, 7 min read
Dear Future Husband
I feel it most when I go to a coffee shop or driving late at night while listening to my favorite music. I feel it when I go on a hike, explore a new place, watch a sunset, go on a road trip, or when I’m feeling high from life: that longing for you. Every day when I go out, I have a simple thought:
“Will I meet you today?”
Will you walk through the door of the coffee shop, and our eyes will meet? You’ll sit near me and strike up a conversation. You’ll ask what I’m reading or writing, and conversation will just flow. By the end, we’ll both know we want to see each other again. Or will it be on a hiking trail? That’s how I often envision it. We’ll both hike to the top of a mountain or to the same waterfall, and that shared experience and love of nature will open a natural conversation. I imagine you’re someone who loves to hike just as much as I do.
I imagine it every day, a thousand different ways, a thousand different “how we met” stories: a bookstore, the grocery store, on a hike, a coffee shop, in the park. Everywhere I go, I wonder,
“Will I meet you?”
Sometimes I’ll lock eyes with a mysterious and handsome stranger and feel that instant pull to them. We may interact just a bit, have a short conversation, or nothing at all other than a long look, and I’ll fall in love for just that day, wondering,
“Was that it? Was there supposed to be more? Could it have been you?”
It was a joke with me and my roommate. Almost every day, I would come home, declaring I fell in love, and she’d let me tell her this story. I picture you in my head as clearly as I can. I imagine your personality to be quieter, thoughtful, laid-back, maybe a bit mysterious. You’re the one in the corner reading a book at the party. You are abundantly warm, kind, gentle, and patient. I feel comfortable and safe with you. You aim to treat everyone around you with kindness. You are the type to go out of their way to help anyone, anytime. Some may call you a “feminine man,” but that’s exactly what makes you perfect to me. You don’t see femininity as shameful or weakness. You love and embrace it within yourself. You value emotions and are in touch with yours. You know how to express yourself. You’re not afraid to cry. We take turns being the strong one for each other.
You are in awe of the feminine and encourage me to discover and embrace my power. You treat me with respect and view me as an equal. You are an absolute gentleman and take great pleasure in making me feel like a princess, always thinking of little romantic gestures. You write little love notes, make a fuss over my birthday and Valentine’s Day, and pick me wild flowers. We share a fascination of psychology and know how relevant it is in the day-to-day. You might even be a psychologist or a therapist. You’ve studied relationships and know the effort that they require. And we share the commitment to work together. You value relationships, emotional maturity, self-awareness, and are also a hopeless romantic, searching for me right now.
I imagine you
I imagine you’re creative and an intellectual, a photographer, a filmmaker, an artist, maybe a writer. You love to think as much as I do. You think about life and the world as if it’s all finite. You know what life is really all about. You don’t put too much weight in the constructs our society has deemed important, and you still see the magic and beauty of life. And you have the same passion to live life to the fullest.
You are strong, you are noble, you have integrity. You are respected by those around you because they know you are good. You have endless depths and constantly provide me with new perspectives. We can talk endlessly. We love to talk. You have a true desire to get to know me fully, and I share that desire to know you fully. You have an unsatiated curiosity about all things in life. You love to read, you love nature, you love travel, you love animals, you love people, you love growth, and most importantly, you love to love. You desire a great love. You too have desired that one person who you can bear yourself to in entirety, so you can build trust with, share thoughts with, be vulnerable with, feel safe with, share every secret with, and develop true intimacy and an inseparable bond.
We’re on our own wavelength. We understand each other. We get each other. We are loyal, committed, and devoted to each other for life, through everything. We love to spend time together. We admire and respect each other, care about the other’s thoughts and opinions. We are each other’s number one person.
How you look
Can I say this? Can I say the more superficial things? I’m going to. You have long, dark hair, tan skin, beautiful eyes. You have the perfect mix of feminine and masculine facial features. You like to wear dark clothes. You care about what you wear and how you look. You wear jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, earrings. You wear black, ripped jeans, and you have a favorite pair of worn-out boots. You have a couple of tattoos which all tell a story.
What I have just described is my unicorn of a man. And the thing that kills me is that I know, I know that you’re out there. I know that you exist and that you are alive right now, even if I never find you.
What am I?
I’ve always been this way, as far back as I can remember, always dreamed of a great love. As a teen, what I wanted most was to meet you, the love of my life, and have our story begin. I thought I would be married by now. Some people get that. I’ve seen it. They get to do all of life together. People tell me, “You’re young, you have plenty of time. You might meet him in your 30s or your 40s. Just live your life.” But how can someone say that, and how can I believe that when we only live one time? We only get to do it all once. Every year we live is the only time we ever get to be that age. For me, the more time we had together, the better. And how can I live my one life when the most important piece is missing?
I am 24 and a half years old. Already my life is more than a quarter over. Already I have missed your teen years and your early twenties. I’ve missed those years and every milestone you experienced in them. I wasn’t there. I haven’t met you. I don’t know you. In case you can’t tell by now, I am what some people call a hopeless romantic, and I’m floundering in life because I never thought I would be here now. I don’t know what to do with myself. It was supposed to be You and Me Against the World. It was supposed to be us living Our Lives, making decisions together, pursuing what we both wanted. Now I’m afraid that whatever I do will lead me away from meeting you.
To me, the meaning of life is love: intimacy, closeness, to love someone with every fiber of my being and to be loved back fully, to see someone, their every complexity, their light and their darkness, and to love and accept everything they are. I’ve had plenty of Amazing Life Experiences on my own, but nothing, not even me at the Pinnacle of joy and happiness, compares to the fullness of being with you.
Me finding my one true intimacy and inseparable bond is a human need, no different than food and water. I’m sick of people saying, “You must be fully happy and whole on your own before meeting your person.” That’s like saying you need to stay alive before you drink water. Ask a happily married couple if they are more or less happy since meeting the love of their life. Of course, finding the person you want to spend your life with makes life happier, more fulfilling, and complete.
So I am doing the best I can be without you. I’ve done everything I can to prepare for you. I have lived fully. I have traveled. I’ve grown and done amazing things that I’m proud of. I like myself. I’m waiting to meet you. And every day that I don’t feels like another day wasted. If only I could live the exact same day but knowing that I would go home to you at the end of it.
It is my hope, my dear future husband, that in the not-so-distant future, I can show you this video or play it at my wedding with you by my side. You may be all of the things I just described, or almost entirely different, but we find that we fit together. We will both tell each other every detail of our journey to find the other and revel in the fact that life is unpredictable. And we will know, in hindsight, that it was all just around the corner. If we can just hang in there a little longer, we will both know soon that it all worked out. We met, and have the greatest “how we met” story. We fell in love. We are together. And we are together for the rest of our lives. And even that won’t be enough time.