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Ten Steps to a Great Date Night (And Why You Need One)

Our lives are hectic and busy. Sometimes, like the Apostles in this Sunday's Gospel, we barely have time to eat. Jesus' solution? “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”


It's crucial advice for couples. The busier you are, the more you need time together that you gets you outside your work, chores, and parenting, and activities and let's you refocus on one another.


But when Dawna asks couples about date nights in couples counseling, or when we bring it up during couples workshops, we often hear expressions of exasperation. Formal date nights, they tell us, have become either tedious, or just another chore. Another way women are supposed to keep up their Instagram profile, or men can beat themselves up for not wooing their wives.


If planning and preparing for date night feels superficial or chorelike, you're not doing it right.


What is a date?


We want to begin with an important distinction that not everyone makes: a date is not the same thing as quality time.


Quality time is time spent giving one's attention to someone with whom you are close: your spouse, your children, a close friend. Family game night is quality time. So is a regular Friday night ritual of popcorn and snuggling together while watching a movie.


A date is a scheduled, interactive activity that takes us out of our usual range of activities. Dates move us out of our ordinary routines so that we can share an activity and focus on one another.


Going out to dinner at your favorite restaurant followed by a night at the theater, then coffee and pie at an all-night diner is a date. So is taking a walk to that new ice cream place and back. So is lying on the floor on blankets eating breakfast and watching favorite Saturday morning cartoons from your childhood. The trick is to get out of your usual routines in order to have fun together and focus on one another.


Good dates involve quality time, but not all quality time constitutes a date.


Ten Steps to a Good Date Night


How do you ensure that you will have a good date? Communication is key.There will be times you want to surprise your spouse but most dates for most couples work best if there is clear communication, discussion, and mutual buy-in. Here's ten steps to planning a stress free date.


1. Come up with an idea. Couples can generate ideas for a date by brainstorming together based on shared interests and hobbies, exploring local event listings for concerts, festivals, or special events, and trying out new activities or experiences they both have never done before. Partners may want to trade off the activity, each taking one week, or they may wish to collaborate.


2. Schedule and Commit. Whoever had the idea, or is most committed, needs to invite the other. Both partners should agree on the activity.


3. Plan the logistics. How will you get there? How long will it take? Do you have time to go home to shower and change or do you need to leave straight from work?


4. Create an itinerary. Clarify exactly the activities and times to which you are committing. It is important that there are no mix-ups that will lead to disappointments, delays, and recriminations.


5. Gather the stuff you need. Will you need swim suits? Rain gear? Beach chairs? Is there gas in the car? Did you run out of cologne/perfume?


6. Be flexible and spontaneous. The purpose of planning is to help you have a fun and seamless date, and avoid foreseeable problems. But the purpose of these plans is to protect you, not to imprison you. Don't let your planning get in the way of sudden fun impulses. Feel free to be spontaneous and to improvise if unexpected opportunities arise that you will both enjoy.


7. Focus on one another. The purpose of the date isn't the activity, it's the relationship. It's important to remember to focus on your partner, not winning the game, or getting in those steps. If each of you is focused on making sure that the other is having fun, you will have a great date--and you are strengthening your overall relationship skills.


8. Engage. Turn off your cell phone. Don't discuss work, the kids, or the chores you need to get done around the house this week. Just in case you've forgotten how to have funny, flirty conversations with your spouse, bring a handful of interesting questions or conversation starters to get things going (just Google conversation starters). And here's a tip to make sure it's a conversation starter: after your spouse answers a question, don't be quick to share your response. Instead, draw them out by asking them follow up questions.


9. Memorialize it, or not. Take a selfie and post it to Facebook or Instagram, or save it for yourself, your secret get away. Text the kids. It's your marriage that will establish the model for your children. Let them know you prioritize your relationship. Send your spouse a text message the next day letting them know what a good time you had, or reminding them of something fun that happened.


10. Start planning the next date. Here's a conversation starter for the drive home: "I had a lot of fun with you tonight. What should we do next week?"


Remember this: the goal of dating is to have fun together, from the planning to the date itself, to remembering it afterward (even if its to laugh at how pathetic it turned out!). These tips are meant to help the process along, not to create another chore.


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