HOW TO MAKE DATE NIGHT CONSISTENT
Tuesday night's have kind of become a special night for my husband and me.
It started back when our oldest daughter Charlotte was just 2 months old. I was a new mom, I hadn’t left the house except for her pediatrician appointments, had no one to relate to that was a mom, and basically felt like I could't keep my shit together. To top it all off my husband and I were at each others throats adjusting to the new life we had in our home and the exhausting routine that came with it.
We never thought of date nights as anything important until a god friend told us, now more than ever it’s so important to find that designated time to enjoy one another’s company without kids. Everything we did up until that point involved our baby; she came with us everywhere. Our counselor said the bickering we were doing back and forth was a direct result of us not fulfilling each other’s needs of spending quality time together. She suggested doing date nights on a weekly basis, and from that point on, we decided to go for it. This is time we are investing in our marriage, and we are going to do that by “dating” one another every Tuesday night!
It’s sad, but the reality is eventually all of our kids are going to grow up and go off to college and ultimately we are going to be left with our spouse. We don’t want to be left in our house feeling like we don’t know one another; which our marriage counselor assured us, she has come across many couples who feel like they have grown apart after their kids leave for college. It definitely triggered something within the two us, probably scared us a bit. We definitely don’t want to end up like that.
So here we are, four years later, going on weekly date nights. It’s just a couple hours a week, but it’s just enough for the both of us to have conversation with one another, laugh, enjoy some good food, and not have to clean up any dishes afterwards! It’s so good for the soul, it’s so good for our relationship, and ultimately good for our family.
Here’s three easy ways we stay committed to going out every week that I hope can help you stay committed to with your significant other:
FINDING A CONSISTENT BABYSITTER:
Finding someone you trust to watch your kids and also someone who gets your kids excited to have mommy and daddy leave is priceless! We aren’t lucky enough to have any grandparents who live in the state, so we have a babysitter that is scheduled EVERY SINGLE TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE SAME TIME unless we tell her otherwise. It makes it easy, and almost forces us to go out, because we already have a sitter in the books.
NO EXCUSES:
There's always something that "comes up" in our lives, oh I'm running late at work, my friends want to grab drinks, the kids need me, ALWAYS SOMETHING! My husband and I set rules that nothing interferes with date nights. It’s always at the same time and same day, otherwise we won't make it a priority. Typically with everything we have routine in our lives, if we miss it a couple times, the likelihood that we make it a priority diminishes over time. This makes no excuses SO SO IMPORTANT!
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE:
A lot of people think date night needs to be super fancy, but for my husband and me it's all about getting out; not having to cook, wash dishes, or wait on our children hand and foot. Something as simple as Chipotle and grocery shopping together afterwards is considered quality time for us. We typically don't go grocery shopping together, so when we do something like this after a casual dinner it gives us time together that we normally wouldn't have. Usually a trip to Costco with my hubby after a dinner is seriously the best time, and he never fails to make me laugh and we usually have the best conversations when we do something like that.
I want to end this quick blog post by saying that I know finding time with your spouse is HARD. But making the little effort to go out once a month and not waiting for a special moment, anniversary, or birthday to go out will fulfill you and your relationship in so many ways.