Right now I’m sprawled on my bed in this shoebox apartment just outside Philly, it’s like 1:47 a.m. because I can’t sleep after we had the dumbest fight about who forgot to charge the air purifier (yes that’s a real fight we had), and I’m typing this with chip crumbs falling into the keyboard. I swear half the keys are sticky now.
We started doing these relationship journaling prompts back in late 2024 when honestly everything between us felt… beige. Like we were just two people who knew each other’s coffee order and split rent and occasionally remembered to have sex before Netflix asked if we were still watching. So one insomnia night I’m doom-scrolling and I search “couple journaling ideas” at like 3 a.m. and think “this is either gonna fix us or make us break up faster”. Spoiler: it did both, just not at the same time.
We bought these ugly matching notebooks from Target (the ones with the motivational quotes nobody reads) and promised we’d do one prompt every few days. We made it through maybe 19 before we needed a timeout. Some nights we’d finish writing and just stare at each other like “who the hell are you really”. Other nights we’d end up crying or making out or both at once which is messy in a different way.
Here’s the real list we used—the ones that actually hit hard, even if half the time we wanted to set the notebooks on fire afterward.
Why we even tried relationship journaling prompts (aka rock bottom looks different for everyone)
Our couples therapist (found her on Psychology Today, highly recommend filtering by “writes notes like a maniac” because she did) straight-up told us “write before you speak next time or you’re both gonna keep exploding”. So we did.
First session with the notebooks I felt so stupid. My handwriting looks like a toddler discovered cursive, he draws little angry stick figures when he’s mad, and we’re just sitting there on the couch like two idiots trying to be deep. But seeing our messy words next to each other… idk. Made the scary feelings feel smaller somehow.
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The actual 25 relationship journaling prompts we survived (mostly)
I’m not gonna list all 25 because I’m tired and also some are too embarrassing to type again tonight, but here are the ones that actually moved the needle—or at least made us notice the needle existed.
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Past stuff that still hurts more than we admitted
- I wrote three pages and my mascara ran onto the paper. Classy.
- What’s one thing I did early on that you still haven’t 100% forgiven me for? He wrote about that “joke” I made about his mom’s lasagna at Thanksgiving 2019. Three pages. Front and back. I had no idea it still lived in his brain rent-free.
- If you could whisper one thing to me on our first date, what would it be? His was sweet: “You don’t have to try so hard, you’re already enough.” Mine was… filthier. We laughed so hard we woke the neighbor’s dog.
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Right-now prompts that got way too real
- What tiny thing do I do almost every day that quietly makes you feel loved? He said the way I leave the porch light on when he’s late from work. I literally never thought about it.
- What’s one small thing I’ve done lately that hurt you and you never said? I admitted I’m on my phone when he’s talking about his day. He teared up. I wanted to disappear into the couch.
- What do you need from me emotionally right this second that you haven’t asked for? He said “stop saying ‘it’s fine’ when it’s obviously not.” Fair. Still suck at it.
Future ones that made us both panic quietly
- Paint the picture of us in ten years that actually feels good. We both wrote about a little house with too many plants, a dog that hates me specifically, and arguing about podcasts in the car. Same details. Freaky.
- What’s the one fear about our future you’ve never said out loud? Mine: I’ll get boring and he’ll quietly hate me. His: I’ll bail when shit gets hard. We just sat there after reading those. Heavy.
The spicy ones (we almost divorced over prompt 10)
- One thing you wish I did more of in bed, and one thing you wish I’d stop doing. No filter. We wrote separately, swapped pages, then didn’t speak for like twelve minutes. Then talked till 4 a.m. It was awful and amazing.
I’m too wiped to list the last 15 tonight (there’s ones about money trauma, in-law boundaries, and “what song makes you think of me naked”). If you want the unhinged rest just comment and I’ll trauma-dump them later.
What actually happened after months of this chaos
Some nights we finished a prompt and felt closer than ever. Some nights we threw the notebooks and gave each other the silent treatment for two days. A few times we ended up half-naked on the kitchen floor because vulnerability accidentally turned into horniness.
