How to Fit Date Nights In
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Here’s something we haven’t discussed in far too long: how do you fit date nights in as working parents? Did you feel like “date nights” changed during the pandemic? How else do you carve out alonetime with your partner?
How My Husband and I Fit Date Nights In
For my $.02, my husband and I (pre-pandemic) had a really regular schedule with date nights when the kids were small — every two weeks I tried to arrange a babysitter and we’d make reservations somewhere. These were lifelines to us — so, so essential to our happiness and the health of our marriage to be able to kick back and be together.
(As I noted in our previous discussion on this, once my second son was born he came with us on a lot of dates — it was easier to wear him to a lot of dates rather than worry about whether a babysitter or family member could handle him.)
This was incredibly pricey, though — babysitter + dinner often topped $300. Yowza. (It was less expensive when a family member babysat, obviously, but that had its own drawbacks — I always felt a little judged that I wanted to go out without my kid(s), or if I came back a little tipsy. Plus, half the time our kiddo was still awake and in that overtired monster mode, so the parenting felt even more stressful when we came home.
During the pandemic, “date night” became us in the corner farthest from the kids having a martini — we’d put the Hue lights on low and focus on each other. Even that made a difference to me! (Also: much cheaper.)
I remember long ago reading that the secret to marriage is acknowledging your partner for about 90 seconds — 30 seconds in the morning where your focus is entirely on them, 30 seconds in the evening, and maybe 30 seconds at dinner.
I will admit that I’m not always the best at doing that on a lot of average days — too many things going on and my attention is being pulled in too many directions. But for date nights… I can give that attention and acknowledgment. And maybe that’s all that’s needed!
Readers, what do you do for date nights? How do you fit them in when so much else is going on? Do you have a regularly scheduled date night, or do you take it when you can?
Stock photo via Stencil.
I know this isn’t the point of this post, but the 90 seconds rule sort of makes me sad. I’m sure it’s good advice but it seems like so little time to focus on your life partner!
My kindergartener’s (bio) dad has him on Tuesday nights until 7, so husband and I try to sneak in a happy hour or early dinner with the 3 month old. Honestly it sometimes feels like we end up doom scrolling during that time since we’re so burnt out, and it’s something we should work on. We used to walk to a local place for a quick drink and it helped us disconnect from our phones/work and connect with each other, but that’s a bit harder with baby. What we have never done is take an overnight trip without the kid (now kids), which I’d like to attempt at some point when the baby is a bit older.
After a bunch of failed attempts for a date night (kid got sick), we’ve started doing more spontaneous lunch dates. We typically don’t need reservations for lunch, so we can decide day of based on our schedules. Kiddo has also been fighting bedtime lately (napping too long at daycare probably), and we’ve been a little nervous about grandparents’ ability to get her to go to bed. Hopefully once the weekly viruses ease up a bit this spring we can attempt date nights again.
Pre-pandemic, we would schedule two nights each month – one a date night for the two of us, and one for a 1:1 parent/child date – we’d swap kids each month. Babysitters became impossible to find so this has gotten harder. Now we try to do one lunch date each month, and one night for a parent/kid 1:1 but it may just be Mom and Kid1 building Legos in the basement while Dad and Kid2 practice braiding hair in the bedroom.
We recently talked about trying to start up the out-of-the-house nights for both sets again. We recently managed to finagle it where both kids had sleepovers on the same night, and getting a real restaurant date felt amazing in ways we’d forgotten about during the pandemic. Sitters still are impossible to come by, so with the oldest about to turn 11, we’re starting to work on leaving them home for short periods of time to see if that will be an option.
We don’t do regular “date nights.” Pre-pandemic we worked on the same university campus and did lunches weekly if not more often, but now that I WFH we don’t do that any more. We have local parents and our kid sleeps over at their place approx once a week. We rarely go out to dinner those nights (we typically have dinner with my parents before they take kiddo to their house) but we like to take a long walk together weather permitting.
DH and I don’t have a regularly scheduled date night, and I don’t know that I would want one, but I would like more regular date nights. We do more lunches, for some stretches, as frequently as once a week. The rule is that we don’t talk kids or logistics for more than a few minutes at the beginning of lunch. Fitting in lunch is usually easier, and frankly, more often than not I’m too tired or fried from work to want to go out on a Friday or Saturday night. Also, on the weekends, I want to see my kids and have family outings that we can’t do because of school and work during the week.
I’m getting tired of just dinner for dates, and would like to do something like a cooking class, going to a play, even the adults only indoor mini golf.