Our Story

It began with two people who had just fallen in love and started thinking about how they could protect that feeling for the rest of their lives.

The day Louis asked me to be his girlfriend, we were at AfrikaBurn, surrounded by endless desert landscapes, incredible art and thousands of strangers .Everything about that day felt significant. We both knew, almost instinctively, that what we had found in each other was different. This was the person we wanted to build a life with.

As we sat together that evening, still taking in everything that had happened, our conversation naturally drifted towards the future. We weren't talking about marriage or children yet. We were asking ourselves something much simpler, and perhaps much more important.

How do we make sure this lasts?

Not, how do we stay together? But rather, how do we continue feeling this connected twenty, thirty or even fifty years from now?

The more we spoke about it, the more we realised how strange it is that we intentionally invest in almost every aspect of our lives, except the relationships that matter most. We read books to become better leaders, listen to podcasts to improve our mindset, spend hours in the gym looking after our bodies and carefully plan our careers, finances and future. Yet when it comes to love, we often assume that if we have found the right person, everything else will simply take care of itself.

We believed that if a relationship is one of the most important things we will ever build, then surely it deserves the same intention, attention and care as everything else we choose to invest in. That conversation became the beginning of what would eventually become The Monthly Undress.

Because Louis asked me to be his girlfriend on the second day of the month, we decided that every second of the month would become our evening. It would be an evening that belonged to just the two of us. We started with nothing more than an ordinary notebook.

Inside, we slowly began creating something that reflected the relationship we wanted to build. We wrote down our shared principles, the values we wanted to protect, our own "rules of love" and the questions we felt every couple should ask each other on a monthly basis. We wanted to create a space where we could celebrate each other, acknowledge the things that had been left unsaid, apologise when necessary, dream about the future and remind ourselves that love is something you continue choosing.

Every month, we dressed up as if we were going on a special date. We lit candles, poured ourselves a glass of wine and opened that little notebook.

Some evenings we laughed until our cheeks hurt. Other evenings became unexpectedly emotional. There were conversations that challenged us, conversations that healed us and conversations that made us realise how much can remain hidden beneath the surface, even in a healthy relationship. Yet no matter what we spoke about, we always finished the evening feeling lighter, closer and more understood than when we had started.

The notebook evolved with us. Every month we refined it a little more. We removed questions that didn't spark meaningful conversations, rewrote others, added new rituals and discovered what genuinely helped us stay connected. Over time, it became far more than a notebook full of prompts. It became the heartbeat of our relationship.

As friends and family began hearing about our ritual, they all asked the same question.

"Where can we buy one?"

The answer, of course, was that they couldn't.

It didn't exist.

And that was the moment we realised we might not have created something that was only meaningful to us. Perhaps we had created something that other couples had been looking for too.

Over the following months, we poured ourselves into transforming our private notebook into something beautiful enough to become part of someone else's relationship. Every page was rewritten countless times. Every question was carefully considered. Every chapter was designed with the hope that it wouldn't simply become another journal on a bookshelf, but a ritual that couples would genuinely look forward to returning to month after month, year after year.

We called it The Monthly Undress because we believe the deepest intimacy has very little to do with taking off your clothes. It begins when you take off your armour. When you put down the expectations, the assumptions, the distractions and the words you've been swallowing all month. When you allow yourself to be fully seen. To emotionally undress is to choose honesty over comfort, curiosity over assumption and connection over convenience.

That is what The Monthly Undress has always been about.

It is not a journal designed to fix broken relationships. It is a ritual created to help couples keep choosing each other before distance has the chance to grow. It is an invitation to slow down in a world that constantly asks us to speed up, and a reminder that the strongest relationships are rarely built in extraordinary moments.

Looking back now, it's hard to believe that everything started with one conversation in the desert and a simple notebook that belonged only to us.

Today, our greatest hope is that The Monthly Undress becomes part of your story too. That one evening every month becomes sacred in your calendar. That years from now, you'll pull your worn-out copy from a shelf, smile at the memories written inside its pages and remember that the greatest investment you ever made was in each other.

With love,

Dana