The FUNdamentals of Marriage: Dating Your Spouse

A single friend recently shared a horrible first date story with me (and trust me, she’s got many).

It started with her date asking her to pick him up in the city because he forgot he wasn’t medically cleared to drive. It continued with him playing Pokémon throughout their date (he’s in his mid-to-late thirties). He demanded to know if she was a vegetarian and lectured her on the cruelty of eating meat, which morphed into an inquisition of monumental proportions regarding recycling, water bottle usage, and leather goods. Later he texted her to see if she’d like to hang out on the weekend, possibly meeting up at the Renaissance Festival, where he proudly shared that he had an authentic all-leather costume.

“You know, I just want to find a solid guy whose life philosophy might be different than mine, but who can respect any differences we may have. What happened to simple civility and fun?” she wistfully wondered.

This got me thinking about my own date nights.

To an outsider looking in, does it look like we’re having a good time? ARE we even having a good time?

Sometimes married date nights fall into a routine: find an affordable sitter, go to a moderately priced restaurant (because you’ve got to pay the sitter), order one or maybe two drinks (because we’ve still got to parent through nightmares and I-am-not-tired at 2 a.m.), and catch up with each other.

Sometimes date nights are simply three hours of relative quiet amid the bustle of a restaurant—there’s no demands, no questions, no yells, no tantrums, no world-ending breakdowns. Quiet conversations and the simple pleasure of enjoying a meal that doesn’t require any clean-up constitute a good adult evening. But are these date nights really what we need?

Sometimes.

Other times we need something more fun, and that’s what we need to work on.

Adulting doesn’t always carve out time for fun—we have to remember to schedule it amid the mortgage payments, family obligations, and work demands. Parents make a great effort to schedule fun for our kids, planning playdates or trips to the park, science center, or outdoor festival, but we don’t always remember to invest this effort in ourselves. Parents need more fun, positive social interactions. And while we can have fun with our kids, sometimes we just need to have fun by ourselves.

So here are our new date night rules:

- Date nights don’t need to be during “nights” they can be morning or afternoon dates.

- Secure a babysitter for at least one fun date each month (maybe arrange in-kind kidsitting with other parents to keep cost down).

- Take turns planning dates for the element of surprise.

Don’t get me wrong; I love planning or attending activities with our kiddo, but sometimes an afternoon hike is just more relaxing at an adult pace!

So over the next year, we’re going to go back to the FUNdamentals: we’re going to plan FUN.

We’ll research what’s happening locally and attend some more concerts and events. We’ll plan hiking or biking or kayaking afternoons. We’ll tackle an adventure course. We’ll attend a cooking class and finally master rolling sushi. We’ll volunteer at an organization we believe in. We’ll participate in a color or zombie run. Whatever we do, we’ll do it together, and in the process we’ll show our kids the importance of having fun and connecting with the people you love.

There can’t be a more important lesson than that!



After surviving ten years as a high school English teacher, Kathryn opted to create imaginary worlds and spend her days hunting for ladybugs with her daughter. She has written for ChildGood and Babies and Breastfeeding magazines as well as various sites around the web.