Parental question #123 – What is this mythical thing called “Date Night’?

Getting Smart with Date Night

So we know spending time together is important in cultivating a healthy relationship.  This is true not just for new relationships, but those connections that have been years in the forming as well.

Having spent over 10 years working as a relationship educator and coach, the idea of “date night” was more than a common topic, in was an inevitable conversation.

However you define and create your “date night” – from the elaborate private jet to fill-in-the-blank, with a three course meal and tickets to the most amazing Opera/Ballet/Art Show/____ (oh, how romantic movies have spoiled me);  or a quiet evening at home, screen-free, chatting about something other than work, house, kids, and so on – the fact remains, that intentionally carving out time to look and see each other is vital for relationships to continue to flourish.

Once the kids arrive, well finding this time becomes more than a challenge.  (not that kids are the only interference, but let’s face it, they make the top 3 reasons for not doing a “date night”) The added cost factors, planning components – like being a teacher planning for a substitute teacher – twice the workload and inevitably behavioral issues arise – and often separation anxiety, either from the kids themselves or one of the “daters”, make one wonder if it is even worth all the extra effort.

Our kids arrived 3 years ago, at ages 8 and 6.  (yep, we are an adoptive family)  This literally happened overnight – call on a Thursday evening, kids being welcomed Friday night.  Now, my husband and I had been working towards this for what seemed like forever – classes, applications, home studies, certifications, home inspections, you name it.  Sounds like we had tons of time to “prepare” right.

Nope.  Not the way it works.

Jumping into parenting mid-stream is not the same as having 9 months of growing occur, as I found out two years ago when we were surprised to discover that we could indeed get pregnant – because we did!  (but all of that for another post)

Mid-stream parenting demands rapid learning process, or at least it did for us.  Our focused energy as a couple became all about tending to the needs of the FAMILY – working on and through attachment challenges, healing from old, now harmful, survival patterns, building a sense of identity of us as The Bakers.  It also came with educational challenges, development delays, behavioral issues, health complications, trauma history and PTSD.  Our opportunities for “date night” became “family dates” because that was what was needed.

Currently we are on the other side (we hope) of some pretty intense crisis living, with some of that crisis being our connection as a couple.  It seemed to me that we needed to reclaim “date night”.

But how?

Enter DateBox Club.

Subscription Boxes are all the rage right now, and this one delivers a “date” to your door. This made it easy to not put off – no need to find an appropriate sitter for the kids (this is a huge challenge for our kids due to medical and mental health issues), we could pick a specific night or be spontaneous, which if you know my husband is an essential element, and neither of us had to plan it.  Score!

We had our first “DateBox Club date” the other night and thought we would share some of the highlights.

Surprise Element

Because our date comes in a box, planned by someone else, to us it’s a surprise – how fun!  Of course hubby and I joked about what we would do if the surprise was lame (skip it and head to the bedroom was his first response – not surprising). The kids were curious, so we took a peek earlier in the evening, discovered the theme was French – celebrating Bastille Day, July 14^th, just a few days earlier.

As we did our family evening routine, I went ahead a put together a little plate of French inspired snacks and got some “special” beverages for us adults, because that’s just me.  With the kids down we were able to dig into the box, crack about how bummed we were about the World Cup and “here we are celebrating that country”, and immediately noted how connected we were already feeling.

Hook Up

No, not the modern use of the phrase, I mean we are already married to each other!   This “hook up” element is about the relational connection activities that are designed in the box.  One such activity was putting together a 3-D puzzle of, you guessed it – the Eiffel Tower.  As we were working on our “tower-of-connection”, we began acting like it was a scene from The Amazing Race and chatted about what kind of team we would be and how far we would be able to go.  This led us to reminding ourselves of the ways we work well together, compliment each other, fill in the gaps for one another, and sharpen each other.

Dimming the Lights

Part of the date included playing with sparklers and capturing words, pictures, etc. with long exposure.  And of course, there is an App for that! So, hubby set up a fire outside while I downloaded an App and grabbed the sparklers that came in our date supplies.  There is a bit of a fine art to this activity and we enjoyed trying our hand at it.

What is most interesting to me is what research is identifying about the effect “dimming the lights” can have on people.  Apparently, dimming the lights can increase your creativity by making you feel ‘free from constraints’.  Being in a dim room can help people solve creative insight problems and while researches have yet to determine why this is the case, they believe it could be because people feel more comfortable in the dark as light exposes mistakes.

I will say our evening had a very nice relaxing and freeing sense about it as we sat by the fire and played with our sparklers.  Our conversation became more intimate as we talked about some of the stressors our family has been facing, the challenges of approaching things differently, and extended forgiveness and gratitude towards each other.

hubby’s 

mine

While I have no idea what future DateBox “dates” will look like, we were happy to begin reclaiming date night, and look forward to balancing it out with the necessary family dates as well.

How are you ‘getting smart with date night’?