You know what’s crazy? In the time it would take to write a proper love letter, you could send 28 DM slides, reply to three Instagram stories with ‘LOL so true,’ and still have time to cry to a Frank Ocean song about how lonely you are. This is modern romance, a world where the height of vulnerability is sending a blurry meme at 2 a.m. and hoping they get the vibe.
There was a time, or so I like to imagine, when people sat under candlelight, pouring their hearts onto parchment with ink-stained fingers, carefully choosing each word to immortalize their devotion. Fast forward to today, where romance is distilled into a fire emoji followed by “u up?” Truly, we have redefined progress.
Love letters are now museum artifacts, a bygone art that demanded patience, intention, and the ability to craft sentences that didn’t stop at 280 characters. In my head, I am a modern Elizabeth Bennet, elegantly weaving poetic declarations for my Mr. Darcy. In reality, I am hunched over my phone, agonizing over whether “wyd?” comes across as desperate for someone I barely remember meeting during O-week.
In a world of instant communication, where even three dots typing sends us into a spiral of anxiety, the love letter is a rebellion. It says, ‘I have thought about you for longer than two seconds and I am willing to put in effort that cannot be undone by deleting the chat history or a sense formality that screams, I am willing to risk carpal tunnel syndrome to declare my love.’

If I ever wrote a love letter, I’d embrace the glorious absurdity of modern love and make it as unhinged as my late-night Google searches. If I were to write someone a love letter, I would tell them how I’d trade the tired “ssup?” texts for something that feels like an actual adventure. I’d tell them we should skip the overdone dinner date and instead go horse riding or better yet, go on walks with the horses, like we’re trying to recreate a scene from some indie film where nothing makes sense, but it’s beautiful anyway.
I would tell them how much I’d love for us to ditch the ‘dine and dash’ routine that has become modern romance (dinner, then back to one of our places, rinse and repeat.) Instead, to swap the dash for something unpredictable. Let’s drive to a random spot on the map, grab snacks from a petrol station, and argue over the best road trip playlist. Or to show up at the farmers’ market and pretend we were food critics judging tomatoes for a cooking show no one asked for.
If I were to write a love letter, I’d tell them how I dream about lazy afternoons together, where doing absolutely nothing feels like everything. I’d tell them how perfect it sounds to lie on the couch, sharing a packet of biscuits, debating whether we’re more “cozy chic” or “messy chaos” as a couple. And I’d make it clear that I want to skip the curated Instagram-worthy moments and dive straight into the kind of love that’s full of laughing at bad ideas and eating bread we probably shouldn’t have tried baking.
I’d tell them how love, to me, is in the little rebellions—the times we skip the gym to eat tacos in the car or decide to wear matching pyjamas to a picnic because life is too short not to be ridiculous.
If I were to write someone a love letter, it wouldn’t just say “I like you.” It would be an invitation to all the absurd, wonderful, perfectly imperfect things I’d want to do with them. It would be the kind of letter they could tuck away, read on a quiet day, and think, “Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of love I want too.”
And yet, I wish I’d written love letters. I wish I’d risked being a little too earnest, a little too cheesy. Because while DMs are fleeting, a letter says, “I see you. I care. And I’m willing to risk sounding ridiculous to make you smile.” Until then, I’ll just be here, sliding into your DMs with, “Hey, this article made me think of you.” Because even Elizabeth Bennet had to start somewhere.