Date Night with Spouse?

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DJgang

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Do you and your spouse have Date Night?

Everything that I read pertaining to a “happy” marriage says to set aside time for you and your spouse.

Well, what I am most interested in is …

How do you find time? Especially with a house full of children.

How often do you have a Date Night?

How important is your Date Night?

If you and your spouse do not have much time alone…are you like me…looking for ideas on how to get hubby to take time for just “us”…

Thanks!
 
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DJgang:
Do you and your spouse have Date Night?

Everything that I read pertaining to a “happy” marriage says to set aside time for you and your spouse.

Well, what I am most interested in is …

How do you find time? Especially with a house full of children.

How often do you have a Date Night?

How important is your Date Night?

If you and your spouse do not have much time alone…are you like me…looking for ideas on how to get hubby to take time for just “us”…

Thanks!
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Before we got married, my wife and I had many things that we liked to do. Unfortunately, many of them were physical activities that are no longer as appropriate for our aging bodies.

Anyway, with that as background, doing date night was especially hard for us when the kids were younger and frankly we didn’t make as much of an effort as we should have. The by-product of this neglect was as the demands from teh kids became less, we needed to find new things to do together and we realized how some of our recreational interests had gone down different paths. Fortunately for me, she has come to love golf but I’m still trying to find the value in chick flicks.

As one who is giving advice from teh perspective of “learn from my mistakes”, it is my advice to find certain common interests and make those “events” as important as we do getting to our child’s softball game. They don’t have to require you to even leave the house as some of date nights are as simple as eating on the deck (w/o the kids) and then spending the rest of the evening just drinking wine and talking.

The quantity of the date nights should be weekly. If God knows we need to get to Mass weekly, we probably need to intimately tend to the Sacrament of Marriage weekly too!
 
Set the date, arrange/hire a sitter & enjoy an uninterrupted, meal, conversation, sunset, whatever. It is well worth it to collect several reliable sitters so this can be a regular sanity break for the two of you. They can be family, friends or neighborhood teen/college girl you hire. Hint: if your kids like the sitter and develop a relationship w/ her they will be as excited as you are that you are going out!
 
I don’t remember my parents ever having date nights, but we got a sitter pretty much monthly for their ‘dinner and dialog’ group. Even now I wish they took more time to themselves. They sacrificed so much for us!

I always loved it when the sitter came over. They started leaving us at home alone when we were 10, 8, and 5.5, but we were VERY VERY well behaved and responsible. (wow, it didn’t seem like we were that young, but I guess we were!) They always made sure both neighbors would be home, as well as another trusted adult we could call.
 
How about trading kids with another family? One Friday, the kids all go over to the Smiths for a sleepover. The two of you have the house to yourselves – cook dinner together, sip wine, watch the sunset, dance in the living room, watch a football game – whatever you want to do. Then, two weeks later you take the Smiths kids for Friday night sleep over. Saving the cost of a sitter –

Another bit of advice, date night does not have to mean being alone every time… what about spending time with other adult friends/family – remember having fun with friends?

You could get really crazy and take a weekend and go camping, just the two of you.

For us, we sit on the porch almost every night and chat before dinner – it works for us!
 
My DH and I also don’t get much time at home, but it’s mainly because he’s in the Guard, and has been deployed more of our marriage than he’s been home, and we’ll be married 4 years in March.

I do think it’s important, but it’s also important to balance. When my DH was in Germany, my DD, MIL and I went to visit him for a couple of weeks. My MIL suggested we have a date night, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on my DH to give up time with his DD just for me. So we spent the time as a family. Also, when my DH first came home, we didn’t really do much outside the home because we were getting used to each other again. So it just depends on your situation.

We did recently have the opportunity to have a Date Weekend. The Guard is kinda tired of marriages ending while members are deployed, so they started offering Marriage Enrichment Seminars. The seminars are kinda boring, mainly focusing on prioritizing each other and discussing active listening at length, but the cool thing is that they put you up in a hotel, and pretty much assign “homework” to go have fun with your spouse. Pretty neat.

Since we don’t have much money, we used the second night of our weekend just to stay home, cook dinner together, drink a bottle of Sangria together, and watch a non-kid movie together. It was probably the best date we’d ever had!
 
We’ve always made a priority of having a “date night”----at least once per month, or even an occasional weekend away alone to a B&B. We get a sitter, or a relative. Period. Just think of the money you spend for the sitter, and nite out, goes to help your relationship!!! That’s pretty awesome!!🙂
 
We’ve done this at least once every 2-3 months. Yes, I think we should probably try to do it more often, but we’re so busy and we already ask family SO much to watch the girls and we don’t have $$ for a babysitter.

We try to be creative in finding time together. DH works nights with days off during the week. I work the 8-5 M-F schedule (until this next baby comes along!) so right now we do things like:
  1. Put the gate up while the girls play downstairs and have a drink (wine when I’m NOT pregnant!) and talk while cooking dinner.
  2. I wake up on weekend nights and we get a chance to talk when he gets home from work around 4:00 A.M. … then I can get up and get some stuff done before I get the girls out of bed.
We did take a trip when dd#2 was 6 months old and dd#1 was 2.5 years old. It was really wonderful, and just about the right amount of time away…we were really ready to come home to the girls afterwards (and no, i wasn’t breastfeeding…hence the possibility).

I hope that when I start staying home in February that we will work a little harder to have a date night at least once a month or so.
 
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kage_ar:
How about trading kids with another family? One Friday, the kids all go over to the Smiths for a sleepover. The two of you have the house to yourselves – cook dinner together, sip wine, watch the sunset, dance in the living room, watch a football game – whatever you want to do. Then, two weeks later you take the Smiths kids for Friday night sleep over. Saving the cost of a sitter –
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A grand idea!!! We did this for a nite out when kids were small, never a sleep-over though.
 
My husband and I have “Date Night” every Wednesday night. We have a steady babysitter who we completely trust, and the children love her.

Our Date Night is very important to us. It’s our time to reconnect with each other, discuss important issues, and just enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes we go out for a nice dinner, and sometimes we get cheeseburgers and milkshakes. The point is for us just to spend some time alone. It’s vital for our “marital well-being”.

I couldn’t recommend more highly Date Night for every married couple. It’s amazing how much just a couple of hours each week can do for a marriage!

Scout :tiphat:
 
Tim and I don’t have a baby yet, at least not until next May 🙂 but we spend our Friday evenings together, we go to bowling league and then come home and watch Battlestar Galactica together…its nice to just be together, and not have to go do 50 other things…I’m sure it won’t be so easy once the baby gets here, but hopefully we’ll find some way to just be together even if only for some hugs before the next diaper change…

Jamie
 
When the kids were little, we traded w/ another couple once a month. When we didn’t have much $$, we rented a movie and got take out. We still try to go out to breakfast every other Friday (dh has a flexible schedule and is off 2 Fridays a month) —KCT
 
If you can’t find/afford a sitter…send the kids to bed at a reasonable time, hunker up with a glass of wine and enjoy a movie together, without (hopefully) interuptions. We agree to not answer the phone, do laundry, talk about troubles, only enjoy each other. I also make sure I prepare an easy, yet fun dinner for the kids, maybe pizza. For us I make some simple h’ors doeuvres (sp?) nice cheese and crackers or crusty bread and cheese…simple - no mess, more time alone! We also agree that we BOTH stay up till the end of the movie and go to bed together - this one is tough if you have the wine, but it’s the “rule!” This has worked for us every Friday night for the last 8 years!
 
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movingmom:
If you can’t find/afford a sitter…send the kids to bed at a reasonable time, hunker up with a glass of wine and enjoy a movie together, without (hopefully) interuptions. We agree to not answer the phone, do laundry, talk about troubles, only enjoy each other. I also make sure I prepare an easy, yet fun dinner for the kids, maybe pizza. For us I make some simple h’ors doeuvres (sp?) nice cheese and crackers or crusty bread and cheese…simple - no mess, more time alone! We also agree that we BOTH stay up till the end of the movie and go to bed together - this one is tough if you have the wine, but it’s the “rule!” This has worked for us every Friday night for the last 8 years!
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That is so cute.

I love renting movies and cuddling up with my husband, too.

Tomorrow we are having a nice relaxing dinner at a favorite restaurant and then will catch a late movie–I think the Jodie Foster “Flight Plan” comes out tomorrow.

Saturday we are going to an art fair and then having a picnic in the park. 🙂
 
A few years ago we belonged to a babysitting Co Op with friends we trusted. Now we dont’ have a babysitter, but our children go to bed at 8:00 so we spend a few hours together every night that my husband is home.
 
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movingmom:
If you can’t find/afford a sitter…send the kids to bed at a reasonable time, hunker up with a glass of wine and enjoy a movie together, without (hopefully) interuptions. We agree to not answer the phone, do laundry, talk about troubles, only enjoy each other. I also make sure I prepare an easy, yet fun dinner for the kids, maybe pizza. For us I make some simple h’ors doeuvres (sp?) nice cheese and crackers or crusty bread and cheese…simple - no mess, more time alone! We also agree that we BOTH stay up till the end of the movie and go to bed together - this one is tough if you have the wine, but it’s the “rule!” This has worked for us every Friday night for the last 8 years!
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This is the same thing we do! I don’t even feel like we need to go out on date nights anymore because we have such a nice relaxing time at home together!
 
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Princess_Abby:
That is so cute.

I love renting movies and cuddling up with my husband, too.

Tomorrow we are having a nice relaxing dinner at a favorite restaurant and then will catch a late movie–I think the Jodie Foster “Flight Plan” comes out tomorrow.

Saturday we are going to an art fair and then having a picnic in the park. 🙂
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Ahh… the prebaby days! I remember those! We still go to museums, resturants etc. but we have three little ones in tow 🙂
 
It’s funny how when you have kids it’s just a more comfortable feeling to stay close to them and hang out at home while they snooze upstairs! Cheaper too!!!
 
Our last date night we went to see “Weekend at Bernies 2”😃 in the movies.:ehh: Unless you count a Wedding or two that we went to without the kids. Yes, that came out in the early 90’s;)
 
Yep, ya gotta do the date night thing. We do at least once a month, but the wifey would like it to be once a week.

I can’t take the pressure man! Having to think of stuff to do…i don’t know what to do! I had to think of that stuff while we were dating, now it should be her turn. 😃

Really though, we do simple stuff a lot of the time. Tomorrow we’re going to eat at a local street side BBQ and then go shopping for a toaster oven, get a latte, walk and talk, maybe even hold hands :cool: .

But one thing we do know: You will never have the time. You have to make the time.

…and it is good for the relationship. She felt like I didn’t care about our friendship cuz all we did was be parents together. It’s a good thing, the Date Night.
 
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