Lifestyle

Date Nights

January 17, 2020 /

As I mentioned in my Night off blog post, my husband and I were together for 10 years before our son was born. We were used to spending a lot of time together and knew what was going on in each other’s lives. After our baby was born, the only conversations we started having were related to logistics – who is going to pick up groceries? who is going to do the banking? who is going to book the next doctor’s appointment? You get the jist…. We were also growing apart and becoming distant.

According to The Gottman Institute, it is important to have updated “love maps”, which simply means knowing the little things about your partner’s life which creates a strong foundation for your friendship and intimacy. John Gottman, leading researcher and author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work suggests regularly updating each other’s love maps by sitting down and catching up. But how can you sit down and have a conversation when you are constantly being interrupted by a child, you are stressed and you can see all the chores that need to be completed before bed. After 2 years of being strangers to each other, regular weekly “Date Nights” were born!

Once a week on a weeknight, we hired a babysitter and went out from 8pm to 10pm (after our son was in bed) to refresh our love maps and get to know each other again. We took turns picking a fun activity to do and other spouse was not allowed to say no. We had to go along with what the other partner wanted to do that week but taking turns made it fun! We kept an open mind and thus I got to try virtual reality games and jazz bars and my husband got to try my favourite yoga studio and paint night.

We also took half days off work and met up for lunch followed by some fun activities before heading home at our usual home time at 6pm.

Here are some of the activities that we did on our date nights:

  • Science center adult night (fun science talks, cocktails and space imax)
  • Board game Cafe (decaf cappuccinos with cooperative board games, us vs. the game)
  • Funny Fest (stand up comedy festival – we laughed together for days at some of the jokes)
  • Live music bars (dueling piano bar, jazz bar, random bands)
  • Walk to local pub for nachos and beer
  • Murder mystery theater
  • Night market at a local mall (local artists and locally made products on sale in open parking lot by the mall)
  • High end cocktail bar in downtown (fancy 2 oz cocktails)
  • Symphony performance
  • Movies
  • Float life (float in salt water tubs and meditate)
  • Casino (play Craps)
  • Visit with a financial advisor
  • Locked room (solve puzzles to escape)
  • Museum (newly opened music museum)
  • Vrcade (virtual reality games)
  • Paint night (facilitated painting class in a bar)
  • Yoga
  • Work out
  • The Rec Room (modern arcade games)
  • Couples massage
  • Sauna
  • Central library
  • Golf simulator
  • Driving range (in the summer)
  • Dinner with friends