I was cleaning out my closet today, and of course I found a dusty box of old letters from an ex. That’s right. I’ll say I’m old enough to have had a boyfriend who sent me real, hand-written letters after high school. This was before texting “what r u wearing?” was how a guy showed he loved you. It made me stop and wonder whether technology has changed romance for good. Those letters felt slower, but they also felt more personal. They made me remember that effort used to be part of the message.

I’m not high maintenance. I really don’t care about where we go to dinner or what kind of car you drive. But it used to take some effort to get in touch with a girl to ask her out. You had to pick up a phone and actually talk into it. Texting is so easy, and when you hear back, you don’t even have to respond. The whole thing feels light, quick, and a little too effortless. It lowers the stakes, but it also lowers the meaning. Sometimes that makes romance feel more disposable than exciting.

Texts get sent and received with no heaviness, no thought. Nobody uses real words in a text, at least not for very long. “LOL” or “u going 2 call?” takes less time, but it also takes less heart. I confess I text a lot, and years from now people probably won’t have old boxes of letters. They’ll pull up old texts or emails instead and wonder why they used so many words. Maybe that will be the new version of nostalgia. But it will never quite feel the same as opening an envelope.

But I’m glad I found the box. There are some things that I want to keep as a reminder that romance exists. It’s worth my time to put some effort into a relationship, with real words and sentences. The letters may be dusty, but they still say something important. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the one that makes love feel real. Keeping them felt like keeping proof that someone once cared enough to write. And maybe that is exactly the kind of reminder we all need now and then.