Writing Wednesday: Rose’s Tips for Keeping a Love Journal (Guest Blogger)

Sometimes at the Endpaper Blog we get the unique opportunity to offer a platform to creative journallers from around the world. Today, we are excited to welcome back blogger and self-described “stationery fan” Rose as she writes about her personal experience of keeping a love journal. For more from Rose, be sure to check out her previous Endpaper post on keeping a dream journal. And don’t forget to check out her blog, Enjoy Happy Stationery: enjoyhappystationery.blogspot.ca.

If you know of someone (like yourself!) that we should feature on the Endpaper, please send us an email!

A love journal – any lover’s dream

Love is the strongest power in the world. To fall in love is one of the most beautiful things to experience. Being in love is said to not last long and evaporate quickly. After a period of love, we remember only fragments and wish we could save those experiences in a jar and open them up every once in a while to relive those moments. That is not possible so far but with a love journal you can at least remain in love with your memories and retrieve many beautiful moments, situations and words of that loving and lovely period.

Paperblanks journals are the perfect journals to use as a love journal. They are a keepsake in themselves and they serve as an exquisite memento for a beautiful period that you never ever want to forget.

What exactly is a love journal?

A love journal is a journal in which you record everything about love that you want, but it is also a journal about the moment you fall in love to the moment you want to stop writing about it. I chose to dedicate my love journal to the man I fell in love with. The love journal mainly deals with love but you will discover that a lot of other related aspects will come to the surface. For instance, when you fall in love you will write about the love you feel for this person but at the same time a myriad of feelings will be experienced – from joy to insecurity and even to jealousy. Similarly, you might recount some other loves or even dramas in your life and see them from a different perspective. You can relive past loves or past mistakes and write down what you want for the future. Don’t forget to include fantasies and daydreams about your lover. For me it brought a lot of new resolve and a determination not to repeat mistakes I made in the past. Also, for me, keeping a love journal felt more intimate than a regular journal. I wrote the entire love journal in the color pink which I associate with love.

How do you keep a love journal?

You can keep a love journal any way you want, just like a regular journal. I will give you an example how I kept my love journal.

From the moment I met my current boyfriend, I kept a separate journal than my regular journal and I started writing about our first encounter ever. When I looked for a journal to write in, initially I thought I would go with one of the Laurel Burch designs which are very colorful and incredibly romantic, such as The Lovers. No matter how lovely they looked I chose to go for the Rembrandt Embellished Manuscript for my love journal. I considered it a sign because I knew that my boyfriend-to-be was a painter, among other things, and loved the old masters who used light and shadows like Rembrandt. It actually does not matter what your love journal looks like, as long as you have the association with (your) love. I thought it was such a coincidence they actually had a Rembrandt that I chose to go with that one.

In all of my different kinds of journals, including my love journals, I date the entries and write titles under the dates. So after my first date with my boyfriend I wrote the title “We had a first date.” Then I wrote down in detail how nervous I was, yet how happy I was to have a date with him and what I would wear, even the scent of the perfume I wore. After the date I would write about the details of our conversation, what kind of jokes we told each other, what we talked about, what I thought he thought of me, what he was wearing, how I felt being in his vicinity. For the next couple of entries I chose titles such as “He sent me an SMS for my birthday.” Here are some examples of my entries:

What are the benefits of a love journal?

For me it took a couple of weeks before I knew my boyfriend liked me as much as I liked him and that he also wanted us to become more than friends. However, in the beginning there is no way you can tell, or can you? It can be really helpful for you to write down your anxiety, worries, insecurities and even questions to get an overview of things. It is a great way to see how your mind, emotions and feelings work. In retrospect, you can see signs and signals that make you smile. When you have been really honest with yourself, you also see characteristics of him and you that can be like a barometer in your relationship. It can help you strengthen your relationship.

Love is exceptional and it does not come around often so when it comes around, you want to capture every part of it. Writing your love experiences down, especially from the beginning, can help you remember what it was that made you fall in love. It can serve as a foundation to build a good relationship and see how you evolve in your relationship.

For me, the things I liked about my boyfriend in the beginning and why I fell in love with him are still the things that I love him for. If I need a reminder, I just need to catch my Paperblanks journal and read a fragment.

A very famous love journal

The writer Anaïs Nin is famous for her journals and she kept journals about her affair with the writer Henry Miller. It is even called The Journal of Love. Her journal is very passionate and detailed about their love affair. Reading her love journal is a very intimate peek into the love life of someone else. You don’t have to read only the love journals of others but create your own love journal.

How deep is your love? Tell it to your love journal!