My husband and I shared a journal the first year of dating—here’s why

My husband and I became acquainted shortly after graduating college and we fell madly in love.

In our first year of dating, we began a journal of our adventures. In it we raved of our love for each other, the first time meeting friends and family, nights spent at the bar, and everything in between.

When we met, we had both been writing separate, non-committal blogs on livejournal. We enjoyed reading each other’s infrequent entries when we were unable to be together. It was a nice way of connecting and it helped us learn more about each other’s thoughts and feelings.

Two months into the relationship, we began our journal. “We decided collectively today that we would keep a journal. This relationship seems much too important to let memories go by the wayside,” we wrote

We kept the journal online, password protected so that no one else could accidentally stumble upon our private posts. We have never told anyone about our journal, not even today. Well, not until now.

We spent the first few weeks recollecting the first months of our relationship in as much detail as we could muster out of our lovestruck brains.We were total romantics to the core, and the idea of having a keepsake of our first year was pure gold.

We often wrote our entries together, staying up late into the night after a long weekend, narrating to one another the previous days in every attempt to capture the moments before they were lost. Sometimes we’d write entries separately without consulting the other first, and we’d have a wonderful two-sided perspective of the same day. It was always so fun to see the different ways in which we experienced the same moments.

Occasionally we’d become too busy to write entries for a few weeks but we’d always go back and rehash our thoughts as best we could.

I love reading the journal, a decade later, and seeing his words about falling in love. “Jenny and I enjoy each other’s company immensely and I knew then that I really was falling in love. It was a good feeling.”

The most difficult part of our first year was that it began as a long-distance relationship. My husband often surprised me at my doorstep, then he’d write lovely entries such as, “I am thoroughly enjoying this relationship, despite all distances, and am happy to think that it is going to keep being this good as far as my mind can see.”

Journaling with my husband was a solid example of our dedication to one another, right from the very beginning. Every new entry was a wonderfully tangible show of our commitment to one another.

I’m so thankful to cuddle up with him and read the memories that we took the time to inscribe. Many of those words stand the test of time. Like this entry: “We never had a dull moment together.”

[Image via YouTube]