After watching a talk show the other day about married couples and date nights, it made me start to think about “couple time” The time that my husband and I get to spend together seems to keep getting shorter and shorter. From talking to other friends, it seems we are not alone. We know we are all becoming great moms, but sometimes ”great wife” gets put on the back burner. Between kids, jobs, sports, meetings, appointments, etc, it often becomes difficult to fit in a date night.Not to mention that an official Date Night out of the house can get expensive once you have dinner or go to a movie and then pay a sitter on top of that.
So, what I would like to hear is creative ways that you have found to spend quality couple time with your spouse. I’ll start:
When my son, Jake, was less than a year old, I was a stay-at-home mom and my husband was working as the manager of a donut shop. Even though he had to get to work early in the morning… ;time to make the donuts” … we were very fortunate because he was able to drive the short two miles home to have lunch with me. It soon became a habit to eat our lunch together every day. Even if I had plans on certain days, I would always keep them before or after lunch and try to keep our lunch date. Eventually we started to add a game of Scrabble to our date while we ate our lunch at the kitchen table. Yes, I know that is nerdy, but that is beside the point! Anyway, it was such a great time to hang out, play a game and chat about our day. Jake would sit right next to us in his highchair and eat his lunch as he watched us play.(And now he is a spelling bee genius. Just kidding, but wouldn’t that be a cool story?) When it was time for my husband to return to work, we’d stop our game and continue the Scrabble extravaganza the next day.
Since my husband now manages a restaurant which does most of its business during the lunch hour, there is no way he can break away for lunch anymore I am sure we are like most of you where many evenings are filled with meetings or commitments that we do without our spouse. But even the nights that we have no plans, he comes home from work, we enjoy a family meal, and by the time we get the kids in bed at night, my brain turns off, slippers go on, and I am ready to do absolutely nothing except watch mindless reality TV or work on the website. My husband often is in the same mode, except his choice for relaxing is the History Channel or a book.So here we are stuck again with paying sitters in order to squeeze in a date night on the weekends!
So we need some advice! Please share your thoughts with us on how to fit in couple time with your spouse!
