{Day 7} Plan Dates

Welcome back to 31 Days to Becoming a Joyful Wife and Mother! I can hardly believe we’re already on day 7!

I will be posting more about being a joyful Mother in the coming weeks… but this week I’m focusing specifically on being a joyful wife.

Let’s talk about dating your spouse! You might think it sounds funny to date someone you live with daily and see all the time but trust me, dating your spouse is JUST as important now as it was before you were married.

Dating your spouse doesn’t have to mean going on big, fancy, expensive dates either! When your kids are very small and you’re totally exhausted a date with your spouse might simply be eating dinner together at home after the kids are tucked in to bed. This can be a lot of fun and won’t cost much at all. Just get the little ones tucked in early, order some takeout, and maybe play a board game together. I would suggest a movie, but that doesn’t make for much conversation time. So I’d say you should stick with a fun board game so you can still talk while playing. The important thing is being together and being able to talk with one another.

Here are some other ideas for dating your spouse:

* trade childcare with other friends who have kids. A friend of mine does this – they watch their own kids + the friend’s kids so their friends can go out on a date – then the next week they go out and the friends watch all the kids. If you think about it, everyone wins cause the kids will LOVE playing with their friends and you’ll get a date night every other week!

* do something fun like bowling, roller skating, or ice skating. Act like teenagers, hold hands, flirt with one another, be silly and have fun!

* Go to dinner – but make sure you choose somewhere you can have good conversation! If you go somewhere super noisy or full of distractions, it will be hard to talk during dinner.

* Do something outdoors together. Go for a walk, hike, bike, etc. Take a moonlit walk on the beach, put on some snow shoes and hike through the snowy woods … the possibilities are endless and can be done in any season.

* plan a surprise date – don’t tell him when or where you’re going, just plan it all and ask him to come along. It will be fun for him to see what kinds of things you cooked up for him. Make sure you plan and take care of the childcare ahead of time too!

I’m sure you all have a LOT more date ideas too … please share them in the comments if you can!

I know that making time for dating your spouse can be tricky with our busy schedules and trying to find childcare, but I hope you can see how vitally important it is for the health of your marriage. I want you to think about your relationship with your husband and what it might look like when your kids are grown and have left home. If you have focused ALL your time and ALL your attention on your kids and none on your spouse – where will that leave you when your kids are gone? You’ll have little to nothing to talk about or focus on anymore and trying to rekindle things at that point will be difficult. Instead, let’s make sure we keep a proper balance NOW, giving enough time and attention to our husband, so that when the kids are grown and gone we’ll still have a strong and loving marriage.

Today’s challenge:

When was the last time you and your hubby went on a date together? Just the two of you? If it’s been a while or you simply can’t remember it’s time to start planning that date now! Figure out a time when you can have someone else watch the kids and you can go out on a date. And if you know it’s going to be awhile due to time or money constraints then start planning that ‘at home’ date  - perhaps you could even do it this weekend?!

Oh, I forgot to mention … no one said dates had to be on weekends or at night … many times the only date my husband and I get together are on a Tuesday afternoon when the kids are at my Mother in law’s house. We often go for a walk or hike and then out to lunch and sometimes run errands together. I know it seems so simple, but it’s alone time together and it’s important.

If you’d like to check out the other 31 dayers, please click here.