Dear Julia,

You've been asking for this for so long - honestly, probably longer than I'd like to admit - and I think deep down we both knew it wasn't that I didn't have anything to say, it's just that I've never really found it easy to say it out loud. Or write it down. Or really do anything that requires me to sit still with my feelings for long enough to actually get them out of my head and into words. I'm not sure I've ever been fully able to open up in the way you needed me to, and I know that hasn't always been fair on you... but I want you to know I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm going to try. So - finally, here it is.

I remember the first time I saw you. 180 House, Friday the 7th of July 2023, and you were wearing this denim dress. I clocked it immediately, and something in me just knew - I didn't know what exactly, not yet, but something. Nearly three years later and I still remember it like it was last week, which probably tells you more than I ever manage to say out loud.

You met me at a strange time. Not in a romanticised, cinematic way - in the real, unglamorous way where I was grinding through one of the loneliest stretches of my life, hadn't fully figured out why yet, and was carrying a lot of things I didn't know how to put down. You didn't know all of that at first - I made sure of it, because if I'm honest I was scared that if you saw any of it too soon, you'd do what others had done before and quietly disappear. My ex did. Some friends did. And so I kept the armour on for a while, right up until the point I trusted you enough to take it off... and you didn't run. You stayed. That sounds simple but it genuinely wasn't - and I haven't forgotten it.

What I didn't fully appreciate until I'd known you for a while is how rare you actually are. You're direct - properly direct, not performatively direct - and you're not someone who makes me feel like the odd one out for being who I am. I spent time in past relationships feeling like I was somehow too much, or not enough, or just slightly wrong in a way I couldn't quite name... and then I met you, and none of that was true anymore. You're not woke, you're not fragile, you're not someone who needs me to be a different version of myself to make you feel comfortable - and I genuinely can't tell you what a relief that has been. We're opposites in a lot of the right ways, and the same in a lot of others, and it works in a way that I didn't think things could work for me.

You are also, for the record, objectively stunning - and somehow, the longer we've been together, the more that's been true. We've laughed about this, you and I, but it is genuinely not a joke: I'll be in the gym or scrolling my phone and I'll see a photo of you and think, without any context for a split second, "who is that?" - and then I remember it's my girlfriend. I'm proud to walk anywhere with you. People stop and stare, they always have, and I want you to know I notice it every single time and I think the same thing every single time - she's mine, and I am lucky.

Some of my favourite memories of the last three years have your name written all over them. Taking you to Dubai that first December. Florence in March 2024, when I told you I loved you for the first time - and then, in what I think says everything about us, immediately took you on a run as some kind of final compatibility test, which you spectacularly failed, and which I will never let you forget. Bali the first time, and the second, and somehow the third even though we keep promising ourselves we're done going back. The vineyards in Italy. You driving a Lamborghini through the desert like it was completely normal. South Africa. Kuala Lumpur. Ibiza. The Qatar flight where we basically had a double bed in the sky and I remember thinking life doesn't really get much better than this.

And then Warsaw - which was one of my favourites of all of them, if I'm honest. You taking me to where you grew up, the villages, your grandparents taking us in, Zakopane in the mountains in August 2025... I've always said you were a wholesome village girl at heart, and going there with you just confirmed it. I loved seeing where you came from. It made me understand you better - not that I needed more reasons to love you, but it gave me more of them anyway.

And then the Maldives this March, for your 28th - which was probably the most beautiful trip I've ever been on. But what I keep thinking about isn't the place itself, it's teaching you to swim... or rather, realising that you could swim all along - you just needed someone to believe you could. I think about that more than you'd expect. Because I hope that's what I am for you, even on the days when I'm not doing it very well - someone who believes in you. In what you're building now, in where you're going, in all of it. You have my full support, always. Whatever comes next, we're building it together.

I want to be honest about something though, because this wouldn't be a proper letter if I wasn't. I make things hard for you sometimes - I know that. I go to dark places in my head that aren't easy to be around, and I don't always let you in when I should, and on my worst days I probably push away the very person I need most. When we were basically homeless at the end of 2024, when we were in that Airbnb in January with everything up in the air and I was in one of my worst headspaces in years - you just showed up. You didn't make it about you. You cooked clean, you kept things steady, you were just... there. And when I spent six months complaining about Clapham every single day, and the construction noise followed us from London to Bali to Dubai and I was still in my own head about it - you stayed. I am aware that I haven't always deserved that. And there are days when I genuinely feel like I'm not good enough for you - which I know you'd tell me is nonsense, but it's the truth, and I'm putting it here because you deserve to know I feel it.

What I also want you to know is that you make me better. When I'm with you, I sleep properly, I eat well, I have structure, I have someone to come home to who actually gives a damn. When I'm not with you - and these four weeks have proved it more than ever - the bad habits creep back in. The diet goes. The sleep goes. The whole rhythm of it shifts. You have genuinely made me a better, healthier, more grounded person just by being in my life, and I don't say that lightly. I miss your hugs more than anything - which is not something I'd usually admit, but there it is.

I want to give you everything you deserve. I'm working toward it - financially, physically, mentally, especially mentally - and I want to make sure that when the best bits come, and they are coming, you're there for all of them. You've been there for the hard parts. You've earned the good ones. I see you - more than I show, more than I say, more than you probably believe on the days I'm miles away in my own head - I really do see you. And I love you. And I want you in my future... and one day, when the time is right, I want to make you my wife.

Worth the wait, I hope.

All my love,

Matt x