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Monthsary ideas for long distance couples

A monthsary is the same day of the month as the day you got together, every month. It is a small thing, and that is exactly why it works at a distance. An anniversary comes round once a year. A monthsary comes round twelve times, and a long distance relationship runs on small things that come round often.

What a monthsary is

If you started on the 4th of April, the 4th of every month is yours. The word comes from Philippine English, and you will also see monthiversary, monthversary and mensiversary, which all mean the same thing. Plenty of couples count them through the first year and then switch to years. Plenty never stop. Neither is wrong, as long as you both know which kind you are.

If you started on the 31st

This is the one real question, and most answers get it wrong. A month without a 31st still gets a monthsary: it moves to that month's last day. So the 30th in April, June, September and November, and the 28th of February, or the 29th in a leap year. The same goes for the 29th and 30th in February.

It does not slide to the 1st of the next month. If it did, February would have no monthsary at all and March would have two, which is a strange way to reward somebody for surviving February.

When you are in different time zones

Your monthsary is on your calendar and theirs is on theirs, so for part of the day one of you is having it and the other is not. Two ways to handle it:

• Follow whoever gets there first. The one further east wakes up into it. Send the first message the moment it starts for you, and let it be waiting when they wake.
• Keep the overlap for yourselves. Eight hours apart, it is the day for both of you for sixteen hours. Whatever you do together goes inside that window.

Small ones, every month

The trick is to pick one and repeat it, not to invent something new each time. A ritual that happens every month is worth more than a big plan that happens twice.

• Send only the number. "Fourteen." They will know.
• One photo from this month that you took and never sent, with the story behind it.
• Both write down one thing that changed since the last one, then swap.
• A playlist that grows by one song every monthsary, chosen in turns. In a year it is a record of the year.
• Rate the month out of ten, separately, then compare and argue about the gap.
• Record a voice note on the day and do not listen to it until the next one. Every month you hear who you were four weeks ago.
• Ask one question you have never asked. There are a lot of good ones here if you are stuck.
• Light a candle at the same hour, whatever hour that is for each of you.

An evening, if you both have one

• Cook what you ate on the day it started, or the closest either of you can manage, on a video call.
• Plan the next visit properly: dates, a budget, and the first thing you do when you land.
• Rewatch one scene of the first thing you ever watched together. Just the one scene.
• Play something where you are on the same side. These games are built for two people who are not in the same room.
• Draw each other a map of your month: where you went, where you ate, where you thought about them.

The ones worth making a fuss about

• The first. Say it out loud. It is the one that makes it a thing.
• The sixth. Each of you writes a letter to the two of you at twelve months, and seals it.
• The twelfth. Open them. After that you can keep counting months, switch to years, or do both.
• Any of them. Post something physical, timed to land on the day. It takes days to arrive, and that is the entire point of it.

What to write

A monthsary message does not need to be long, and it should not sound like a greeting card. One specific thing from this month beats any sentence about forever. For example:

• "Fourteen months. I still check what time it is where you are before I check what time it is here."
• "Month seven. You were right about the thing. I am telling you on a monthsary so it counts for more."
• "Another one. I like us more than I did last month, which last month I would not have thought was possible."

Write your own. They can tell.

For a longer one, there is a whole page on what to write in a love letter when you are far apart. And if you want it to arrive as something, this one opens into flowers, with your song ready to play while they read. It is free, and it gets there tonight, which for a monthsary you remembered at 11pm is the main thing.

For one of the milestone months, the same page makes a book: your story, your photos, your firsts and the reasons, 24 pages they turn with a finger. Give it the day it started and the cover counts the months for you, with a page for the day ringed on its calendar and the moon that night. It saves as a PDF to print, so the twelfth can be something they hold.

How Two Houses, One Home keeps count

Each of you types the day it started, without saying it to the other first. If they match, that is your day. The tree of everything you have done together has a heart in the middle with the number of months inside it, and a ring of twelve marks around it that fill one per month, the current one filling a little every day. A full year leaves a thin gold ring outside and the twelve start again, the way a tree counts its years. On the day itself, it says so when you open it.