How Important is Date Night for Married Couples? An intimate look at a Well-known Piece of Advice

You’ve read it in almost every place you look for advice on how to have a great marriage or how to improve your relationship.  

You can probably recite the list of advice by memory… 

Turn off your phone 

Have weekly date nights  

Flirt 

Compliment each other 

Say Thank You 

Kiss for 15 seconds 

And the list goes on… 

You almost get tired of seeing the same advice over and over…but there’s a really good reason that it is everywhere!  

They are all very important tips for a healthy and happy marriage. 

But I’m going to harp on just one of those today… 

Date Nights.  

Yes! You need them. 

There’s a good reason that married couples are highly and repeatedly encouraged to have regular date nights or at least schedule and set aside time to spend together regularly or as often as they can. 

The couples who have good marriages and loving relationships and a track record of good years with their spouse, know what they are talking about! 

They really do! 

After almost 14 years of having an amazing, loving marriage, I know that having regular date nights, even if it means having one at home and not going out most of the time, is a very important part of investing in your marriage that gives a big payout!  

Why are date nights so important? 

It gives you sweet memories and better bonding, laughter and quality time, a greater desire for each other, and keeps the light of romance burning, even during the down times! 

The more time you pay attention to something, the better it gets!  

The more time spent on improving and molding and fashioning something, the more beautiful it will become.  

Your relationship and marriage will begin to show quality and reflect the care and effort put into it. 

If you give more time to your marriage, it will become better and better, like a good wine. 

It adds flair and an element of excitement to the marriage and your time spent together.  

It encourages good communication, a greater appreciation for each other and a place to just be yourself.

Dating or courting was important to knowing if you wanted to get married and I think that it is important to continue to know and recognize why and whom you married. 

My husband and I are incredibly passionate about having a great marriage and keeping our love and passion blooming.  

The honeymoon stage is long gone, but something infinitely better has taken its place. 

Yes, we have grown used to each other in many ways after so many years.  

A simple touch from me, these days, won’t send his senses reeling, like it might have early on in our courtship, but he does still notice it!  

I don’t always thrill when he enters a room, but I’m definitely aware that he’s in the same room with me. (Catch me at the right time and I do still thrill!) 

Sometimes we forget to kiss each other good night, but we keep working on that day to day! 

But despite things becoming comfortable, with me and my spouse having plenty of ordinary days, in which the romance might seem like a distant memory, I attribute several things to why our marriage is still wonderful! 

Firstly, I count the strong foundation built on God, we started with when we got married, and the personal character we both still work on day in and day out to being the primary reason that we are both the spouses that we need to be for each other. 

And then there are date nights!!  

This is definitely one of the reasons that our marriage and romance still blossoms.  

They have been huge! 

(I really want to talk about flirting for husbands and wives, because that is like the sauce that tops it all off and makes the recipe of marriage so delicious you just keep coming back for more, but I need to put that into another post. It deserves its own!) 

So…why don’t married couples still date each other? Does it feel like too much effort to put in? Have they lost interest? 

I’ve tried to understand why couples think that they are done with dating once they get married or have kids! 

It’s as if they think they don’t need to put effort into learning more about their spouse, or that they don’t need to still be winning the affections and attention of that man or woman every day. 

It seems like the effort just isn’t there anymore. 

Could it be, that they just grew tired of every day becoming the same?  

That’s one of the reasons that continuing to flirt and give a little every day is so important to keeping a marriage fresh and exciting! 

Otherwise, your marriage can become tasteless and stale. 

It shouldn’t be though. You need to Spice. It. Up!  

Yes, make it interesting like when you were dating before you got married!  

It was fun, it was interesting, it was exciting, it was exhilarating, it was bonding, it was thrilling, it was important! 

And those are the same reasons that dating after the wedding day are still just as important! 

We have six kids and I totally understand about feeling like there’s no time for your marriage.

And fitting a date night in after you have kids, when you’re probably totally exhausted, sounds impossible!

But your marriage needs to be a priority and treated like one, or it will become like the unimportant thing that you have made it and disappear. 

There are still plenty of ways to spend time with each other at home and in between the chaos and exhaustion of caring for your baby or young kids. 

You know…a serious couple will and can turn just about anything into a mini date… 

Don’t get me started on what happens when we find ourselves alone somewhere in the house without any of our kids! Even if it’s just for a minute.  

A lot can happen in a minute, because we are still crazy in love! 

There are still ups and downs for sure, but the ups are so good and the downs are easier to get through because we know what’s waiting on the other side. 

We are madly in love, which I attribute to the little things that we make sure we do for and to each other and the deep love that God placed in each of our hearts for the other. 

Plus, the active flirtation almost every day plays a key role! 

Anyway…With date nights being so important, because they keep us connected and enjoying each other’s company, we try to spend time with each other at least once a week, if not more often, even if it’s only a skin to skin snuggle after we go to bed. 

There are a lot of benefits to skin to skin which I won’t go into here, but I highly recommend it! 

How to Have a Date Night at Home

Date nights can be something as simple as a glass of wine together while relaxing on the couch, a little foot massage while catching up on how each other is doing, slow dancing to a favorite song, or just snuggling in bed while you watch something together.  

It doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant, though you shouldn’t exclude those types of dates altogether.  

When the season of life allows, it is really special to go somewhere and splurge a little on your date. 

There should be some give and take and meeting in the middle and doing something that the other one wants to do, because that makes for a healthy, happy marriage.

But mixing it up is what keeps both spouses wanting to come back and do it again!  

Learning to and remembering to laugh together, flirt and have fun, is really essential to having a wonderful date night and I recommend to all the ladies, that you learn to do so with your man.  

He will be drawn to you like never before, when he sees your joy and how you delight in him. 

We enjoy spending time together so much, that we had to come up with more variety, just to keep our times together from becoming too much the same. What a problem 😉 

Variety does help to spice things up and keep things interesting…though just being together and with each other is enough a lot of the time,

We still like to liven things up and keep the youthful spark in our marriage. 

Over time, we have tried various things that we’ve read on the internet and landed on quite a few that we really like, as well as a few that we’ve come up with ourselves that we haven’t seen anywhere else in lists of date night ideas. 

I’ve looked at list after list of Date night ideas at home and Date night ideas out on the town, and I see so many of the same ones.  

I suppose there’s a reason that so many of the same ideas are everywhere. Most likely, its because a lot of couples do enjoy those things together, but I also feel like there’s been a lot of copy and paste going on or A.I. written content being used all over the internet. 

One thing that bothers me though, are the date night lists that I think…no…that I can tell, were written by a woman without taking into consideration what a man might want to do.  

These lists feel one sided in a big way.  

They include things like painting a painting together, or going to an art museum, which both sound like something a woman would more likely choose to do, because she values quality time. 

Those are all well and good in their own right, 

But there are a lot of guys who would most likely choose to have a nerf gun fight in lingerie, over going to an art museum, any day of the week!  

That may seem like a date idea just with the men in mind, but it’s not.  

Ladies, this is your time to shine.  

There’s nothing like a sassy woman having fun and getting her man good, to turn her man on! 

I’m not saying that every date needs to be tailored with only the guy in mind.  

I’m saying that for those women who wish their men would want to spend more time with them or wonder why their spouse doesn’t jump at planning a date with them, maybe it’s because he would like to do something more geared towards his enjoyment too! 

I think that a lot of us can agree, that men and women are very different and tend to enjoy different types of activities more than others, but thank goodness for that!  

We need that variety to keep the spice in life!

That being said, I still have some of the most famous and well known date night ideas on our own list of favorite date night ideas.

I put them on there, because both my husband and I, genuinely love doing all of them together.  

I’m so happy that you are here, it means that you find spending time with your spouse, very important, as it should be! 

Good for you!