I get questioned weekly on Instagram when I post about Sam and myself going on date night. People are constantly shocked at this frequency and typically ‘jealous’. I have been thinking a lot about those messages and wanted to share my thoughts on why we prioritize date night, and give my 5 tips for making time for date night in your marriage.
Like I said above, sam and I try to go on a date once a week. I will talk more about the how in my tips below, but as far as the why, my view is this. you have to invest time and energy into anything you want to be successful. We all do it daily in our jobs, maybe at the gym, into friendships, but many times we forget, or make excuses for why we can’t with our spouses. Don’t get me wrong. Some of those excuses are valid, and warrentated, but the reality of it is, we have to find a workaround and a way to make time for our marriage. Sam and I didn’t do much for date nights the first 2 years we had kids. It was slightly easier because with one child they are a bit more ‘portable’ but by the time Avé came around something had to give, so below are my 5 tips for making time for date night in your marriage to hopefully help you make more time for you and your spouse.
5 Tips for Making Time for Date Night
- Schedule it! – Spontaneity isn’t the name of the game with kids. Plan your date nights out in advance. For us we schedule our sitter a couple months at a time with a mass of dates, which brings me to my next point.
- Have reliable sitters. I know this one is hard. It was SO hard for me, but for us, we don’t have a lot of family to watch our kids, and honestly we like that when we pay a sitter there is zero guilt involved in time together. When we hire a sitter we tell them that they will get regular work (typically weekly), but that we like to go out on Fridays, so that also needs to typically be a night they are free. This requires us to budget in date night as a bigger expense but it is worth it.
- Take advantage of unique times or situations – Maybe your kids are in school and some weeks dates look like a lunch where it’s just the two of you.
- Don’t let a lack of sitter cancel your night – Sam and I try really hard to make sure that we do ‘date night in’ once a week too. For us that is typically delivery sushi and a movie. We are still devoting an evening to being together at home and not going in two directions getting stuff done after the kids are in bed.
- Kill two Birds with one Stone – For us date night is typically a mix of dinner and drinks and going and doing some errands. With three little kids at home we can’t always justify that the time we are away is all fun, so we try to make errands enjoyable by realizing we could have kids in tow haha. When we were training for a half marathon we spent much of our time running together, but again we tried to be happy that it could have been worse.
I hope this helps give you some ideas and inspiration for getting out and dating your husband or wife!
