I think a part of me always knew it would never work out

August 31, 2022 6:25 AM

The Unsent Project is a collection of unsent text messages to first loves. CW: A mix of sweet, sad, and disturbing. It's a fairly unfiltered collection of thoughts that anonymous people put into a textbox on the internet.

The Unsent Project is a collection of over 5,000,000 unsent text messages to first loves. Messages are submitted anonymously from people all over the world. Rora Blue started the Unsent Project in 2015 to figure out what color people see love in. To investigate this, submissions are displayed on the color the submitter associates with their first love. The content of the submissions are wide ranging, encompassing just about every emotion. The term first love is open to interpretation and messages have been submitted to lovers, best friends, exes, parents, siblings, and even pets. All texts are submitted and stored digitally in an online archive which can be sorted by name and color. The Unsent Project aims to provide an emotional outlet for those that need it.

Also be sure to check out the comparisons page.

By Rora Blue.

posted by wesleyac (19 comments total)

I experienced my first ever love at 20. We dated for 4 months. I was awkward and insecure ... and 20. We broke up and went our separate ways, ran into each other a year later, and became friends. We'd hang out at clubs and maybe go see the occasional movie and talk about the other people that we were dating. Then they moved out of town two years after that. We stayed in touch sporadically over email, and Friendster. I took a road trip to see them just before I turned 30 and realized then, almost 10 years after we dated, that they'd always be special to me in some way.

We fell in love with others. Moved our correspondence to Facebook. We fell out of love with others. Years became a decade. Then, when I was on the cusp of 40, I wrote to say that I was sorry for how I was when I was 20, and that I valued how our friendship has grown despite all of that early awkwardness. She wrote back saying that she felt bad that I felt a need to apologize because she also regretted how she behaved then. We forgave each other. We forgave ourselves. Then a few months later, when both of our recent longterm relationships had separately ended, I wrote an email that could've been a text:

"Somedays I wish that you didn't live so far away."

She told me later on that the email stopped her in the street when she read it. She knew what it meant. She wrote back, "I wish that myself, for what it's worth."

We made plans to meet in New York, which was halfway between where we both lived, and we decided that night to date again. We've now been married for six years.

This is all to say that I wonder if I can hack together a way of threading messages into that project. I'd be anonymous, but the recipient is indexed. The way it sorts messages back is consistent ... hmm ...
posted by bl1nk at 7:15 AM on August 31, 2022 [31 favorites]

Genuinely unsettlling entering your own legal first name into the search box and getting back unfiltered vitriol amid more generic "omg i love u!!!"s. Like looking into a box long sealed, forgotten in the basement, that contains all the passionate, fraught, intoxicated mess of youthful love.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 7:23 AM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

Absolutely unsettling, especially when some of them are eerily specific to your own history. 0.o Having a dark forest moment…some things are better left in the shadows.
posted by k8bot at 7:39 AM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

My legal first name is so common as to make that aspect of it meaningless. But the site reminds me of lowbrow.com (the first incarnation from the early dawn of the internet), and I'm glad that the "message in a bottle" website still exists.
posted by KirTakat at 7:46 AM on August 31, 2022

I have a reasonably uncommon first name for this database and sure there's a bunch of "your hot"s (sic) but it's hard not to notice the "I fucking hate you"s and the "you're toxic"s, eep.
posted by MiraK at 8:03 AM on August 31, 2022

Genuinely unsettlling entering your own legal first name into the search box

Mine had a person woefully seeking contact with a lost name-mate, posting over and over (every couple of posts was them) asking for the name-mate to reach out. I know it is the same person because they kept signing the messages with their own first name.

Eek.
posted by sciatrix at 8:08 AM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

The search for my name didn't turn up anything that gave me pangs (I'm far too old to have talked about One Direction with someone) but there was a message that someone with my name prefers "cats to capybaras" and I know that's not me because I would honestly have a hard time choosing.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 8:50 AM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

5 and a half million?? It's blowing my mind that a site of this type would have that many user-submitted anything.
posted by dusty potato at 9:38 AM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

sciatrix, I had the same experience. I now wonder if you and I have the same given name.

For all his faults, at least my first love wasn’t that guy.

5 and a half million??

To be fair, I estimate approximately 4 million of those posts are from one bitterly jilted dude named Sean.
posted by armeowda at 9:41 AM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

There is a certain sameness to a lot these, either bitter or forlorn, so it was refreshing (no pun intended) to come across the “Ugh bad breath. Stay away” entry for a change of pace.
posted by The Gooch at 9:49 AM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

HEY NAME-TWIN yes I too am now worried I will come home to find Sean waiting yearningly on my doorstep with some kind of giant boombox and a bouquet of roses the size of my torso. Big yikes.
posted by sciatrix at 10:05 AM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

1/4 think I'm a terrible person, 2/4 are kinda vaguely spammy lyf stuff, with the generic yearning sentiments, 1/4 seems to be from the same guy slowly losing hope, one is achingly poignant "Waiting..."

And I can't decide if "Admiring you from afar is like staring at the stars; beautiful to look at, yet too hard to reach." is lovely sentiment or memey stuff printed on canvas and sold at home decor stores.
posted by Jacen at 10:59 AM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think I'm too old and/or unromantic to understand this project very well. But my favorite text addressed to "me" is this:

[gallery size=full
columns=1]

A lot to ponder there.
posted by biogeo at 11:35 AM on August 31, 2022 [6 favorites]

A bit disturbing that my "real" first name brought up repeated accusations of pedophilia. I hope the multiple messages are only one person texting one other person (even though one is too many, obvs) and not something more widespread among people with my moniker.
posted by maxwelton at 12:22 PM on August 31, 2022

"a collection of unsent text messages that anonymous people put into a textbox on the internet"

aka a bunch of made-up stuff
posted by glonous keming at 2:30 PM on August 31, 2022

My first relationship predated text messages by a long shot, and mostly predated emails although we sort of had like, rudimentary email. But I am also someone who is finally dating a person that I've been sort of crossing paths with for 20+ years, and it's always funny when Facebook memories pull up messages to each other or comments on each others' posts from, say, 2007.

It's almost always an exchange ending with "we should grab a drink soon!" [narrator: they did not grab a drink soon. much later, they grabbed all the drinks at once.]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:27 PM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

One of mine says "nice girls don't explode sis" which I think I'll take as a compliment on behalf of all the mes.
posted by paduasoy at 3:28 PM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

My first name is so common it's not surprising the messages run the gamut of emotions all the way up and down and back again. Like sciatrix, there is one person that keeps messaging and leaving their own first name and I hope that person is OK and found their person eventually.
posted by dg at 5:04 PM on August 31, 2022

I checked my name, there were about 150 and I'd estimate that 1/3 of them were written by 3 people. Most of the rest looked like they were posted by bot
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:00 PM on September 2, 2022