Author pens heartbreaking letter to husband

Author Amy Krouse Rosenthal pens heartbreaking letter for husband. Photo / Facebook

While many of us might be guilty of spending endless periods of time trying to perfect our dating profiles, none will ever hold a candle to the one written by author Amy Krouse Rosenthal - only, she wasn't even writing it for herself.

Rosenthal, who is terminally ill with ovarian cancer, today penned a dating profile for her husband Jason for The New York Times and it'll simultaneously warm and break your heart in one foul swoop.

The author starts: "I have been married to the most extraordinary man for 26 years. I was planning on at least another 26 together."

After asking her readers if they "want to hear a sick joke?" Rosenthal recounts heading to the hospital in September 2015 where, "a few hours and tests later, the doctor clarifies that the unusual pain the wife is feeling on her right side isn't the no-biggie appendicitis they suspected but rather ovarian cancer."

Her kids had just left for college but as soon as she received her diagnosis, Rosenthal and her husband's post-kid plans "instantly went poof".

"No wonder the word cancer and cancel look so similar," she writes.

Rosenthal then proceeds to introduce us to Jason who she was set up with on a blind date.

"It was 1989. We were only 24. I had precisely zero expectations about this going anywhere. But when he knocked on the door of my little frame house, I thought, 'Uh-oh, there is something highly likeable about this person.'"

By the end of their blind dinner date, Rosenthal admits she knew she wanted to marry him.

The best-selling author proceeds to construct the world's best dating profile for her husband revealing everything from his "flair for fabulous socks" to "his affinity for tiny things".

And then, she encourages her audience to do as they do on Tinder and swipe right.

The part that will have you careening through your house for a box of tissues is when she describes her tattoo which reads "more."

"I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet."

"So why am I doing this?" she wonders.

"I am wrapping this up on Valentine's Day and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins."

Rosenthal is a best-selling New York Times author well known for her children's books such as Little Pea, Spoon, and Duck! Rabbit! as well as her 2005 autobiography Encyclopaedia of an Ordinary Life.

Since writing her piece You May Want To Marry My Husband, thousands have taken to Twitter to express their heartbreak and the impression the piece left on them.

I read that gorgeous piece by Amy Krouse Rosenthal in today's New York Times, and it utterly leveled me.

— Caiti Caiti Bo Baiti (@nolanolegal) March 3, 2017

It's been five hours and I'm still not over that Amy Krouse Rosenthal essay.

— Sarah Begley (@SCBegley) March 3, 2017