100 Things I Love About You – A Review

I was browsing around Amazon recently, looking for something completely different, and for whatever reason, I came across this book, called 100 Things I Love About You: A Journal by Cara Kovacs.

I was understandably intrigued, so I took a closer look, and I loved what I saw.

Let’s start with what this book is.

It’s essentially a set of 100 prompts to inspire you to tell that special person in your life how you feel about them.

Here are a few of those prompts, which were taken from images on Amazon:

• I love spending time with you. My favourite activity we do together is…
• …always reminds me of our first date.
• Your strangest quirk (that I love nonetheless) is…

Here’s an image that shows two other prompts, and gives you an idea of how the journal looks inside:

The idea is that you write in this journal on a regular basis (although not necessarily every single day, unless you want to) – trying to do it all in one long session would, I think, be counter-productive and exhausting – until it’s complete, at which point you can give it to your partner.

So, why do I think this journal is such a great idea?

Well, here are my thoughts.

Firstly, when you’re in a committed relationship, whether you’re married or not, it should go without saying that you love your partner.

And you may well tell them so frequently – and if not, it’s time you started!

But it’s easy for those three little words to become some sort of mantra – something you chant automatically, in the same way that the goodbye peck on the cheek when you leave for work can lose its passion and meaning.

I know that, when I was in the death throes of my first marriage, I used to tell my wife that I loved her all the time – but I came to realize I was saying it for my benefit, not hers. I was trying to convince myself it was still true, when deep down I knew it had stopped being the case some time ago.

And this gets to the heart of why this journal is so great – the prompts force you to truly think about your relationship and what you love about your partner.

This means the words “I love you” have a deeper meaning, a why, and maybe a whole series of memories that you share that will conjure up all of those original feelings and emotions.

Secondly, by doing this on a regular basis – if you completed one prompt a day, that’s over three months worth of writing – you get to remind yourself of why you are together, because let’s face it, most couples have disagreements and even full-blown arguments, but they should be minor bumps in the road on the journey through life together.

Of course, this does assume that you chose your partner for the right reasons (i.e. something more than lust, which I fear happens all too often), and it so happens I have a 21-lesson course on how to find true love.

But assuming that is the case, then it’s highly unlikely that you and your partner will agree on absolutely everything, and that’s fine.

The lady who would become my second wife and I spent literally 4 – 12 hours per day, seven days a week, talking over the Internet (primarily via Skype), for about eight months, since we lived in different countries at the time.

And during all those conversations, when we discussed pretty much everything there was to talk about, it turned out we were incredibly similar, in terms of our thinking processes, our principles, our likes, our dislikes, and more. It was, as they say, almost like we were made for each other (not that I believe in things like fate).

But there were things we didn’t share – our tastes in music, for example, were very different – and once I moved to the USA and we were married, after which we lived and worked together 24 x 7, we found a few other dissimilarities, but nothing that led to a real argument.

The thing is, if you really know why you are with your partner, and can appreciate all of the good things you share and the many ways in which they enhance your life, then minor hiccoughs are just that, rather than deal-breakers.

Thirdly, I think most relationships could do with something “special” from time to time, to help keep the romance alive. (I have a course on that too, by the way.).

With my first wife, I would occasionally go to work via her office and pop a hand-written love note through the letterbox for her to find when she arrived.

I was also one of those “random gift” “buyers – if I saw something (usually small and not expensive) that I knew she’d like, I’d buy it, just because.

With my second wife, if this sort of love journal had been available while we were dating (or even shortly our marriage), I would have bought one and filled it in.

But it wasn’t.

However, what I did do, since we were dating online in a long-distance relationship (something I’ve written about here), was write her a love poem each day.

I did this from January 2005, shortly after we started dating, all the way through to late October of that year, when I moved to the USA, but it didn’t stop there. I continued writing these poems until we were married in early December, and then for a year or two after that.

As far as I recall, the reason I stopped was that we were super-busy with one of our businesses, and once we started offering 24 x 7 phone support to our customers (and potential customers), we just didn’t have the time, and I was too tired, mainly through being woken up at all hours of the night — if I ever got more than two or three hours of contiguous sleep, I was lucky.

Having said that, I still wrote her the occasional poem, or created a love-themed meme for her, and, later on, wrote love haiku (which later became a couple of volumes of what I called LuvKu).

Here’s another thought – maybe you could use the prompts in this book to help evaluate whether the person you’re dating is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with?

Used in this way, you obviously wouldn’t necessarily give the completed journal to your partner (although you could if you wanted) – it would be more of a way to help you decide whether this person is the one for you.

If you struggle to answer too many of the prompts to your own satisfaction, then maybe you need to keep searching?

Another approach would be to buy one each, so you can both complete the prompts and then exchange journals once you’re done. However, you will need a strong relationship to do this – the point of this is to focus on your love, not create reasons to have arguments, and it’s definitely not intended to be some form of competition between the two of you.

So, maybe you could buy a couple for your child and their spouse as a wedding gift to them?

Alternatively, supposing, as a parent, you completed this, or something similar because I don’t know how many of the prompts would be appropriate in this context, for each of your children, and then, when they reach a certain age, or maybe when they leave for college, you can give it to them?

Conclusion

I really love the idea of this journal, and while I don’t believe in having regrets (something I’ve mentioned many times already), it would have been great to have had this with either of my two wives.

However, while completing this journal will clearly take some time and effort, wouldn’t this make a beautiful and incredibly personal anniversary or Christmas or birthday gift?

Or, of course, it would be the perfect and unique present for Valentine’s Day (but don’t forget the roses and chocolates too)!

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. 100 Things I Love About You