Dear Hallee: Date Night
I have a date night question for you. My husband and I were talking about finding more time for each other and I told him about you and Gregg and your once a week date night. Could you give me some good advice on how to make it successful. Do you all do it on the same night each week? Do you always have a babysitter or sometimes wait till the kids are asleep? How do you make it inexpensive? We want it to be about our time together not the money we spend. Do you take turns planning the dates or do you plan them together? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. My husband and I are very much in love and enjoy each others company outside of being parents. It seems like we spend too much of our time on the daily tasks of living and raising a family. I really like [my husband] and want to spend more time focusing on him. 
We just take each week as it comes. One night, we went to a mystery dinner theater. Another night, we went to see a cheap movie and then had a picnic dinner with homemade food. A few weeks ago, we went and looked at houses with a real estate agent. One week, we didn’t have a free night, so we had lunch. This past week, we spent $8 for two tickets and enjoyed a show about the night sky at the planetarium.
What we do is meet every Sunday afternoon and purposefully discuss the previous week and discuss the coming week’s schedules and activities. Date night is always discussed. If there’s something that one of us wants to do, we typically email it to each other prior to the event, so that tickets can be bought and we know when it’s coming up. I’m subscribed to Living Social Deals and Groupons, which are daily ‘deals’ — sometimes it’s spend $20 on a $40 restaurant certificate, and sometimes they’re total busts — but they come every morning and provide ideas for restaurants or activities. I also am a Facebook follower of Lexington 365 — a daily “do this in Lexington” idea page.
We always have a baby sitter. Sometimes it’s Kaylee, but she’s our standing Monday night sitter for our volunteer work on Mondays, so we try to get someone else to sit on our date night, or hire a girl from our youth group to come and hang out with her while they both babysit.
It’s not always expensive – though sometimes it is. And it’s not always easy to juggle in a date – this week would be an example of that. It’s Tuesday and we’re still trying to figure out how we can have a date this week. But we’re committed to doing it, and we both really look forward to it every week.
Good luck! I love love. And I love loving and happy marriages.
Hallee
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date night…boy do i NEED one of those!
YAY for date nights!
Sometimes, if you have little children, date nights can happen at home. When Jer & Bec were little, I remember sending them into our room for a movie and having a romantic dinner for two at our kitchen table with candles and a special meal. I think just making sure you are connecting as a couple on a regular basis is SO important.
I know it is not healthy to care about what others thing, but how can I get past the family and friends’ comments about us on date nights. It really eats at me. You know the comments – “I wish we had the time for that…or….I wish we could afford that…Don’t you feel guilty leaving them with a sitter each Friday?….Must be nice to have money for evenings out…. I really need a night out” etc, etc.
Some folks think that since my husband spends 40+ hrs a week at work then we should spend the time with our kids and not hand them off to a sitter every Friday night.
Others are judgmental of the finance factor. We live simple and frugal so if we want to spend $50 or even $100 on a weekly evening out, it isn’t a big deal since we have ate the previous 20 meals from scratch! While on these date nights the kids get a fun meal like pizza or burgers with the sitter. We choose to live debt-free (besides our mortgage) so the cost of these dates isn’t a factor. Are we rich? Heck no, but stable, AND we pick and choose where to spend our money and ‘investing’ in dates with each other as husband and wife (not as a mom and a dad) is important to us.
Does anyone have advice on how to get past these comments from our families and friends?
As Hallee said, date night need not be expensive. If someone is saying “we wish we had the money to do that, you might reply: “lets check the papers and events going on around the area and see if we can find something for you for date night?” If they think the time needs to be spent with the children point out that you have 6 other evenings to spend quality time with the children. Always do this with a smile and love, not anger and resentment.
Janet,
I think people who make negative comments are probably jealous. So many of us want to do stuff like this (date nights) but feel guilty about it. It’s not really guilt about spending the money or taking the time away from our kids, it comes down to guilt for doing nice things for ourselves. It is really hard for some of us Moms to consider taking time for ourselves and marriage, and we resent those who do. It is TOTALLY our own fault, but I think that’s where many of those comments come from.