Date night can be a highly effective tool for putting a little love back into your relationship. Whether you're going through a bit of a seven-year-itch or on the verge of calling it quits, making the right date night choices can be a huge win for your marriage. Unfortunately, making date night mistakes of monumental proportions, such as those listed below, can spell disaster for your efforts to save your relationship.
Spending the Entire Night Discussing Family Problems
Date night is all about getting away from the mundane issues troubling the two of you. It's time to turn your focus on each other. Leave the kids, parents, in-laws, and outlaws at home where they belong. You want this to be a genuine "feel good" opportunity. Don't squander it by bringing bad vibes into the evening.
Bringing Work Along on Your Date
Whether it is in thoughts or in deeds, bringing work on your date night date not only kills the mood, but also breeds resentment. In many marriages, constant work is a problem. Your spouse feels slighted because you always seem to put work before family. When you bring work on your date night that resentment becomes a deep and simmering rage. It's just another nail in the coffin of your relationship in many ways and one that can be easily avoided one night a week.
Cancelling Date Night or Rearranging it at the Last Minute
Cancelling date nights is a huge no-no. It's the last thing you want to do without a darned good (I mean someone has died or is about to die kind of) reason. Whenever you cancel date night, you're essentially putting whatever reason it was before your marriage. Stuff happens. Sitters quit or cancel and you're left scrambling to find a suitable alternative. It's better to do a little additional scrambling than to deal with the romantic and relationship fallout of a cancellation.
The same holds true with rearranging plans at the last minute. Once the sitter is lined up and dinner plans are set for the evening, last-minute rearrangements really upset the apple cart doing more harm for the date night cause than good. The bottom line is that if you aren't going to take date night seriously, it's better not to plan to have it at all.
Falling into a Date Night Rut
Whatever you do, don't do the same thing week after week. It becomes monotonous and routine. This is your opportunity to add a little fun and excitement to your relationship. Don't risk it by going to dinner and a movie week after week. Switch it up some and see what a difference it makes not only in your excitement about having a date night but also in your partner's response to date night. Make a date night "bucket list" of things you'd like to do on date night together and have fun granting each other's date night wishes.
Date night can be as exciting or as humdrum as you allow it to be. Make a compact with yourself and one another not to let your date night become a run of the mill experience that's easily taken for granted. Do this and your marriage is sure to be one in which you do not take each other for granted either.
Have a PLAN!==>Go for the Making Up Magic!
