Never Have Another Reason NOT to Date Your Spouse!
Note: I may earn money or products from the companies, products, or links mentioned in this post.
I will be honest… I have heard a lot of excuses when it comes to dating your spouse. I have heard it from friends, and we even discussed it in our Sunday School class once! Here are a just a few reasons that I have heard from others:
- “I don’t want to leave my kids.”
- “I can’t find a babysitter.”
- “Our marriage is fine.”
- “We don’t have enough money.”
- “My husband thinks date nights are cheesy.”
While these are valid reasons, I still feel there are so many ways around them. A “date night” does not have to be super fancy – it can be as simple as sitting on the couch or even laying in bed talking or discussing things with your spouse! While I know there are other reasons that it may be hard to date your spouse – ie: deployment, work schedules, etc. I feel there are still plenty of ways around the other reasons I listed above!
- “I don’t want to leave my kids.” – You don’t have to! You can have a date night right at home! One night a week or even one night a month put the kids to be bed early. This is YOUR time, and an early bedtime once and awhile won’t hurt!
- “I can’t find a babysitter.” – There are plenty of ways to find a new sitter. My suggestion is to start asking around for recommendations. Then interview a few and have them come to the house and play with the kids while you are there so you can get to know them and see how they do with the kids. Work your way up to trusting someone new! And if you still can’t find someone, you can put the kids to bed early and do something together at home.
- “Our marriage is fine.” – I don’t know of any marriage that can’t use a little spice! Giving a little time to your marriage every once and while shows that you care about it and you want it to grow!
- “We don’t have enough money.” – This is a tough one we have had to deal with on occasion as well. But spending a lot of money is not a must for date night. A date night can be as simple as sitting down for coffee, or walking through a bookstore together. And if you still don’t have money for that then stay home and do a date night at home!
- “My husband things date nights are cheesy.” – I hear this one a lot, but really it doesn’t have to be that way. Find something that your husband wants to do. If he doesn’t like the name “date night” then call it something else, like “You and Me Time.” You both may have to compromise a little, but that’s ok that’s what marriage is all about – a little give and take!
What is a “Date Night”?
To me a date night is doing something together (not sitting in front of the tv) that brings you closer together. Whether it’s doing an activity together, talking together, or just being together, a date night should make you feel closer to your spouse in some way (emotionally or physically) when it’s over.
Some of you may wonder why I say no tv. I say no tv because although watching tv together is fun, I don’t think that doing that brings you closer together. For my husband and I we watch tv together on the couch almost every night. For us it’s nothing special or out of the ordinary it’s just life. So for me, watching tv together doesn’t bring me closer to him, but doing something different with him would.
Here are all kinds of ideas to help you with YOUR date night so you never have another reason NOT to date your spouse!
Date Night Ideas:
- Date Night Tips
- Date Night Jar
- Date Night Gift
- The Bookstore Date
- Date Night in a Bag
- Can of Dates
- A Few Favorite Things
- Romantic Dinner at Home
- 30 Ideas for a Date Night at Home
- 101 Things to do With Your Spouse
- 5 Summer Dates
- Let’s Get Lost
- Two Minutes in Heaven
- Couple’s Cafe
- How to Date Your Spouse
- The 15 Minute Date
- 40 Free Date Ideas
- 52 Date Nights
- A Cheap Date Night
- The Spouse Sleepover Date
- Top 50 Date Ideas of All Time
- Beyond Movie Night: 10 at Home Date Night Ideas
- Two Player Games to Play With Your Spouse
- 32 Stay at Home Date Ideas
- 148 Romantic Date Ideas
- 70 Cheap or Free Date Ideas
- Write Your Story Date
- 100 Ways to Date Your Spouse
Websites with Date Ideas:
- Love Actually: Romance on a Budget
- The Dating Divas: Strengthening Marriage One Date at a Time
- Never a Dull Date: Answering: What Should We Do Tonight?
- Nifty Date Ideas: Creative Things to do on a Date
- Datevitation.com: Have Fun Together
Date Night Questions:
- 5o Questions to Ask Your Spouse on a Date Night
- 100 Date Night Questions
- 30 Fun Date Night Questions
Looking to PIN some of these “date” ideas? See my board full of date night ideas here:Â DATE NIGHT IDEAS
Thank you so much for featuring my post about dating my husband! 🙂
What a great post you put together!!
THANK YOU!!!
I posted about this on fb!
http://www.facebook.com/BonnieDonahue.FanPage
Bonnie 🙂
Hello! I found your blog through HH6 Connections: Military Spouse Blog Hop! I absolutely love this post especially all the different articles with ideas. Certainly the most common objection in our household is money but I love seeing all the ideas that don’t have to be expensive.
My Husband and I have been married for almost 51 years. We met at a dance in July 1959 and have been together ever since. We married when I was 18. We go dancing every weekend. I have diabetes, arthritis, fibromyalgia and I am in remission from breast cancer but we still go every week and I dance like I did at 16. Fast and fun and slow songs cheek to cheek. I have to double my pain medication on dance nights but it is worth it. We also Go to museums on Sundays and Historical villages, and many festivals during the summer. On the weekend during the day we catch all the garage sales. We don’t usually need anything but looking is fun. We love having friends over for dinner and going to the movies too. Date night is VERY important and having fun is good for any marriage. He also helps me with a lot of difficult housework. We do it as a team. He brings me my morning coffee every morning.
I need to work on this, it is so easy to just bush it all aside and put off dating my spouse
This is such a good reminder. I love the way you handle these common objections to date night. I know how important it is to prioritise date night to strengthen and build your marriage and friendship.
Yet, for myself and my husband one of the biggest obstacles is energy. We have tried to set Friday nights as our date night. But often we are so exhausted we just end up collapsing in front of the TV together with me inevitably dropping off to sleep before 9pm.
It just seems like too much effort sometimes to organise a date night – we often don’t even feel like cooking a nice dinner or playing a board game together.
Will definitely read some of these suggestions to kick start our date nights again. Thanks for the great post. Blessings
Thank you for the ideas, Date Night give them a chance to understand better to each other.
Thanks for stopping by!
Amen to this, Kathryn! It is vitally important to make time to date our spouses and connect with them in meaningful ways. In fact, the excuse that they “don’t want to leave the kids” is not only flimsy but unhealthy. The kids will benefit from knowing mom and dad make time to strengthen their relationship. The kids will also be given a healthy model for their own marriages someday. Great thoughts, my friend and I’m so glad you linked it up with Wedded Wed.