This caught my eye: “When we do have date nights, I can’t decide whether they’re a sign of a healthy marriage or an unhealthy one. Whether our relationship’s so high-maintenance it requires time carved out just for it, or its passion so irrepressible there’s no holding it back.”
We tried. I tried. It became a combination of being tired plus realizing we preferred to actually stay home and be with our children. We had a neighbor with one child, both parents worked full time and they went out every, single Saturday night. It made me tired to think of it.
We hardly had any dates! It was really hard to find babysitters, and when we did, they often backed out at the last minute or showed up late enough that we missed our event and had to cancel.
We had no family to help, either. My parents lived in FL. I have no other living relatives. My husband’s parents were elderly, frail, and clueless about safety. His brother’s family was overextended dealing with their own family’s problems, and did no babysitting for us, ever.
We basically ended up taking our daughter everywhere with us.
We didn’t carve out date nights but we did make a point of taking childless vacations. We were extremely lucky when the kids were young to have grandparents who were able to stay with them.
My S and his wife don’t have kids but they do have a weekly date night.
Our date nights were trips to Home Depot or grocery shopping. An empty fridge or rooms without a working light bulb did indeed smack of “passion so irrepressible there’s no holding it back.”
We never had formal date nights, and any trip that includes even one child is a “family trip,” definitely not a “vacation” in my book. DH and I went back to Ann Arbor last October for his 40th reunion – our first “vacation” in over twenty years. Now that we’re retired, DH thinks every night is date night, but I think our definitions differ. Time to work on that, I guess.
We never had a date night. We probably only went out alone together 2 or 3 times (for our anniversary) when the kids were growing up. I was a little jealous of some other relatives who had date night and parent only vacations, not that I really wanted to be away from the kids. Never having that time alone together made it too easy to put all the focus on the kids and none on our relationship. We still don’t get out together since my mom moved in before the kids were gone. However - we have a trip together in the works very soon…
We never had a formal date night. With four kids six years apart from oldest to youngest, those early years were rough (exhausting). Most of our socializing was with other families/neighbors though, rarely, just adults. We did have one vacation just the two of us when I was pregnant with #3, and a few overnights alone to attend weddings. Once the kids got older, we socialized more with adults only, but not just the two of us. We’d try to go out for our anniversary at least but often due to dh’s business travel, he wasn’t even home. A few years ago, we did go to Ireland alone - it was planned around a particular event and the kids were in school so we couldn’t take them. But regular date nights? Most of the time we were too busy managing, driving and/or attending our kids many activities to be able to have a regular night out alone. Now that the kids are all teenagers, we have a lot more free time, but I’ve found that the older I’ve gotten, the less social I have become! I’m an extroverted introvert. But dh and I do go out a lot more than we did when the kids were younger.
I could count the times we went out on a “date” on probably one hand for the 26 years we had a child under age 18 home. For a variety of reasons including:
we liked our kids and doing things with them.
our work schedules were often the opposite of each other - which worked out great for caring for the kids but not for spending time together.
no family in town. I wasn’t too keen on the teenage babysitter thing - don’t know why! Also we didn’t really know teens well who would be in that group.
I was probably excessively dedicated to “doing things ourselves” - without need for additional self. Maybe not my best quality!
In some ways I regret that we didn’t take the time to have a date occasionally. But somehow all those years just rolled on by and overall I cherish and loved doing lots of “dates” - but with the kids.
We’ve had date nights our entire marriage. Sometimes it was just a fancy dinner at home after dd’s bedtime but we always have carved out time to be alone together. Felt natural, not a burden.
We were lucky to have a plethora of sitters on our street and grandparents willing to stay if we did travel. We did trips alone here and there, but usually DD travelled with us.
We didn’t have regularly scheduled date nights when our kids were at home, but one way or another we wound up going out without our kids maybe once a month Most of the time it involved some professional obligation, or we would go with another couple; going out just the two of us leaving the kids home was really rare, at least until they were late in high school. It was pretty easy – we had au pairs until the kids were 11 and 9, and before the au pairs we had a family with 8 kids around the corner that was great for providing experienced babysitters. (The first time we showed up at a neighborhood swim club with a baby and a toddler, a 9 year-old girl from that family introduced herself to us and gave a sales pitch for her older sisters, along with their business card. Very effective.) We went out a lot with our kids, too.
The kids spent time without us during the summers – for a few years, they would visit my parents with their au pair for 2-3 weeks, and later they both went to summer camp. So we did a lot of stuff just the two of us then.
These days, we do sort of have regular date nights. We have accumulated various subscriptions – orchestra, opera, theater – and we make dates of those, sometimes with other couples.
We did not carve out date nights, and we didn’t do a whole lot without the kids. We enjoyed taking them on vacation with us, so we didn’t do vacations without them. It was just our choice. We had friends who did things without their kids, and that was fine for them.
When the kids are grown & gone, I am not sure the fact that mom & dad had dates nights 20 years ago makes a whole lot of difference. It’s where mom & dad are today that matters today, and that could be close together or worlds apart … regardless of whether or not they spent childless time together years ago.
We’ve gone out for a meal (B, L, or S) every month on our numerical anniversary date. Sometimes it was fast food. Sometimes it was a nice meal. When the kids were young they often had to come with us as we didn’t use babysitters and didn’t have family around. One church occasionally offered “Parents Night Out” that we took advantage of, but that rarely hit the correct date, so we’d try for a movie on those nights.
30+ years later we still enjoy looking forward to eating out somewhere on that day of the month even though we’re empty nesting now most of the time and it’s a treat if the kids can join us.
It was never a burden having a day when we knew someone else would be preparing food and cleaning up for at least one meal.
We’ve always gone away on our actual Anniversary - sometimes for the day, sometimes as part of a longer trip, but usually for 2 days/3 nights. Most years it was without kids as Grandma would pitch in by coming to our place or us going to her, then heading out on our own, but once in a while they’d come along - always for the longer trips. We still love those little trips too - something to look forward to each year.
All other trips, etc, our kids were with us. We enjoyed family life so never wished for anything different. If we hadn’t liked what we did, we’d have changed it to become what we liked. We have that power.
We had date nights with the kids, every Friday at our local pizza restaurant, and ice cream afterwards. In the beginning they brought their sippy cups. It makes me happy to remember those days. A few times my parents took the kids while we traveled, but generally we wanted them with us, and planned around their interests… We waited to have them and had already done a whole lot of traveling and partying.
In our empty nesting life, every night is date night.
Never did date nights. Got a babysitter when we wanted to do something with other people. Once every 3 to 5 years we took a trip no kids. We were together 15 years before we had kids, had a lot of date nights before then.
When my husband was in grad school and I was working full-time while we had 2 small children, we saw a marriage counselor who basically insisted we have date nights! It turned out that we couldn’t really manage it in the evenings, so we would make sure to meet for lunch outside of the house one day per week, and I have to say that it really helped. I guess it made us both remember that we had a life outside of school/work and the kids, and that we used to enjoy each others’ company and doing fun, social things together. Anyhow, that got us over the hump and even years later we would go through periods where we realized we needed to get out together more, without the kids. I give it a thumbs up as a quick, easy, effective way to sort of re-set the relationship, as needed.
