When was the last time you enjoyed a date with your spouse? We know most couples would probably answer it was a long time ago, or even say they can’t remember! It can be difficult to find the time for dates with everything else on your plate, but we believe it’s crucial to your marriage to spend this important time together—just the two of you without distractions.
We want to give you the perfect opportunity this month to get back into the swing of dating by extending a Date Night Challenge—and we want to help make it a little easier to pull off by giving you some ideas. Our challenge consists simply of planning to go on one date a month. We hope this will serve to refresh you as a couple as you carve out some time to be together and connect.
In our book 40 Unforgettable Dates with Your Mate, we give 40 date ideas for husbands and wives to plan for each other, designed to help meet the top five love needs for men and women. The dates in this challenge are taken from the book so you can get a taste of what we offer there.
Month 1: This date is for a husband to plan for his wife and helps to meet her love need for friendship.
Dating Days
Relive your early dating days, back when you were “just friends,” remember? What did you do together then? Play tennis? Go on long walks? Browse bookstores?
Now plan a date doing one of those activities—something you enjoyed doing together as friends. If you used to enjoy spending time in bookstores on some of your early dates, then plan to do just that. She’ll be thrilled to know you’re remembering those dating days so fondly and that you want to rekindle that friendship.
Prep Steps
- Get the date on both of your schedules—and the family master schedule.
- Schedule a babysitter, if needed.
- Depending on the type of date, consider what kind of planning you need to do. Check on the opening or closing times for restaurants or museums, make reservations, etc.
- Tell your wife what you’ll be doing and why. She’ll love it! And because of the wide variations that this date could encompass, she will want to know how to dress and what to expect. She’ll spend the day anticipating this date with her own memories of those early dates with you.
Answer these questions together on your date:
- What are a few things I do that refresh you the most?
- Do you feel that I spend enough of my free time with you? What things do you feel cut into our time together?
- What item in our schedule would you most like to change?
- Let’s talk about some of the way we’ve tried to stimulate growth in our relationship because we got lazy or too busy. Which one of these could we start again with a renewed vision for what it was meant to accomplish?
