple, but grand representation of romance at its most distilled.

But in today’s world, true love letters are nearly obsolete. Replaced by the “good morning” text or the curated Instagram story, modern communication has diluted the need for classic pen-and-paper expression. We are constantly in touch, yet rarely intentional about it, and have lost the impulse to tell others the beautiful things we see in them.

And yet, the codification of desire traces back to the very beginnings of the written word. In what some consider to be the earliest recorded love letter, inscribed on an ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablet over 4,000 years ago, an unnamed female speaker addresses King Shu-Sin:

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,

Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,

Lion, dear to my heart,

Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

Since then, romantics, celebrities, and political figures alike have turned to the letter as a means of deliberate vulnerability. Some of the more famous love letters of our time include one from Johnny Cash to June Carter:

But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 earthly reason for my existence.

… from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf:

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.

… from Alex Turner to Alexa Chung:

My mouth hasn't shut up about you since you kissed it. The idea that you may kiss it again is stuck in my brain, which hasn't stopped thinking about you since, well, before any kiss.

… and from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera:

I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.

Across millennia, the physical love letter has held its own as a grand and timeless romantic gesture, yet it is undoubtedly a dying art. The love letter invites the writer to meditate on gratitude and devote time purely to another person. In doing so, it dilutes the self-obsession ingrained in us by modern media. We’ve become coded in public self-expression (social media, dating profiles, and broadcasted affection), but much less practiced in the private and uncurated articulation of care that a personal letter requires.

In today’s political economy, love and empathy very naturally fall in the periphery of our decision-making. We prioritize productivity over presence and aim to streamline even the most intimate moments and gestures. While love may be the last free resource available, we’re conditioned to treat it like a commodity. 

The love letter resists that logic.

To write a love letter is to slow down and articulate gratitude without the expectation of performance. Studies suggest that deliberate mediation on gratitude increases empathy, lowers stress, and improves overall well-being. But beyond its neurological benefits, the act of writing a love letter is a quiet rebellion against the culture of immediacy and an insistence that someone else is worth your uninterrupted time.

And maybe this is why the concept seems so intimidating. But truly, the love letter doesn’t have to be long or eloquent; it doesn’t have to be mailed, or even handwritten; it doesn’t need to be remotely serious. A paragraph will do, or a page torn from a notebook, or a note slipped under a door. And beyond this, love letters are not solely for romantic partners. They can be written to anyone, or anything, that has shaped you.

So I propose we revive the love letter in full force. Write one, and let it be awkward. Let it be slow and inefficient – because yes, we can fit dozens of casually placed “ily” texts in the time it takes to write and deliver a letter. But the love letter is an immortal exercise in noticing. It promotes depth, intention, slowness, and permanence, asking us to mean what we say and to say it like we have all the time in the world.