If things feel distant in your marriage right now, I want you to remember something really important: you already know what it feels like to be close to your wife. It's in your memory. A specific night, a specific look on her face, a moment when everything felt right.

In this conversation, I'll share what happened when I asked a group of Catholic husbands to recall their best dates with their wives. I’ll walk you through a simple, five-step exercise to write your wife a love letter she won't forget (all you need is a pen, some paper, and about fifteen minutes).

Finally, we’ll talk about why this whole thing follows a pattern you already know well but maybe you never connected it to your marriage: the Mass itself.

Whether you're in a great season or a hard one, this is something you can do this week.

Grab a cup of coffee and let’s chat.

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One of the things that I love to do on that first call is the introductions.

And I ask every man there one specific question, you know, beyond name and how long you've been married and how many kids you've got and that sort of stuff.

One question about them to get to know them.

And that question is to ask everyone to share a story of one of his best dates with his wife.

I do this every single class, and it never gets old.

These men, many of whom signed up because something in their marriage feels hard or stuck or confusing or they feel distant from their wives.

They start talking about their wives and their faces light up and you can hear it in their voices.

And.

And some of these men, like, I know from conversations or emails that I've had with them prior to this, they're in a tough spot.

But you start asking them about a great date that they had, they.

Their faces just light up.

It's amazing.

So, you know, there's so many great responses.

Many of them involved really fantastic dinners.

In this last round, there was a surprise visit to a monastery, which was really cool.

A Viennese ball was mentioned.

How awesome is that?

Square dancing.

Dancing showed up a number of times.

The rosary, getting caught in a rainstorm and, you know, sheltering his date, his now, his now wife with his jacket.

So sweet.

So many great stories.

And every single one of these men knew what closeness and connection and love felt like.

They had tasted it.

That's why I asked that question, because the themes that come out through these stories all center around, like a really authentic, joyful connection with the one that we love.

It's not some abstract idea.

It's not a theological, you know, proposition.

Those are great.

I love theological propositions.

But what comes out when you ask that question is real experience and memories.

It's a specific night, a specific event, and that's powerful in the life of a husband, in the life of a wife and the life of marriage.

So here's what I invite you to do today.

If you are listening to this, and maybe you're feeling distant from your wife, maybe you're feeling alone, maybe you're feeling like the two of you just aren't on the same page anymore, or the spark has faded, like you're more roommates than lovers.

You're not on the same page.

Maybe you feel like you don't have each other's back, or she doesn't have your back, or, you know, whatever it is if there's a distance between you and your wife, I want you to know that you already know what it feels like to be close to her.

It's in your memory.

It's not gone, it's not dead.

You have lived it and it can be cultivated and brought back.

There's hope for that.

That gap between the memory of your best date and where you're at right now, it's not evidence that your marriage is broken.

It's.

It's proof.

It's not proof that anything is permanently wrong.

It is an invitation.

It is God saying, there is more for you here.

Come back to what I designed you for.

Right?

You can cultivate that connection, closeness again.

If you feel like that has drifted from your marriage.

This is really core to what I believe and what we believe in, Holy Desires.

God wants more for your marriage.

He saves the best wine for last.

It means marriage should just keep getting better and better.

Your marriage, your wedding night, obviously it should be a highlight.

It should be an amazing moment in your life.

But it's the start of something that keeps getting better and better and better.

The church, you know, teaches that sexuality within marriage is a source of joy and pleasure.

I love quoting that from the Catechism.

Many of us are living beneath that vision, below that vision.

Partly because that vision is an ideal.

Partly, yes.

There's always more, right?

We've never made it until we make it into heaven.

Right?

That's the it that we want to make it to.

So there's always ways that we can improve.

But maybe for a lot of us, we're not living up to where we really are invited to be by God because we just have never received the formation to get there.

We don't have a roadmap.

We don't know how.

There's a big difference between knowing what the ideal is and it's a beautiful ideal and knowing how to make that ideal real in my own marriage.

And that is why Holy Desires exists.

So I'm going to give you something really practical that you can do.

And I mean like you can do this today.

This is low risk.

You don't have to start an awkward conversation.

Sometimes communication is an area in marriage that needs a lot of work.

This is actually something that will help you with that in a very low risk way.

You don't have to bring up the relationship or have an awkward chat.

All you need is a pen and a piece of paper.

I want you to write a love letter to your wife and I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do it and give you the step by step five steps structure for this love letter.

And if you do this, I promise you it will have a really good result.

All right, step one.

Think of a really great date that you had together.

Same thing I asked the.

The gentleman in the Holy Desires cohort this spring.

What is one of the best dates that you had with your wife?

Go back to that memory and sit with it for a while.

Think through it.

Where were you?

When was the date?

What was she wearing?

What are the specific moments or memories that stand out?

Was it a rainstorm?

Was some.

Did something surprising happen?

Was there an element of adventure?

Was there discovery?

What you know, what did you do?

The more detail you can remember here, the better.

Just let yourself feel it again.

Relive it in your memory.

All right, that's step one.

Step two.

Now we're going to start the letter.

Start the letter by telling her that you love her.

And name, this is important.

Name two specific things that you love about her right now.

Maybe it's the way she handles the kids in the morning.

Maybe it's how she laughs at something.

Maybe it's her faith.

Maybe it's how beautiful she is.

Maybe, you know, be specific and tell her at least two things that you just really love about her right now.

She needs to hear that you see her with eyes of love, not just eyes of, you know, good co logistics managers, right?

So stay away from efficiency.

Don't get businessy on her.

With eyes of love, right?

Tell her two things, at least two things that you love about her.

All right, step three.

Now the next thing you write is recall the date.

You can literally start a new paragraph with, do you remember the time that we.

And then tell the story.

Talk about the restaurant, talk about the walk, talk about the conversation.

Talk about the rainstorm, talk about the surprise, talk about the music, whatever it was, right?

Whatever you did together, include a lot of the details.

Let her see that you remember it.

Let her see that it mattered to you and that it still matters to you, this experience that you had.

All right, step four, the next part of the letter.

Tell her how you felt during the date.

How did you feel?

This is the part that many men can skip because it's hard to give words to feelings, and many of us men struggle with that.

This is the part that matters the most to our wives.

So some things that you can say.

I felt so close to you that night.

I didn't want that night to end.

I felt so alive.

I remember thinking, I'm the luckiest man in the world.

I was so attracted to you.

You were so beautiful.

I felt so close to you.

Whatever it was, write out, articulate in words and write out what it felt like to be on that date with her.

She needs to hear what was happening inside of you.

And this is.

This is really, really important.

And doing this in a letter is actually a lot easier because for those of us men like myself who can struggle at times to come up with the right words to think of words to say, you know, to my wife, writing it out actually gives you more time, right?

She's not standing right in front of you waiting for you to say something.

This is a letter.

And you can take as much time as you need to write it out.

So take that time.

All right?

That was step four, last step, step, close the letter.

So finish up the letter.

All what you do is you close this love letter with a vision.

Something like, I still love you so much.

I know that we are the same couple now who had that amazing date, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago or whatever, and the same couple who has had so many other amazing dates or amazing experiences or who have.

Who has, you know, gone through so much together.

I want you to know that I love you and I want the rest of our lives together to be just as amazing as that date was.

Something along those lines.

Love you.

Right?

That's it.

Five steps.

You could probably write this out in 15 to 20 minutes.

Here's a bonus tip if Take this letter and write it out in adoration, bring it in front of Jesus and ask his help to help you with your memory and to help you with writing the letter, finding the right words, articulating them, and using this as a graced opportunity to draw closer to your wife.

I promise you, it will mean more to her than you probably think.

What you're really doing is reminding both of you of who you are together, reminding the two of you that you are that couple who is giddy in love or who has the crazy adventure or who was so close and connected.

That is still you.

It might be buried under some years of dust, but it's still you.

And together you can.

You can start dusting it off, right?

And start cultivating that relationship again.

You're calling back to the truth of your marriage in that.

In that way.

One last reflection here.

And here's.

This actually just came to me fairly recently.

Here's what I think is so beautiful about this.

I didn't plan it this way.

When I first started asking men to talk about their dates and doing that as an introduction.

But the more I reflected on this, the more I discerned, the more I realized this.

This follows the pattern of our faith.

So think about the Mass.

Just stick with me for a minute.

We start Mass by gathering and by prayer.

We come before God.

We honestly come before Him.

We confess.

Confiteor, right?

We ask for mercy.

We say, here I am, Lord, I love you and I need you.

Right?

That's our posture.

And we come before Him.

Then comes the Liturgy of the Word.

What's that?

We remember.

We hear the story of God's faithfulness to us.

We hear what he has done for us and the salvation that he has opened up for us.

The readings, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Psalms, the Gospel.

It's remembering what God has done for his people, for us.

Then comes the Liturgy of the Eucharist, right?

This is physical sharing Jesus, becoming one with us, union with God in a physical way.

We don't just think about God and we don't just remember.

We actually receive Him.

Body, blood, soul and divinity.

It is the most intimate act in our faith.

So can you see the parallel here?

Marital intimacy follows this pattern.

It's built on the bond of love and friendship first.

Just like our faith is built on knowing Jesus before we unite with him in the Eucharist.

You don't skip the relationship.

You don't skip the bond.

You don't skip that.

That bond which is so revealed and strengthened in the.

In the remembering.

You don't go straight to the physical.

It doesn't work in faith, and it doesn't work in marriage either.

It's like built in to our souls.

This is the pattern.

So that love letter that I encourage you to write, it's really more than just a nice gesture.

You're walking that same path that the Church walks that we all walk in our walk of faith.

Every Sunday, we come before our Beloved.

We acknowledge our Beloved.

We remember our journey with our Beloved.

And then that opens the door to a deeper union with our Beloved.

We can't push that analogy too far.

Obviously, the difference between God and us is far greater than, you know, us and our wives.

But that is a beautiful pattern.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, like, this is the pattern for love, really.

I mean, God is love.

So it should be no surprise that the way that he built our relationship with him, the way that he has structured our liturgical worship of him, which is an expression of our love for God and a sharing in God's own Love with us.

It should be no surprise that that same pattern should be found in, you know, other areas, especially those deepest, most intimate, loving unions in our life.

Marriage is a.

What is it?

It is a.

A symbol, a sacrament of Christ's love for the church.

So it's no surprise that it follows that same pattern, that that same pattern is stamped upon our own marriages.

So here's my challenge to you.

Don't.

Please.

Please don't.

Just think that's a nice idea.

I should do that someday.

I really encourage you to actually do this.

Write letter.

Write it this week.

It doesn't have to be long.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

It does have to be sincere.

She doesn't need Shakespeare.

She needs you.

She wants to know what's in your heart.

She wants your words, your memory.

So just remember one of your best dates and remind her that the man who took her on that date is still the man who is right here, right in front of her every day, still fighting for the marriage, still in love with her.

That's who you are.

So I pray that you do this.

If you do it, let me know about it.

I would love to hear how this goes.

Because I promise you, if you do it, your wife will absolutely love you for it.

She will love this.

So let me know how it goes.

If you.

If you get a chance, I would love to hear.

Thanks and God bless.