To the woman I will call mine . . .

There are parts of a man that language struggles to reach. Not because they are shameful, but because they are deep—layered beneath the words he uses in ordinary life, waiting for the right person and the right moment to surface. This letter is my attempt to reach one of those places and hand it to you—openly.

I want to share with you something I hope for in our marriage—something I’ve spent a long time understanding in myself before feeling ready to offer it to another person. It is this: I hope that one day, if you are willing, we might share in ANR—an Adult Nursing Relationship—as part of the intimacy between us.

I recognize that may land strangely at first. So I want to tell you not just what I hope for, but why, because the why is where I actually live.

What draws me to this has very little to do with the physical act in isolation. It has everything to do with what I believe intimate love is capable of being. I am drawn to the idea of being received. Not simply desired or admired, but genuinely welcomed—invited into your most tender and generous space. There is something in me that longs not to take, but to be given to—not to perform or achieve or earn, but simply to rest and to be known and cherished at the same time, without having to justify either.

I spend much of my life carrying things. I suspect you will come to know that about me. And I believe that one of the most sacred things a marriage can offer is a shelter from that—a place where strength doesn’t have to be performed and vulnerability isn’t a liability. What I imagine in this is not dependence, and it is certainly not a return to childhood. It is something available only to adults who have chosen each other freely and fully: a mutual self-giving so complete that even the body becomes a language of devotion.

I am also someone who cannot easily separate the physical from the spiritual. I believe bodies tell the truth about things the soul is trying to say. And in this, in the image of nourishment, of abundance, of one person sustaining another through nothing but love and generosity, I find something that feels almost sacramental. Not in a way that confuses the sacred with the erotic, but in a way that refuses to let them be enemies. I believe God made us embodied for a reason. I believe marriage is one of the places where that reason becomes most visible.

I want you to know that I am not asking you to simply accommodate a preference. I am inviting you into a part of me—a part that hopes for a marriage where tenderness and desire coexist, where we can be simultaneously lovers and sanctuary for each other. If this is something you could ever embrace, I would meet it with devotion, gratitude, and all the care I am capable of giving. And if you need time, or questions, or simply want to understand more, I am here for all of that too.

I share this not because I expect it, but because I believe you deserve to know me. Fully. And I believe that the love worth having is the kind that can hold the whole person, including the places that are hardest to speak aloud.

You are worth the vulnerability of this letter. And I hope, in time, you will find that I am worth yours.

With all that I am —

Your future husband