Season 1, Episode 1: Are Love Letters Dead?
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:
On Today’s Episode:
In March 1827, Beethoven’s most famous letter - a love letter - was found in his apartment, with no name to identify his past lover.
As I reflect on the value of writing love letters, I have to ask - how can a love letter to no one still be regarded as the most romantic love letter of our time? And how can we know the value of love letters if the most beautiful one in the world left a brilliant man alone to his painful death?
I talked to a Beethoven scholar, a wedding photographer, a psychologist, and the happiest bride I know to answer the question: are love letters dead? If they didn’t work for Beethoven, can they still work for us - even in this instant world of Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram and text messages?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
UNFORGETTABLE!!
“Liz artfully weaves pieces of history and modern times together, intertwining them into beautiful stories that leave you wanting to hear more. Between learning about Beethoven’s lost love letter and listening to Brittany’s story about how love letters from her husband gave her strength during difficult times- the first episode left me in tears, with my thoughts often returning to it for days after. I cannot wait to hear more!”
With Special Guests…
Jan Swafford - Jan Swafford is a composer whose music has been played around the country and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of St. Louis, Indianapolis, and the Dutch Radio; Boston's new-music groups Musica Viva, Collage, and Dinosaur Annex; and chamber ensembles including the Peabody Trio, the Chamber Orchestra of Tennessee, and the Scott Chamber Players of Indianapolis.
Also a well-known writer on music, Swafford is author of biographies of Ives, Brahms, and Beethoven. His journalism appears regularly in Slate. He is a long-time program writer and preconcert lecturer for the Boston Symphony and has written notes and essays for the orchestras of Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Brittany Youngblood - Brittany Youngblood is the proud wife of Charles and loving mama of Hazel Grace who is 5. Her and Charles have been married for 15 years. She has survived many moves as a Navy wife and 2 deployments to Iraq. She keeps busy with crafts and photography. She loves her family and anything that involves them plus being outside in the sunshine is her favorite. When she has time she likes to help out at her local animal shelters.
Erin Covey - Erin Covey is based out of central New York where she specializes in documentary wedding and family photography. A former journalist for nearly twenty years, she has documented news stories all over the country. She has worked in broadcasting and print, but these days she specializes in documenting love, both on a wedding day and through family relationships. Erin takes an unposed, authentic and artistic approach to capturing images.
Jennifer Silvershein, LCSW - Jennifer created Manhattan Wellness, a boutique psychotherapy practice, for young professionals to receive well-rounded care, and to support them in optimizing their life so it’s a life they LOVE - not just one that’s about checking off boxes and surface-level achievements. With mentions in Cosmopolitan and Oprah magazine, along with her master’s degree from Columbia University, Jennifer has not only created a space for therapeutic healing - she has created a movement that changes the landscape of therapy and counseling.
Jennifer guides both her growing staff and her clients based on the concept of two individuals coming together and stripping away the labels of “Therapist” and “Client.” She has combined her clinical expertise, business savvy and highly impactful relationship building skills to transform what it means to go to therapy. Collaborative, holistic and client-focused care is revolutionary in the therapy world - and Manhattan Wellness is leading the way. Jennifer's practice is built on the belief that if you're willing to challenge your current way of life, anything is possible.
Resources:
I find it almost impossible to explain ALL of the ideas and influences that come up while researching every episode. So here are just some of my most used and referenced resources for this week’s episode.
Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph - By Jan Swafford, one of the interviewees for this episode, this is an absolutely delightful and yet incredibly detail biography of Beethoven. At nearly 1,000 pages, it is not for the faint of heart. But it is so well-written that I actually cried when Beethoven died in it, despite the fact that I (obviously) knew it was coming.
Other People’s Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See - By Bill Shapiro, I used this book as my look into modern love letters. Every page is filled with images of love letters in so many forms, making it a quick and fun read. Warning: some of the letters are emotional as all hell.
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved - If you want an easy-to-read guide to the Immortal Beloved letters, this Guardian article should be your first stop.
The Handwritten Love Letter is Dying - Here Are All the Wonderful Things We’ll Lose - The millennial in me could so relate to this entire piece. I would say this article is where my curiosity really got churning.
This is How I Post - This Morning News article by Jim Ross gave me all the feels. It’s all about the relationship between technology, handwriting, and one writer’s way of balancing the two.
A History of Love Letters - What greater source of love letters than Jane Austen and Regency England?
A Brief History of Great Love Letters - An article on CNN, created by Mental Floss, on some of the great old love letter writers - including from a great computer (this isn’t even science fiction people!).
Napoleon Divorces Josephine - I reference Napoleon and Josephine a lot in my blog posts on love letters. If you’re feeling a little clueless about the reference, this ones a good one for you.
Why E-Mail Will Never Replace the Handwritten Note - If you’re thinking I’m a little bit crazy for talking about getting back to handwriting in this super-digital age, here’s some proof that it’s not just me.
The Was Is Could Be podcast is produced by Liz Russell at To Eat and To Love, LLC. Each episode is carefully edited by Joshua Rivers of Podcast Guy Media, LLC. Our theme music is made by Neil Cross and published by ImageCollect Publishing.
Want more? Follow the Was Is Could Be podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
For advertising or guest appearances, check out the media kit.
Liz Russell: Its March, 1827. Hail and wind batter the windows of a dark and damp Vienna apartment. Inside four men search for its former occupant’s most important papers. Wading through ink blotted music sheets, overfilled notebooks, and unemptied chamber pots, the men are near giving up amid all the squalor, when finally one pulls on a nail sticking out of a cupboard to unveil a hidden collection of papers - including a love letter and ivory miniatures of two lovely young women.
The letter is full of passion. It says “wherever I am, you are with me” and “as much as you love me — I love you even more deeply.” And at times the letter turns to desperation. It says ”At my age now I need some uniformity and consistency of life - can this exist in our relationship?… And then there’s a sign-off that’s will filled with determination. It says “Ever Mine. Ever Thine. Ever Ours.”
And so unfolds a mystery. The letter isn’t addressed to anyone and the man died single and unmarried - despite his amazing fame.This is Was Is Could Be - And this is a story of the love letters of Ludwig Van Beethoven.
[🎶 Theme Music 🎶 ]
Liz Russell: Ever Mine. Ever Thine. Ever Ours.”
Sound familiar?
You might remember it from the Sex and the City movie - its THE love letter that pushes Carrie back to her on-again off-again on-again husband, the final 3 sentences that he sends via email to demonstrate his never ending love to her.
So how can a love letter to no one still be regarded as the most romantic love letter of our time? And how can we know the value of love letters if the most beautiful one in the world left a brilliant man alone to his painful death?
I talked to a Beethoven scholar, a wedding photographer, a psychologist, and the happiest bride I know to answer this question - are love letters dead? If they didn’t work for Beethoven, can they still work for us - even in this instant world of Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram and text messages?
Jan Swafford: I’m Jan Swafford. I'm a composer and writer about music and teacher. I had went to Harvard and Yale School of Music and I've written biographies of Charles Ives and Brahms and Beethoven. I’m just finishing one oz Mozart. Anyway, immortal beloved letter. It's not a simple love letter because you see, you see the beginnings of its impossibility in the letter itself. Now, the question of who it was, it's just not addressed to any specific person. I mean there's, her name is not on it.
Liz Russell: The letter actually starts with the words “In the Morning.” It isn’t addressed to anybody except “My Angel, my all, my self.” Later on in the letter Beethoven refers to his love as “my immortal beloved” and that’s where the name of the letter actually comes from.
We don’t really even know if the letter was sent. It was found, after all, in his apartment, so we don’t know if it was mailed and returned to him, or if it was some sort of draft that Beethoven had copied from, or if it was just never sent at all.
We DO know that he wrote it while in Teplitz and that the recipient was in Karlsbad. And we know that because he explains his journey to Teplitz and he also explains that he knows that the mail only goes from there to Karlsbad on Thursdays.
Jan Swafford: And there's been, you know, raging dispute and dialogue about it ever since Beethoven ever since, you know, probably since shortly after Beethoven died about who she was. But there are three candidates.
Liz Russell:
Antonie Brentano, Bettina Brentano, and Josephina Deym
As a quick note - throughout the recording, Jan refers to “Amelie” but he means Antonie. He actually corrects himself later on in the interview, but it’s not heard here in this episode.
These are the three women that Beethoven scholars have considered to be the most viable candidates for the Immortal Beloved letter.
But as Jan pointed out to me, they were all married to other men.
Jan Swafford: Here’s the thing, there are tantalizing clues for each of them. In the case of Amelie, she was in the right town at the right time. In the case of Bettina, she obviously had a passion for Beethoven and for Goethe, and she was… her goal is getting Beethoven and Goethe together and so forth and so on. It's clear Beethoven was fascinated by her. And she was a fascinating person and Josephina - the tone of the Immortal Beloved letters are exactly, is exactly the tone of the letters he was writing to her about six or eight years earlier.
On the other hand, they were all married or about to be, and that means this was some kind of a backstairs affair. And it's almost impossible to believe that he was having a backstairs affair with any of them.
Liz Russell: In his Beethoven biography, Jan makes it clear why this a non-starter for Beethoven. He had what Jan calls “rigid, puritanical ethics” when it came to marriage and children.
With Antonie, Beethoven knew her husband, and though Antonie was not considered happy in her marriage, her husband was generally considered to be kind, and Antonie is said to have respected him, even if she did not love him. Further, at the time of the Immortal Beloved letters, Antonie was pregnant, and Beethoven knew all of her children. When he became depressed after the affair seems to have ended, he spent time at the Bretano house and it just does not seem likely that he would have attempted to break up the family, and then go to their house to find solace after he was not successful.
Bettina Bretano, a cousin of Antonie’s, was similarly newly engaged or possibly even married at the time of the Immortal Beloved letters, and although there is some evidence that she did not love her husband, existing letters between her and Beethoven only suggest affection and appreciation. Bettina was well known for loving geniuses at the time. In fact, her husband was a rather famous poet. And she really loved Goethe, as Jan explains.
As for Josephine Deym, her marriage was an unhappy one. At the time of the Immortal Beloved letters, Josephine was in her second marriage and that was already coming apart. But earlier in their lives, Beethoven had began courting Josephine and she became really rather alarmed or uncomfortable with his advances - with is an indication that she did NOT reciprocate his love.
Jan Swafford: He hadn't seen her in years. She had, she had banished him from her house years before and there was no evidence that they ever saw each other again. So it's almost impossible to believe that it was any of them. And yet it almost certainly was one of them. But I really don't know. I spent 10 years thinking about this and I really don't know.
Liz Russell: Beethoven had a long history of erratic letters - and due to his deafness he left behind many notebooks that were full of his writing and these included conversations that he had with his family and friends.
Liz Russell (on the phone): My understanding with Beethoven is that he was sort of prone to writing these letters, somewhat erratically, not just love letters, but any of his letters that he might write one and then write an apology about that one, you know, weeks later. So I'm just curious if we can really say this is truly a love, you know?
Jan Swafford: Well two things. Most of his letters, the vast majority of the publishers and their business though sometimes they can be very funny and very informal, partly because Beethoven may have been alcoholic. He almost certainly was the end of his life. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. I don't think he drank when he was composing, but I have a feeling he did when he was writing letters. And that's one of the things that explains them, that some of them like the one to the immortal beloved are really kind of drunk. And I think he's probably drunk with both wine and love in that letter.
Well the other thing is that that was almost certainly the end of the affair. You know, he was basically saying, how can we make this work? How can we be together? And you know, his feelings are really changing in the course of the letter. And there's no question that that was that then or soon after the affair was over, almost immediately after, and he entered a period of two years of depression.
Liz Russell: In the letter, Beethoven says “while still in bed, my thoughts rush toward you my immortal beloved now and then happy, then again sad, awaiting fate, if it will grant us a favorable hearing.” And then later in the letter: “only through quiet contemplation of our existence can we reach our goal to live together.”
Both of these indicate how impossible the situation must have been for them.
Jan Swafford: People said he was a mess. You know, one woman, you know, one guy came to visit him… and Beethoven… he said this squalor was, I mean he always lived in squalor, but the squalor was worse. And Beethoven said, you know, I can't go out of the house. I don't have any boots. And another woman who was a friend of his said, I will refrain from describing the state he was in. He was probably, drinking like a lot and he was not very productive. His hearing was getting worse, his health was getting worse, it was a mess. And he was a very passionate man. He never connected with a woman seriously in his life. They all rejected them or the Immortal Beloved went up and smoke for one reason or another. Here's the other thing about that letter. It is extraordinarily passionate and it's almost like gasping on the page. There are these explosions of words and these little formulas. My love, my only my — and dashes, almost like gasps in the middle of the letter. You know, they are really very sexual and passionate and the only other letters like that are the ones with Josephina Deym earlier. And she, it just kind of scared the hell out of her. It's like she had opened the door to a whirlwind. When Beethoven fell in love with you, he went a little berserk and the, that's one way to look at the Immortal Beloved letter. It's a berserk letter to someone who was really ultimately unavailable and what their relations before that were there's no way to know. Did they have a real affair? There’s no way to know.
I think it is a romantic letter, but it's also over the top at the same time because that's, that's what he was like when he, and the trouble is he would like that in person too. If he was passionate about you, he was all over you. And that, that became, that was a problem with some women too. Beethoven did not have a very good sensor on his actions or his words. The composer he was, is because there was, his imagination was his raging all the time. And yet he had this phenomenal discipline at the same time. So sort of Dionysus an Apollo joined. He was, you know, he was incredibly capricious and changeable and emotional and in his art, utterly disciplined. It's hard to imagine that combination though, you know, I think all great artists have that to some degree, but, uh, he had it in spades. But it also applied to his relations with people. So sometimes he just scared people away, especially women.
Liz Russell: Here is the thing. Beethoven ended up alone. His romantic loves never panned out for one reason or another. So, if we can’t measure the value of his love letters by it’s ability to secure a love interest for him, what other values can we see in this age-old tradition of expressing our love through writing?
I wanted to ask Jan, if Beethoven had lived 100 years later and if he had a typewriter, could we feel the romance the same way that we do now? Is it actually IMPORTANT to the message that these love letters were written in Beethoven’s own handwriting?
Jan Swafford: It probably is psychologically. And by the way, he didn't write it with a pen. He wrote it with a pencil because he's saying, I'm writing this with your pencil and the immediacy of that and the kind of, you know, incredible. I'm looking at a facsimile. As for Beethoven's writing, this was actually pretty clear, but the writing is so immediate and vicious and vivid it. Sure. Psychologically there's a big difference. Even if we can't actually make it out because, and even though I read German, I can't make it out because it's Gothic script, but it has an immediacy. Again, it's like live performance. A letter is a live performance. So is typewriter, but it's a little more distance, I think. Handwriting is more alive. So yeah.
Liz Russell: Beethoven was of course writing in a time well before typewriters - when almost everyone wrote letters. So we can’t really assume that he wrote the letter by hand because he wanted to or because he thought it was the most romantic thing to do. No, to know if it was the most romantic thing, we really had to talk to people who DO have the choice between writing and typing - like people today.
Brittany Youngblood: So, um, we had only been married less than a year and we get moved all the way over to Hawaii from Georgia to Hawaii, brand new babies.
Liz Russell: This is Brittany, a friend of my older brother’s through her husband, Charles, who my brother served in the military, and I met them this summer, and I loved their story.
Brittany Youngblood: I was, I had just turned 20 and he was 20 also. And I'm packing him up that afternoon because he had to, I had to take him on to base to get on the buses to go to the airport that evening. And I'm helping him pack his bags and his like big huge pack and all this. And so at one point he needed to take a nap. So he's napping and I go downstairs and of course, you know, I'm feeling like how I'm sure every other wife has felt and just super scared and then already kind of feeling lonely even though he was still there, you know, just kind of anticipating being by myself. I had never been by myself before I got married and moved straight from my parents' house and with my husband, so it was a lot of feelings swarming around in there.
So I sat down on the couch and, um, my parents have always written love letters to each other. So I went and got a piece of computer paper and a pen and I sat down and scribbled out a letter and like kept trying to make my brain not go to that point. Like, what if this is the last thing he reads from me if something horrible happens. I am a jokester, so I joked a little bit at first and then in the end, you know, I just, said like I wrote out the prayer that we always would pray together and then, um, at the very bottom I started something that we still to this day say to each other, which is, I love you more than I did yesterday and I'll love you even more tomorrow. Then God bless you and love your sweetheart.
Well, I was definitely bawling when I was writing that. You know, I was basically telling him I'm going to be good. I'm going to be fine, I'm going to stay busy. You know, you took me to Hawaii, buddy. What do you think I'm going to do? Sit on the beach every day. Like it's going to be great, but also I'm going to miss you like crazy. I'm going to miss you like playing with my hair at night while we fall asleep, and like, just all the little things that you know will make him, you know, think of us and maybe help him through.
So I'm finished. I folded it up and I went to his, um, backpack that he was going carry him, and I hid it in between his first set of clothes because as they travel, it took almost a week for him to get to the camp in Iraq that he needed to get to. And so like, you know, every day he needed to change, you know, socks and stuff like that cause it's hot, I mean going to be sweating. So I stuck it in between a pair of socks and, um, I did not know this, but while I was down writing him a letter, he was upstairs writing me one and he stuck it in a drawer that I have to go to everyday: my underwear drawer. And he just stuck it right on top. And um, his was just as sweet as mine was. And I still have that letter along with a ton of other ones that he's written me, and like little post-its and stuff that we leave each other here and there.
It made me feel really good because I was worried about like his morale, I guess you could say. Like I was worried about him getting really low, um, and not being able to focus when he needed to focus, you know, in those high-energy moments that I'm sure all of the guys had. And in those low moments when everything's quiet, he took it out, he told me. He would take it out and read it and feel it and like, you know, know that I touched this paper, those are my words that I wrote and like I took my time to write it cause I could have just like typed up an email and like printed it out or something. But that thought didn't even cross my mind. I just, I wanted to write him something and like, I think I even drew like little stick figures of us holding hands or something like something stupid and he's like, it helped so much, so much.
I always liked having the letters better than the emails that he would write me. And um, while he was there, we did email back and forth, but they were never as like sweet or as long as the letters that we would write each other because it's just a quick thing like real quick, like, Hey, just checking in on you, how you doing? I miss you. You know, this is what happened today. K bye. And for me, I would be able to log onto his email and it would show like, I guess read receipts when he, cause he had Yahoo at the time, cause this is in 2005. And it would show that he read it. So then I would know that he was checking his email and obviously it was okay. But he would never have time to email me back. And so having that letter, you know, I see that he checked it and I'm like, but I want to hear from him. Like in my head, I can hear him talking as I'm reading his words. And so I would always go and open my letter again and read it again. I still do it.
You know, I’m 35 now and it's, um, you know, I go back to that 20 year old that was scared out of her mind. Um, not really figured out who I was yet or you know, my role as a wife or, you know, as a best friend to him or all the things, all the different hats we wear in a marriage and just going back to that and feeling, because your love changes as you're married. You know, there's different stages to it. There's different seasons. And so in that season it was so fresh and new and it just takes me back to that sweet Brittany who is just like completely obsessed with him. You know, this tough man who you know is kinda quiet and doesn't really share too much of his feelings is like pouring his heart out in these letters. It like just warms me all up.
The two or three of them that mean the most to me to where if they got damaged or lost, I would be very upset is after our first miscarriage. He wrote me the sweetest letter ever saying I don't want you to ever think that I need to be the reason, like him himself needs to be the reason I keep pursuing this because he is perfectly okay with not having children because he loves me so much that just the thought of having this big, huge adventure with me for the rest of our life is enough for him. And that made me feel just so wonderful. And literally I read it and I was like, I am all better. I'm good. Like, I can mourn this normally. But like having that doubt of like, is he mad about this? Like, is he sad about it? Like, you know, things like that. He just was like, you're enough. Those words, you are enough for me. I don't need any more and I will have this adventure with you for the rest of our life and be completely fulfilled.
It gave me so much strength and I felt so brave afterwards. And then, you know, I continued to pursue infertility and he was right there by my side and giving me shots in my stomach and doing all the, taking me to every, you know, operation I've had to have and things like that. Knowing that I've got a support, but I don't have pressure of him, you know, he's like, you know, if we have kids, we have kids. If we don't, no big deal, babe. You know, we're best friends, so it's whatever.
I cannot tell you how many times I read that. Just seeing it written down made it like permanent. And I had to read that so many times because doing infertility for me, even now with the, you know, my kidney disease that I have and the chronic pain that I deal with, that was the hardest time in my life is dealing with that and being so deep in that valley and so desperate and not feeling like myself mentally or physically. And just knowing that, reading those words and then like seeing him and knowing like he's never going anywhere. He wants me and that's it. If we add a kid to it, it's just a bonus, you know? And it just made me feel so brave and like I could keep fighting and you know, at the end when I did, you know, put it all to bed and put it to rest and said, I'm done, he was like, I, you know, I didn't want to tell you this, but I'm so relieved. He's like, I just don't like watching someone that I love so deeply torture herself. And that's basically what I just lived through. And he's like, through it all, I just, I just want you to do what you need to do so you don't look back and go, I could have tried harder or, you know, him saying this or writing this changed, you know, the way I fought for it.
And then in the end, seven years later, I wound up getting a hysterectomy, and then we got our perfect kid who's like adopted, but she's just like us and it's just, Oh, she's a feisty little rat. It's just, she's so much fun and perfect for us, like exactly what we needed.
Liz Russell: When I heard this story, I thought - this is the most beautiful story ever. But I still had to wonder - we aren’t all separated by war, we aren’t all facing difficult relationship challenges. So what about love letters on the best of days?
Erin Covey: Well I'm a wedding photographer. I do this full time — between 30 and 35 weddings a year, so I see a lot of stuff and I definitely can notice trends…
Liz Russell: I asked my friend Erin Covey - a wedding photographer and owner of Erin Covey Creative. Erin had once told me she sold “love” and her photos often capture a bride or groom reading a letter on their wedding day.
Erin Covey: For the past 15 years that I've been photographing weddings, definitely one of the things that has staying power is the written word and people sending letters and/or cards to their significant other on the day of the wedding, both bride sending groom and groom sending bride. For sure. It is one of the things that has stayed consistent through all of the various little trends that go by year by year.
It happens during the getting ready portion and they read it and usually, sometimes they read it out loud, you know, to their groomsmen or most likely their bridesmaids. But sometimes it's just a quiet moment that they have that they tuck away and they read it to themselves. I'm usually there photographing it because I'm a documentary coverage photographer. So I photograph everything and there's no point in the day where I just like get out of the room or step aside. I just take photographs and everything that naturally unfolds and document it. So I find that it is a nice gift to each other.
Sometimes the wedding day is not necessarily about the bride and groom. There are a lot of expectations from parents and the wedding party and grandparents and random people in and out and a wedding planner involved. And sometimes it's about the timeline and staying to the timeline. And sometimes it's just about the stuff about all the decor and we have to make sure all the bridesmaids decorate all the tables. And there's so much going on that it is that one point in the day where you can stop everything and have a moment to think about why you're getting married and why you're doing this. And to your point is that when you think about the average wedding day, if someone doesn't get married until four o'clock, they're spending most of the day alone with their girls and not even seeing their significant other until four o'clock. So if the day is all about them and they're not seeing each other until the end of the day, and then it's only the six hours from the ceremony to the reception, and it's really not actually about them because they would be spending the entire day celebrating with each other and they're not necessarily.
And when I think about these things, and I do, because I see it a lot and I think about how nice it is to have the written word. If we just press pause and think about how fleeting current technology is, it's, it's really insane because 15 years ago or 20 years ago, we wouldn't have even thought about just texting someone or just emailing someone and it was all about the written word and I just think there's something special about someone who sits down and crafts a letter from the heart in their own writing, picks out a card that is representative or symbolic of the day or even just nice stationary. There's something elevated and really nice about that and I always think like we text so much that communication while it's at an all time high, I also feel a lot of meaning is lost and how it can so easily just disappear from our lives. And I think seeing your loved one's handwriting is something really special and it goes even beyond bride and groom, because honestly, I have cards from my aunts and uncles who have passed away who would write me a little note on my birthday. I still have them saved because I just like seeing their handwriting. And I often think about our legacy too, that the person that you're giving that letter to has something tangible that they can refer to it if something happens to you or to them or to your parent.
How often do you get that chance to, I don't want to say out of the blue, but like just spontaneously tell your mother or have your mother tell you or tell your spouse, in the frequency and hectic pace of everyday life when all of these things are happening all of the time. Sometimes it even just feels odd to take a moment and say, I appreciate you so much. I'm so proud of you. I love that you do this. I love what kind of person you've become. Sometimes there's just not an opportunity. We live in such a frenetic pace of day to day life that maybe it's just happens on the wedding day because that's the one moment where we can pause and we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and emotional and it's okay.
Jennifer Silvershein: My name is Jennifer Silvershein and I'm the owner of Manhattan Wellness. We are a boutique psychotherapy practice located in Flat Iron, New York. We specialize in working with professional women experiencing a whole range of things. I would say most commonly anxiety, depression, self esteem, dating relationships, and really anything that a woman in her twenties and thirties is going through, and I have been in practice for about seven years…
Liz Russell: I wanted to talk to someone who specializes in millennials and dating. In the world of instant communication, I wanted to know, could we survive waiting for a long letter? Would it be better pouring everything out into a time-consuming 5-page paper instead of an instant 100-word text?
Jennifer Silvershein: Absolutely. I feel that even 15 years ago anticipating something had a positive association with it and now in this day and age, because things are so instantaneous, it seems to me like when we're sitting in anticipation, it brings up anxiety and discomfort for individuals, rather than this potential. I could imagine that people sat with excitement and anticipation, and anticipation in a good way.
So I could imagine that someone was very thoughtful in sending up their letter and looked forward to hearing back and I don't think that people had expectations for how quickly they would hear back or what their partner would say and they probably couldn't compare their love letter to their love letter their friend at the other day. I think a lot of it is comparison, expectation and this inability to sit in a little bit of discomfort. But I think so often if we can see the not knowing as something that can be very exciting and it can open up doors and opportunities and things that we never were able to think about, people would start feeling more comfortable in that position.
There's a level of acceptance there and I think also if you were in a long distance relationship, I'm sure you had a lot of other letters that you could read over and enjoy as you wait for the next. And I think that those previous letters that they received could give them clarity as to what they could expect with the next. Which is something that I don't think that we apply in this day and age. I think a lot of people live in a fantasy world and I also think social media has made us feel pressure to keep up with the Joneses. And I could imagine that that, you know, happened in the 1800s as well as, you know, a family was marrying off their daughters. I could imagine there was competition and anticipation.
I love the idea of them sharing their thoughts and writing, you know, whenever they feel comfortable to do so. I think what's so interesting, especially with millennials in this day and age is people are so afraid to get on the phone. I almost feel that people would be more comfortable writing something because they're so used to text and email and Facebook and Instagram than they are speaking it. So I think that if people can pair speaking how they're feeling and then recording it in some way, almost think having a journal at the start of a relationship and being able to track how you're feeling could be amazing for someone. And then to open up that space and either share the journaled writing or summarize your feelings for your partner is extremely beautiful. And I think there's a lot of value in writing out our feelings, not just on a birthday anniversary, Valentine's day, but on the random Tuesday and leaving the note under their pillow. There's something very romantic and very thoughtful about doing it when it's unexpected and they think there's something a bit more genuine about it as well. But I think it's all about being genuine. And I think it's all about being comfortable. And I think people are so uncomfortable with their own thoughts and feelings that how could they ever be comfortable sharing it with someone else.
Liz Russell: But what happens when someone starts sharing those thoughts in writing? What’s the benefit to reaching for the pen, instead of a computer or a phone?
Jennifer Silvershein: They start owning it. You know, it's calling it out for yourself, it's writing in, it's reading it, it's talking to friends. It's really sharing with people how we're feeling, seeing that it's okay because so often when we're sharing how we're feeling, we're actually kind of asking for permission in a way, as weird as it sounds. Um, but when we're able to share it with friends, when we share it with family, when we start writing it out for ourselves, I think get more comfortable and it becomes more real. So I think people are on all different timelines with how they do this and when they do it. But I think it's when you feel as though you want to share, when you have that impulse, I encourage people to take a step forward and see what it feels like. And it could even start with one sentence.
Liz Russell: So can a letter to no one be the most beautiful one in the world? Do love letters still have value in the world of instant communication? Have love letters and their value to us died?
While people in 19th century Vienna HAD to write to one another - just like Beethoven did to his mysterious lover - we have the benefit of choice. It seems to me that - in stories like Brittany’s and those of Erin’s brides, the inherent value of the letter still lives on. It’s just up to us to choose to use it.
If you want to learn more about Beethoven’s love letter and its role in Sex and the City or the contents of love letters and how they’ve changed over time, head over to wasiscouldbe.com and follow us on Instagram @wasiscouldbe to get additional content for each episode.