Back in the aughts, one of the ubiquitous personal productivity blogs recommend couple’s journals. The idea was that a couple have a journal that they share, exchanging it week by week to read what the other had written and share one’s own thoughts. My husband and I started one in 2009. It became a habit of reflection and sharing which, nearly 14 years later, we cannot imagine going without.
For the journal itself, we prefer pen and paper. Not just for the tangibility that leads folks to often prefer writing in a physical journal, but also because it makes the ritual of passing it back and forth feel more meaningful than it would with a digital artifact.
We trade off weekly and each try to write three times during the week. Whatever your schedule, having an exchange schedule and an expectation that each person will write at least once per period helps make it a conversation and a habit.
Most of what we write is a summary of our day-to-day. We also write about our hopes and concerns about the children, challenging things in our lives, and our relationship. Sometimes we write directly to each other, letter style, especially for things like sharing feelings about our relationship or following up on earlier conversations. Most of the time our writing voice is more descriptive.
So far, other than having two people, this is standard journaling fare. The value add comes from reading and reflection. When we exchange the journal, we each read what the other person wrote. Sometimes our own entries will be a direct response to what we read. Sometimes we’ll talk about it. Most often, we just read it and feel a little closer to each other’s day-to-day.
We’ve also developed a habit that wasn’t part of the original inspiration. About the time we built up five years worth of journals, we decided to start reading and reflecting on past journals. Each month we read the entries for that month from 1 year ago, 5 years ago, and (now) 10 years ago. We have found that this creates a lovely practice of reflection and gratitude. It helps us see the patterns in our lives — such as the fact that last year’s journal is almost always pretty similar to this year but 5 years ago is almost always completely different. (It’s also a good way to remember delicious meals that we should cook again.)
While I certainly can’t attribute all of the growth in our relationship to our journaling habit — time, age, children, and Todoist (seriously) have also had a role to play — I can say that it’s been a valuable tool in helping us communicate with each other, connect to our past, and deepen our relationship.
(I’ve delayed writing this post for years because it builds off an idea that I’ve never been able to find the source for. However, it comes up often enough that I’m just going to accept the lossy nature of learning from the internet.)