I Wrote 100+ Letters To My Future Husband. Years Later, I Read Them To My Actual Husband

When I was 14 years old, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. Over the course of six years, I wrote more than 100 similar letters, with the intent of one day sharing them with my God-ordained groom. 

While perhaps an overachiever in this endeavour, I was certainly not alone. Many young women raised in evangelical Christianity in the 90s and 2000s were heavily influenced by “purity culture”, an evangelical movement promoting sexual abstinence until marriage, modesty and traditional gender roles.

Purity Culture mandated a shift away from casual dating and toward dating with the express intention of a swift and Christ-centred marriage, especially for girls.

I absorbed the high value placed on my role as a future bride, and I tasked myself with fulfilling that role as quickly and expertly as possible. 

When I was a little girl, my grandmother sewed me a child-sized wedding dress. It was white with a train, lace trim, pearls and a veil with a blusher.

With the perfect costume, I spent hours playing Bride in the living room: walking down the aisle, standing by the hearth and kissing an imaginary man the way I secretly spied women kissing men on daytime soaps when my mum didn’t know I was looking. 

I would run around in the back yard making up songs about being a woman, being a bride, having a wedding day. I even wore the dress as a Halloween costume a couple of times, much to my little brother’s dismay – what if people mistook him as the groom?! 

It’s not out of the ordinary for a kid to engage in imaginary play, whether that’s dressing up as a princess or teaching math to a class of stuffed animals. But, for me, the fantasy was more than playing dress up. As the white polyblend zipped up over my shoulders, I felt I was accepting a mantle of great power. 

In my imagination, being a bride was synonymous with being visible, honoured and adored. If I were a bride, I would have acrylic French tips like my mum, a 1.5-inch curling iron like my big sister and a man who would look at me the way Captain Von Trapp looks at Maria in the gazebo. (This is still the epitome of romance to me.)

On the wide spectrum of childhoods, I had a pretty good one. I had parents who loved me and did their best with the tools available to them. Some parts of my story are pretty standard-issue teen stuff. As a chubby preteen of the aughts, I shopped in the Dillard’s women’s section, mowed my unibrow with a disposable razor twice a week, and struggled against my naturally curly hair with a Wet 2 Straight hair straightener. I can still hear and smell the sizzle of the iron on my damp, Pantene-scented curls. 

But other parts of my story, while also common, are less relatable to a lot of people. For instance, for the first 18 years of my life, I was at church no less than three days per week learning that it was my personal responsibility to rescue my non-Christian classmates from the jaws of hell due to an unseen spiritual war that was *literally* being waged all around me. 

Still another part of my story is, thankfully, relatable to very few. When I was five years old, my little brother nearly died of liver failure, kickstarting a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional health crises that ricocheted throughout my family, shaped my childhood and still echo in the present.

I outgrew the little white dress, but not the fantasy of marriage. This fantasy was reinforced by religious teachings that emphasised the importance of marriage, purity and obedience to God and to one’s husband. 

I was trying to manage many things that were fully out of my control, within the context of a high-control, patriarchal religion, which left me feeling powerless and afraid and in need of an escape. And in my world, marriage was power. Marriage was purpose. At least for girls, marriage was agency.  

As far as fantasies go, this was an achievable one! Most of the adults I knew were married, so why not me? This was surely my calling. This would surely be the end to the chaos, the uncertainty, the victimhood. 

So, when I was 14, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. It was intended to be read by the lucky man on our wedding night. Predictably, I waxed on about my virginal purity and the “special gift” I’d been saving for him. It is extremely cringeworthy.

The 14-year-old version of me then continued to write an obsessive amount of letters to her Future Husband over six years. Eventually, I stopped writing the letters, put them in storage, and largely forgot about them.

Until 16 years later when, married but no longer an Evangelical Christian, I started reading them out loud to my actual husband – along with an audience of strangers on the internet. 

At 30 – after a decade of faith deconstruction and much-needed therapy – I am married to a great man. Though the 14-year-old version of myself would be disappointed to know that my actual wedding night with my husband, Zach, was spent counting the cash from our wedding cards, eating some chocolate strawberries and promptly passing out.

No one’s hymen was broken. No purity was “given”. We simply snuggled into the deep, dreamless sleep of two people who loved each other deeply and had already shared a bed together for years.

When Zach and I found the letters in an old box of my things at my parents’ home, I knew we had to do something with them. After reading one or two on our own, I had the idea to record myself reading one of the letters to Zach for the first time and post it on TikTok.

So far, I’ve read 38 letters online, which has been equal parts excruciating and liberating. The content ranges from salacious gossip about my friends, to opining about my lonely condition as a single 15-year-old, to writing veritable fanfiction about a young couple at my church.

Inspired by a particular scene of Cory and Topanga from one of the later seasons of Boy Meets World, I imagined a young couple at my church to be poverty-stricken but in love – reduced to “eating chicken salad sandwiches on the floor of their living room”.

I finish my story with the declaration: “Fast forward 10 years … that will be us.” This had Zach and I both doubled over and gasping for air. 

I figured the goofy letters might resonate with some folks online, but I had no idea how much. Countless women in the comments of my videos have shared similar stories and experiences. I was shocked to find out just how many people burn their old journals and husband letters.

Burning seems excessive to me, but hey – your letters, your choice to perform a sacramental bonfire, am I right?

Many followers have thanked me for the “bravery” of sharing a bit of my story. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t actually think reading the letters online is all that brave. I think the brave person in this story is the teenager who found a way to survive far more than she should have had to handle, and who survived deconstructing a belief system that supported her entire identity and worldview. The bravest thing I’ve ever done is heal.

And every time we share a letter online, a little bit more healing happens. We laugh until our stomachs hurt and we gasp at the melodramatic high school tales I’ve gifted myself from the past. The sweetest irony is that I originally meant these letters to be a way for me to connect with My Future Husband … and they are! Just not remotely in the way I imagined. 

In retrospect, the letters were misguided, but this journey has given me deep compassion and empathy for the young woman who wrote them.

She grew from a teenage girl whose wildest fantasy for her future was having a husband to obey to a woman who knows that being a wife is the least interesting thing about her.

If you grew up anything like me, especially if you’re working to deconstruct your harmful internalised beliefs – I hope this series also reminds you that there’s so much more power, agency and purpose in life than being someone’s wife.

I initially shared my letters to My Future Husband online because I was hoping to make you laugh, but the best outcome I could hope for is to also help you heal.

Abigail Freshley is a writer, reader, podcast host and social media over-sharer based in Los Angeles. She reflects on her evangelical upbringing, love of books and obsession with her dog, Bonnie, on Instagram and TikTok. 

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