A Different Perspective On Date Night

Generally when discussing date nights and why I believe they are important for any relationship, I get a majority of two responses.

1. Oh my goodness, I absolutely agree!
2. Lady, you don’t have a clue, do you? I don’t have the time!

The second response always takes me back a little, not because those people don’t have the right to their own opinion, but because I do get it. I get how life can run away from you; I get how it doesn’t feel that you can spare 5 damn minutes to do anything for yourself. Who do I think I am to say date nights are important if you can’t even take a shit without your kids’ faces peeking out behind the door?

My life might look a lot different than yours, my standards and my priorities might be different than yours, my culture, my hobbies and my opinions might be different than yours. But I can tell you one thing, I, in fact, do get it!

I get it! There was a time in my relationship where I saw my husband for one hour a day if I was lucky. We had complete opposite work schedules, when I was at work, he was home, and when I got home, he was on his way out again. This happened again and again, that was our life, that was what we needed to do at that stage in our journey. So yes, I do know what it feels like to not have the time to schedule in a date night with a busy schedule and a crap load of other responsibilities.

But I do know this: You will always be able to make time for the things in life that are important to you. You will always be able to fit in 5 more minutes if you really need to. If your kid has a concert that’s really important to them, I bet you would do everything in your power to be there, to support them. If you need to shuffle things around to get to that long overdue dentist appointment, you would do it, because you simply had no other choice.

Then why is it easier to say things like:
‘Life is too busy.’,
‘I don’t have the time.’ or
‘You just don’t get it.’
when the subject of date night comes rolling around?

Because I can tell you, date night does NOT, I repeat it does not have to be a 2-3 hour event, it does not consist of breaking the bank or pulling rabbits you don’t have out of your ass. It can a simple 10 minutes, you read that right, 10 minutes of your time. It can be a quick catch-up coffee, and voila, you made the time, you put in the effort.

According to the dictionary, yes I just looked that up, date night is defined as an occasion when two people who are married, or who have been in a relationship for a long time, go out together in the evening to enjoy themselves.

My jaw just dropped, I call utter BULLSHIT to that definition. Society has given us the wrong impression of what date nights are, and all the odd looks make perfect sense now. So to clarify I unquestionably DISAGREE with the official definition of date nights and instead I propose my own:

Date night is any moment where two people do absolutely anything they want to while spending time with the person they love.

Date night can be anything you want it to be; it can be absolutely anything you make of it, it does NOT need to be a 3-course meal at a 5-star restaurant, no sirree.

If you end up sitting on the ground fumbling with the munchkins toys and talking about what your favourite ice cream is, then that’s one pretty perfect date in my books. Date night is about making the time to catch up with your partner in a crazy world that can spin out of control in a matter of seconds. It’s about trying something different in life every once in a while, with the person you want to spend the rest of yours with.

You see you might get angry or upset when I say you need to make date night a priority, but you should also realise that I don’t define date nights as grand gestures. To me, date nights or days all intertwine with the other aspects of a relationship. It’s not a big event; it’s the moments we fondly look back on whenever life gets tough. To you, those moments might just be ordinary life, but to me, they mean that we put in the work, we made the effort, and we kept on dating each other, even after marriage.

Challenge yourself, don’t settle for sentences like:
‘Life is too busy.’,
‘I don’t have the time.’ or
‘You just don’t get it.’
but rather change your perspective on what date night means for YOU and YOUR relationship.

Start with 5 minutes wherever you can, and in no time those 5-10 minutes will give you a new spark of energy you thought you’ve lost a long time ago.

That’s all for now.

Odette
xxx