Date Night

As all of you parents are aware, the beginning of the school year is just around the corner. If your household is like mine, you meet this time of year with mixed emotions; glad to have the kids back in school but reluctant to watch your schedule explode with sports, clubs and homework and sad to see the toll those things take on your wallet. However, this time of year can provide another challenge, setting enough time aside to have “date night” with your spouse.
I hear many of you burning up brain cells trying to remember when the last time you and your spouse went out without the kids. If you find you haven’t had a date night in the last month, I am here to help. The first thing you need to remember is how important it is to go on these little excursions. I hope I don’t need to convince anyone of the value of spending quality time alone with your spouse!
I know many of you have objections on the grounds that you are too busy, or date night costs too much. I would remind you that you will be much busier as a single parent than you are with two of you, and you can go on LOTS of date nights for the cost of a divorce attorney; not to mention the hidden costs lack of closeness and low love levels between parents has on the whole family.
But because I am here to serve, I am going to help overcome these two most common objections I hear when it comes to date night. If you believe you are too busy for date night, you need to reevaluate the activities the family is involved in to see if you should scale back to get a breath and regain some sanity. The only thing most couples need is to be reminded to pull out a calendar and schedule a night to get away together.
Perceived lack of funds is also a common reason for allowing date night to fall away. Money concerns are not an obstacle if you think a bit more creatively. For example, find another couple with children roughly the same age as yours and trade off babysitting duties so each couple can go on date night. Another help is to realize the company is more important than the event or restaurant you go to. Grabbing some burgers at a fast food joint and then taking an evening walk around the lake or in a park under the stars, allows a chance to be romantic and talk for around ten bucks. Don’t have ten bucks? Skip the burgers, grab a milk shake and use the time for more walking and talking!
Look in the romantic book you bought a few weeks ago, when I wrote about being romantic, for ideas on how to spice up date night, or look on the web pages I suggested. Relationships take planning and work to make them as satisfying as they can be and no one plans to fail, but they often fail to plan.
“I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful. I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person. However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you." –Zig Zigler