Love letters are a strange thing. Once read, they lose their original purpose and become keepsakes – a piece of paper filled with emotions that are often ephemeral. Which is why I've always felt conflicted about whether it's appropriate to keep a love letter once a relationship has ended. Should I scrunch it up and chuck it in the bin, or treasure it in a box under my bed? What if my new partner found one – would they think I still have feelings for the person who wrote it?

To answer this, I decided to reach out to some of my friends and ask if they would share with me love letters they have received or have written in the past. I wanted to find out why each of them has saved the letters and what purpose they serve now.

Editor's note: The transcripts of some of the letters have been slightly edited for clarity.

VICE: How long have you and Freya been together?
Alexandra: We've been together for a year.

Can you tell me a bit about your relationship?
I'm her first girlfriend and we're a long-distance couple. She lives in Bedford, while I'm in Manchester. We met through a Facebook group in early June 2015 and were together by the end of the month.

How come you had to be apart for five weeks?
I went travelling to Asia for five weeks in August 2015. She wanted to write me a letter as a keepsake for whilst I was away.

Do these letters help when you're not together?
Definitely. Just seeing her handwriting and realising she took the time to write to me, reminds me that she's still there and waiting.

VICE: What's the letter written on?
Katie: If I remember correctly, we'd just got back from a festival after a really messy, trippy weekend and the only bit of paper he could probably find was a left over drugs wrap.

Can you tell me a bit about the relationship?
He's been my best friend since I was 16 and he was 18. He still is my best friend. We grew up together and shared lots of memorable experiences. When I was around 21 something weird happened; I think he went to a festival and came back and realised he "loved me" – or something like that. We kind of had a month or two of fooling around with each other and then it was like waking up from a dream like, "What are we doing?"

Did the letter bring you two together?
I remember feeling more like the letter meant it was a good time to have some space. We chilled for a while and then carried on being friends again.

Why do you still have it?
I keep a lot of things, mainly meaningful things, especially from times I want to remember – such as festival wristbands, gig tickets, train tickets and definitely letters. This note was like something out of a movie because he disappeared in the morning after returning from a festival, and I woke up alone and found it under my pillow.

VICE: What's the significance of pugs in this case?
Nicole: Me and Gaz had always dreamt of having a pug called Albert; named after the Nick Cave song 'Albert Goes West'. We'd probably send each other about five pictures of pugs every day and it became an unhealthy obsession. I now have Albert and he's amazing.

How was Paris?
Paris was incredible. It was our first trip together and it was for Gaz's 27th birthday. A particular highlight was the catacombs; Everyone joked that we were the goth couple of Manchester so we fit right in there. Can you tell me a bit about your relationship?
We had been together since 2013. The classic "love at first sight" story that makes people roll their eyes. We spent every waking, non-working hour together, and we were supposed to move in together last year. At that time we'd been together for two amazingly happy years. Unfortunately though, Gaz died very suddenly and unexpectedly in June of last year.

Does it hurt to look back at these letters?
When I first read these letters after Gaz died, it hurt so much that I left them untouched for six months. I'm now happy to look back at them and remember what an amazing relationship we had. Maybe one day I'll have that kind of relationship again, but for now I consider myself lucky that I had the chance to feel that way about someone. Some people never experience such love. As unfair as it is to have your soulmate taken away at the prime of both of your lives, we had an incredible two years together and I wouldn't change it for the world.

VICE: How old were you when you received this letter?
Lena: A thing that used to annoy me at the time but I'm grateful for now is that he would date everything – so I know that I was 15 when I got this. And as it was in July, I would have been in Ireland for the summer. No phones and no internet meant we used to send each other letters.

Can you tell me a little about your relationship? How long were you together for?
We were childhood sweethearts. We dated on and off throughout almost the whole of secondary school – so for about six years from the age of 13 to about 19. We came from very different families which sometimes became a problem. His bleached middle class upbringing meant that he didn't know what a tea-stained cup looked like, which upset my mother quite badly once. We watched 'White Palace' once together and it was uncomfortably close to the bone. But we were totally mad about each other. It was very romantic.

Did he ever take you to Fabas?
Yes, I got to visit his family's collection of houses in France. It was a great holiday but I used to hate it when he went because he'd be in France, I'd be in Ireland and the summers are so long when you're younger.

And did you guys ever perform together?
We did not. I was in a band at school and at one point, when we weren't going out, I briefly dated the guitarist so that kind of put a sour note to the idea of us playing together. We were in a soul band together at school but we only performed once, and I got too drunk trying to ward off nerves and he was very embarrassed of me slurring 'Freddie's Dead' down the mic. He was often embarrassed of me.

Finally, how come you kept these letters for so long?
For a long time they meant a lot to me because I was pretty mad about him. I think everyone remembers their first proper boyfriend. Though his letters tended to be a bit wooden – he was the classic English perpetual-pole-up-the-arse prude in public – he was a very funny and sweet guy, and I was a happy teenager with him.

VICE: What was the reason you wrote this note?
Ben: I wrote this letter because my boyfriend and I are apart almost all of the time, which is difficult. Writing love notes is comforting to me and reminds me of all the things I love so much about my relationship. It makes him feel good too.

Can you tell me a bit about your relationship?
I met my boyfriend in 2010 while at college in Florida, where both our families are from. We dated off and on for three years but it just never fully fell into place. In 2015, we became serious but it's been incredibly hard because our relationship has been over such long distances. I have been studying in London and he is in California. We get along great and this time around it finally feels like it's the right moment, so I've switched my studies to an online course and will be moving close to him so our relationship can take a new form.

Does he write to you too?
He does, but not in so many words. I get cards and short notes – only a few sentences in each, but they're still just as special to me.

Do the letters help with not seeing each other often?
They do; they remind us of our time together. I typically take pictures of letters I've written to him and of the cards he's given to me so I can remind myself of how it feels when we actually get to spend time together. They remind me how lucky I am to have this person waiting for me at home.

Who was the person you wrote this poem for?
Diarmuid: For a Bulgarian girl from Sofia, also called Sofia.

How come you decided to write a poem, instead of a more traditional letter?
I wrote it without planning to. I often write down whatever comes into my head. I was spending a lot of time drinking alone in dive bars at the time, and writing this helped me pass the time.

Can you tell me a bit about that relationship?
We met in Spain and she had a boyfriend back home. We spent every evening walking around the city together, talking into the early hours. Then she went home. I tried to convince her to come back.

Did it work?
Alas, it did not. I actually spoke to her yesterday, asking for her thoughts on the relationship, and she said "It never officially ended" but I guess it never officially started either.

VICE: Can you tell me a bit about your relationship?
Tanya: We met through a friend of a friend. He was six years older than me but didn't seem it most of the time. He was my first sweetheart I guess – I adored him. Whenever he was home we would go on trips and days out but there was always a lot of strain on our relationship as he was in the military.

What's it like, to be with someone in the military?
It's hard. I enjoyed it because I don't like being with someone 24/7, so it was good to have that time apart but after a couple of weeks, I would really miss him. However, the military changes people; towards the end he became paranoid about who I was hanging out with. I had a lot of guy friends. But I'd have an incredible sense of pride when I'd see him at ceremonies and stuff.

Did he propose?
He didn't. We broke up before then. He said he would propose after a year but we lasted nine months.

What happened in the end?
I got tired of the pressure and paranoia. I'm a bit of a commitment-phobe anyway. But he also made it tough towards the end. The breakup was a sigh of relief. I saw him a few months ago actually and he blamed the breakup on the distance and my age at the time. I left it at that to save arguments, I guess.

VICE: So, did you become husband and wife?
Petra: Yes, we did! We've now been married for 19 years.

Can you tell me a bit about your relationship?
We met when we were about twelve years old. We both used to go to church and I thought he was a complete weirdo. Many years later we ended up in sixth form together and became inseparable – although at this point still only as friends.

On the last day of our A-levels, he was hit by a car and almost killed. In the same accident our friend was killed. Everything changed in my mind. I realised he was more than just a friend – that there was no way I could not have him in my life.

How does it feel to look back on love letters from such an early time in your relationship?
It was so bizarre to look back at these letters. Some of them made me blush! But it is so wonderful to be able to rediscover how much we felt for each other and how pure our love was – untouched by the rigours of adult life.

Oh yeah, and how did your assignment go?
Oh my word… I don't remember; it probably went well. I was a bit of a swot.

* Names have been changed to protect the subjects' identity