Deep Love Messages for Him: 9 Lines Women Really Wrote, and How to Write Your Own

When Juliette Drouet's executor died in Paris in May 1912, his papers held about twenty thousand of her notes to Victor Hugo. Her biographer Louis Guimbaud described them as "mere scribbles", written hour by hour and never read over. Very few were polished, and that is the useful lesson for anyone looking for deep love messages for him. A message feels deep when it is specific, when it is honest about what loving him costs, and when it is plainly meant for one man. Beautiful wording matters much less.

This page collects nine lines that women really wrote to the men they loved, from Héloïse in the twelfth century to Virginia Woolf in 1941. Each one has been checked against a published edition of the letter, and each comes with what was going on when it was written. Each also comes with one writing move you can borrow and a short example message written by our editors (labelled, so you never mistake it for a historical quote). If you want a full letter rather than a few lines, our sample love letters for him, by occasion are the better starting point.

What Makes a Love Message Feel Deep

Most "deep" messages online are built from big words: soulmate, forever, everything. The letters below work differently. Read side by side, they share a few habits, and those habits are easier to copy than the vocabulary.

The nine lines are grouped by what you want him to understand, not by date. The full list with dates is in the timeline at the end.

When You Want Him to Know What He Has Changed

1. Tell him he reached further than you expected

You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me—my heart was full when you came here to-day. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you harm.

— Elizabeth Barrett, Letter to Robert Browning, 27 September 1845

Elizabeth Barrett was thirty-nine, an invalid who rarely left her father's house on Wimpole Street, when Robert Browning began writing to her in January 1845. This is her reply to a letter in which he had again asked her to marry him. "Everything but to do you harm" was her way of saying she would not marry him if her illness would make his life smaller. They married in secret a year later and left for Italy. The text is in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845–1846 (1899).

The move: admit that he surprised you. "More than I thought even you could" flatters him twice: it says you already expected a lot, and that he still went past it.

Editor's example: "I knew you were kind before we got together. I didn't know you would be this kind on my worst days. You keep going past what I expected of you, and I notice every time."

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2. Call it affection, and mean the everyday kind

I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm.

— Mary Wollstonecraft, Letter to Gilbert Imlay, Paris, August 1793

Wollstonecraft wrote this late at night in revolutionary Paris, a year after A Vindication of the Rights of Woman made her famous. She was choosing her word on purpose: passion fades, but affection is something you do every day. The affair with Imlay ended badly two years later, which makes the line more honest, not less. Lasting love was a test she knew could be failed. The letter is Letter II in The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay (1908 edition).

The move: choose a smaller word than "love" and explain why you chose it. A message about habit and warmth suits a long relationship better than fireworks.

Editor's example: "I don't have a grand word for us. The one I keep coming back to is 'habit': coffee you make without asking, the way you check the locks. It's my favourite kind of love."

3. Thank him for one specific thing

What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good.

— Virginia Woolf, Letter to Leonard Woolf, 28 March 1941

These lines come from the note Virginia Woolf left for her husband on the day she drowned herself in the River Ouse, during a return of the depression she had lived with for most of her life. It is quoted on many love-quote sites without that context, so read it knowing what it is: a farewell, not a valentine. We include it because of one technique. Even at the end she did not thank Leonard for "everything". She thanked him for patience and goodness, the two things he had actually given her. The full text is reproduced by the Literary Ladies Guide and in Nigel Nicolson's edition of her letters.

The move: replace "thank you for everything" with the one or two things he really did. Don't copy this note. Borrow its precision.

Editor's example: "Thank you for being patient with me this year. You never once made me feel like a problem to be solved, and I know that took work."

If the line above touches something close to home for you, you can call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US) at any hour.

When You Want Him to Know You Chose Him

4. Say what you would give up

…his sister loves you passionately and nobly; that if he values nothing but fortune, she despises it, and could love you as much a beggar as she could do a prince…

— Dorothy Osborne, Letter to William Temple, London, 1654

Dorothy Osborne's family, and especially her brother Henry, opposed her match with William Temple for about six years, hoping for a richer husband for her. In this letter she asks Temple to forgive her brother's insults. She also tells him, in the third person, that she does not share her brother's view of money. They married at the end of 1654. This is Letter 58 in Edward Abbott Parry's edition of her letters (first published 1888), which are still admired as some of the best English prose of the century.

The move: name a value other people hold and say you don't hold it about him. It is a choice, made in public, and that is what makes it deep.

Editor's example: "People ask when you'll get a 'proper' job. I've never once cared. I'd choose you with nothing in the bank over anyone with everything."

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5. Love him on the bad days too, and say so

Oh, yes, I love you, it is true! I love you in spite of myself, in spite of you, in spite of the whole world… I love you, I love you, I love you, happy or unhappy, merry or sad.

— Juliette Drouet, Letter to Victor Hugo, Sunday, 4 p.m., 1833

Drouet was an actress when she met Hugo in 1833, and she stayed his companion for fifty years, though he never left his wife. This note was written after a day she had expected to spend with him was lost. She is openly hurt that he seemed "almost annoyed" at her tears, and she loves him regardless. The English is Lady Theodora Davidson's translation in Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo (1915), edited by Louis Guimbaud.

The move: love that admits the difficulty sounds truer than love that pretends there is none. "In spite of" is a phrase worth stealing.

Editor's example: "We were both tired and short with each other tonight, and I still love you. Grumpy, distracted, all of it. That part doesn't switch off."

6. Admit you still want to love him more

…that delicacy of passion which loved you always with the utmost tenderness—and yet wished to love you more!

— Héloïse, First letter to Abelard, c. 1132 (English version of 1722)

Héloïse wrote in Latin to Peter Abelard years after their affair, their secret marriage and the violent attack that separated them. By then she was the abbess of the Paraclete and he was a monk. This English text is the free eighteenth-century rendering reprinted in The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise (1903), so treat it as a translation of her meaning rather than her exact words. The idea is clearly hers, though: love that is full and still not satisfied with itself.

The move: tell him the love has not reached its limit. It reassures without sounding like a vow you can't keep.

Editor's example: "I've loved you for years and I still feel like I'm getting started. I want to know you better at sixty than I do now."

When He Is Far Away

7. Let him see you hold back, then tell him anyway

I dare not express to you at 300 hundred miles distance how ardently I long for your return… The Idea plays about my Heart, unnerves my hand whilst I write, awakens all the tender sentiments that years have encreased and matured.

— Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams, Braintree, 16 October 1774

John Adams was in Philadelphia at the First Continental Congress, and Abigail was running the farm and raising four children at home. The spelling is hers. After this paragraph the letter turns straight back to politics, prices and family news, as most of her letters did. Ten years of marriage are behind the phrase "years have encreased and matured". The text is in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Adams Family Correspondence, volume 1.

The move: "I dare not say how much" works because she says it anyway. Use it when a plain "I miss you" feels too small, especially in a long-distance message.

Editor's example: "I'm not going to tell you how many times I checked the flight tracker today, because it's embarrassing. It's a lot. Come home."

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8. Describe one ordinary moment when you miss him

For what a minute did I see you yesterday. Is this the way, my beloved, we are to live till the 6th? In the morning when I wake I turn to look on you.

— Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, London, 25 October 1814

Mary Godwin was seventeen. She and Shelley had come back from their elopement to the Continent, and he was hiding from his creditors, so they could only meet in snatched minutes. Four years later she published Frankenstein. The second sentence does all the work: no adjectives, just the reflex of turning over in bed to someone who isn't there. The letter is in Florence A. Marshall's The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1889), volume 1.

The move: one real moment of missing him beats a paragraph of longing. Pick the minute of the day when his absence is loudest.

Editor's example: "Every night I still put two mugs out before I remember. Eleven more days."

For messages he can open on exactly those days, see our guide to open when letters.

9. Tell him what the world looks like without him

If you should die—O Darling—… It'd be like going blind.

— Zelda Sayre, Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Montgomery, Alabama, 1919

In 1919 Zelda Sayre was still a teenager in Montgomery, engaged to a struggling advertising writer in New York; that summer she broke the engagement off for a while because he could not yet support her. Her letters from Montgomery move between flirting, teasing and sudden seriousness like this. They married in April 1920, a week after This Side of Paradise came out. The letter is collected in Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (2002), edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, and this excerpt was quoted when that book appeared.

The move: one physical comparison ("like going blind") lands harder than "I can't live without you". Find your own: what goes dark, quiet or cold?

Editor's example: "The flat is so quiet without you that I've started leaving the radio on. You're the noise I actually like."

Writing Your Own: A Four-Line Method

Every letter above can be boiled down to four sentences. You don't need all four every time, but a message that has them rarely feels shallow.

1. Start with something true about today. Where you are, what you just noticed, what reminded you of him. Abigail Adams starts from the distance itself. Mary Godwin starts from waking up.
2. Name one thing that is his. Something he does or is, specific enough that it couldn't be sent to anyone else.
3. Say what it changes in you. This is the "deep" part: Barrett's "touched me more profoundly", Woolf's "happiness of my life".
4. End with something forward-looking. A date, a plan, a promise you can keep. Wollstonecraft ends with "we are soon to meet".

Editor's example, all four lines: "It's raining here and I'm wearing your old jumper. You always know when I'm pretending to be fine. Somehow that makes me less afraid of not being fine. Friday can't come quickly enough."

If you are writing on paper, our guide on how to start and end a love letter has openings and sign-offs that match each of these tones.

Lines We Removed From This Page, and Why

An earlier version of this page carried several quotations we could not trace, plus one that was right but misdated. Lines like these get copied from site to site, so here is what we found when we checked them.

For more lines like these, including famous ones credited to Marilyn Monroe, Rumi and Shakespeare, see our reference page on misattributed love quotes.

The Nine Letters at a Glance

Short Answers

How do you express deep love to a man without sounding cheesy?

Be specific. Name something he did, one moment when you missed him, or one thing he changed in you. Cheesiness comes from general words like "everything" and "forever" that could be sent to anyone.

Can I send him a line from a famous love letter?

Yes, but say whose it is ("Abigail Adams wrote this to John, and it's exactly how I feel") and add one sentence of your own. A borrowed line with your own follow-up reads as thoughtful. A borrowed line passed off as yours can be found with one search.

How long should a deep love message for him be?

For a text, two to four sentences is plenty. Mary Godwin's best line is twelve words. Keep longer paragraphs for cards, letters and anniversaries, when he has time to read slowly.