When was the last time you went on a great date... with your husband or significant
other? We're talking one-on-one, no-kids-around quality time. (No cheating.) If the
answer is "too long ago to remember," the advice in Marriage Fitness: 4 Steps to Building & Maintaining Phenomenal
Love might be surprising. In his book, marriage coach and author Mort Fertel
says a happy marriage requires scheduled fun time together every week. In fact, he says
that the most successful marriages are those in which the rules of dating ‑- be
romantic, make special plans in advance and so on ‑- still apply. In this excerpt,
he shares four ideas for making date night a regular part of your happily married
routine:
I know a couple who were avid tennis players. They enjoyed tennis together throughout
their courtship. Two years after they married, their marriage was in trouble. When was
the last time they played tennis together? About two years ago. Is tennis only for
dating?
How did you spend time together when you fell in love? How often did you go out when you
were dating? It's time to start dating again ‑- dating your spouse.
I don't think it's possible to succeed in marriage and experience true love without
spending at least one night a week together.
Date night can work magic in your marriage if you follow four guidelines.
1. Get out of the house. No activity at home counts toward date night. Home will remind
you of your practical and logistical matters. And if you have children... well, that's
not a date.
2. No movies and no other entertainment that requires you to face in the same direction.
You'll need to face each other. You are the entertainment. (There is an
exception to this rule. If you have enough time, you can watch a movie and then spend a
couple of hours talking over dinner. In any event, the point is that you need at least a
couple of hours to really be together.)
Guidelines Continued
3. Don't invite anyone else, and don't attend anything social. Date night is for you
and your spouse only.
4. Schedule at least a couple of hours for date night. Don't tell your oldest child or
the babysitter that you'll be back in an hour. Date night should be an evening.
Here's a suggestion for parents of small children. Like a physical fitness program,
sometimes the hardest part of a Marriage Fitness program is mustering consistent
inspiration. In other words, you may initiate date night this week, but what about next
week and the week after? Can you do it consistently? Why test yourself? Here's an easy
solution my wife and I discovered.
Rather than relying on your initiative each week, find a babysitter to commit to work the
same hours every week. Our babysitter arrives at 7pm every Wednesday night. We told her
not to call to confirm ‑- just come. Now we're set every week with date night. We
don't have to find the inspiration to plan it ‑- it's done! The burden is on us to
cancel, not to plan.
Date night can help transform your marriage, but you have to tune into the spirit of the
exercise. Two people can go on a date and not connect. If you go to the mall and read a
magazine while your spouse tries on clothes ‑- that's not a date. If you go to
dinner and spend the evening talking to the waiter about how you want your meal prepared
‑- it's not going to have much impact on your marriage. But if you help your spouse
pick out an outfit and have fun offering your opinion, you will connect. If you talk over
dinner about how you might prepare the dish at home, you will achieve the purpose of date
night.
My wife and I had a swimming pool in our backyard when we lived in Florida. One date
night we put candles around the pool and went for a swim. We opened a bottle of wine and
toasted each other while standing in the shallow end. We stared up into the starry sky
and marveled at the planes that occasionally flew overhead. We talked about... what's the
difference. It was an amazing evening, and it got better as the night went on.
Get creative with date night. Experiment and find fun things to do together. Take a board
game to a coffee house. See if you can climb that tree on the corner of the block. Go to
the local amusement park. Go race toy cars. Have a picnic in the park. Or just sit down
for a quiet meal at a restaurant. Whatever you do, focus on each other. Date night is not
about what you do; it's about you.
Reprinted with permission from Marriage Fitness: 4 Steps to Building &
Maintaining Phenomenal Love. Copyright © 2004 by Mort Fertel (MarriageMax,
Inc.).
