Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Nuturing My Marriage: Date Nights

I have to laugh a bit at my first efforts at nuturing myself this week. I DID join Weight Watchers online, specifically so I can track my pints on my iPhone, but then iBroke my iPhone! Then yesterday I used a gift certificate for a facial at a lovely spa, but today I am suffering a terrible allergice reaction to the products used (even though the aesthetician SAID they were non-allergenic and very gentle.) Yeah, I hit a couple of road bumps...oh well. I am undaunted and I am excited about the process of beginning to intentionally nuture another area of my life - my marriage. Here's the plan:

Shane and I have been married for 8 years now. We have two kids, two jobs, two cars, two houses, etc. We have also had about two dates in the last several years! Yup...we, like so many marriedcouples-with-kids need a little reconnection. And instead of waiting for him to do something about it, I am stepping up and planning some dates. Last year I came across Project 52. The idea was to plan one date a week for the entire year. Each week, blogger Tiffany relates what she and her hubbie did on their date night (mostly on Friday nights, mostly at home and under $30.00) and invites readers to link to their date night ideas. She even created a pledge form to help you and your hubbie follow through. I am a bit chicken about committing to 52 dates, but right now I plan on using many of the brilliant ideas Tiffany and her readers have put forth.

For our first date of 2011, I have invited Shane to spend some time with me planning out the year ahead of us. As strange as this may seem, we have never done this. When we met and married we were both in our 30's, had our own lives, careers, finances, assets etc. And we kept it pretty much the same until the kids came along. We didn't actually have a joint bank account until I took an extended parental leave from work when Sam was born and had no income. Over the last year or so, we have come together and are now working towards joint future goals. I am looking forward to planning out some goals and activities on the family calendar and tweaking the family budget. And I was thinking we would have a little cheese fondue and some good red wine while we discuss the year ahead. (Hmmm...come to think of it, I have a feeling most of our dates will probably include food and wine!)

As for future dates, Tiffany has a great list of 16 fresh ideas here. And at the end of each of her weekly date night posts are links to readers ideas. Another website I came across via one of Tiffany's posts is The Dating Divas. It is a treasure trove of ideas for fun, inexpensive, unique dates. With all these ideas maybe I will be able to do 52 dates this year. There's no excuse not to!

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