As a wife and mother, it is vital to keep our relationship with our husband #1. In the midst of raising children and other activities that occupy our time, we have to make time to spend with our spouse. Just because we live together doesn’t mean it will happen automatically.
I recently read an article on how a weekly date night is critical for a marriage. I don’t know about you, but this type of commitment has been something that has been difficult for my husband and me to execute over the course of our marriage.
Date nights require a commitment and some type of routine, and routine revolving around work schedules has been vacant in our marriage. With a husband whose schedule was different every day, of every week, of every month, Jim’s job in emergency medicine made a regular date night impossible.
Over the years, we’ve enjoyed going out together. We have done a great job of looking for ways to get out for an evening, or would find ways to go away on short trips. Plus, we always do something special for our anniversary, like going out of town and leaving our children with their grandparents.
However, over the last two years of Jim going into full time ministry, routine has actually started to be more a part of our lives. So you know what, I think it’s time to consider starting a weekly date night.
After 34 years of marriage, we now only have our two youngest children left at home. They are 13 and 14, so “babysitting” isn’t much of a big deal anymore, so I guess you could say that we don’t have any excuse.
Let me list for you a few things you can do in trying to come up with a workable plan for making date nights a priority and a regular, weekly occurrence:
1. Together, take a good look at your schedules. If you’re like me, you’d like to be able to look at this next year, pick a day of the week for a date night, and schedule the rest of your life around it. However, I’ve learned that sometimes life requires more flexibility than this.
Depending upon what activities you and your family are involved in, a regular day of the week, all the time, may be difficult. Consider picking one night of the week for the next month or two and stick to it. Just make sure you move on to March, then April, etc. For the two of us, we’ve decided Wednesday nights are going to be our date nights for the month of January and possibly February.
2. Decide what you will do for your date nights. Don’t just let your dates with your spouse roll around with no attention given to it. While it doesn’t have to be expensive or full of fireworks, talk about some ideas of what the two of you might like to do before your date night arrives. Try to make this time special with each other. Jim and I have decided that we will take turns planning our date nights from one week to the next.
3. Allow money for date nights in your budget. For many couples, babysitting expenses can add up. While this can be costly, I remember how we participated in a babysitting co-op when our first three children were little. While this may be difficult to establish in a neighborhood, maybe you have a few couples in your church you could trade off with so all of you could enjoy your own date nights together with little or no money being spent on sitters. Here are a few suggestions to help you begin to brainstorm some ideas on how to start a co-op.
Establishing a regular date night has been shown to be very important in a marriage. Here are just a few reasons I can think of to help you decide to take the plunge along with Jim and me:
- Date nights give each of you something to look forward to each week–especially a mom of young children.
- Being alone together helps to nourish and strengthen your marriage.
- Spending time together can just be plain fun. Remember how you had fun dating before you got married?
- Date nights are cheaper than therapy–or a divorce!
Why not resolve to make weekly date nights a priority for this next year? Even though it may take some work and some money to make date nights a reality, our marriages have everything to gain. 
This article was taken from Vickie’s website on marriage found at Joyful Journey Productions.
Date nights are important for any marriage. It can be so easy to overlook with everyone having such busy schedules. I’ve had to compromise that date nights can’t always be full of romantic fanfare.
Shawn and I have spent several of our “date nights” with both of us working together at church doing our part-time jobs. But it can be fun to just be together to talk and work alongside each other. We try to squeeze in dinner together as well but sometimes it’s just being together with no munchkin distractions that mean so much.
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