Making Date Nights Important (W/ Tips)

Married couples – Make date nights important, especially if you have children living at home! Even if you do not have kids, or are empty nesters….whatever season you are in, it is important!

Over the years, date nights have looked very different for us. Sometimes we just went to a nice dinner. Sometimes we went to a movie. When we had a young baby, we just went to the dollar theater & brought the baby in the stroller. Sometimes we used the time to do some shopping that we wanted to do uninterrupted.

The point is that the idea of Date Nights is going to look different for everyone. We are not all in the same places in our lives – financially, physically, age-wise, do we have kids at home, etc…. You have to adapt and make it work for you.

If money is tight – A few ideas:

• Make a nice dinner at home and put the kids to bed early (or set them up with a special treat – a movie they’ve been wanting to watch, popcorn, whatever would keep their attention, be special, etc for a time. This would be dependent on the age/maturity of the children, but usually if they are too old to go to bed early enough to make this happen, they would be old enough to sit alone for an hour “While Dad & Mom have a special date night”)
• If you can afford a sitter, but not a fancy restaurant – what can you afford? A favorite Take out you don’t often get? A pizza to share? Coffee & chocolate? The arcade?
• Swap babysitting with a friend who has similar aged children
• Go hiking, bike riding, swimming, walking, canoeing, driving – whatever you enjoy doing together (and is applicable to where you live, the weather, etc)

It doesn’t have to be expensive to be special. The main priority is the time spent together. Our first date was on the back of Grant’s pickup truck, eating McDonald’s outside a laundromat. 😊 No judging, it’s where we were at! We made it special and fun. Attitude makes a huge difference. 😍