Dating
For the past two months, Brandon and I have been dating—and it has been one of the best things ever.
As we shared in an earlier post, a couple of months ago Brandon and I decided we were ready for a change. We were ready to deepen our relationship and, honestly, to live out our marriage on our own terms. Part of what we came up with was for Brandon and I to start dating again.
In all fairness, this was all Brandon’s idea. In fact, he didn’t ask me, he told me he was going to date me—that he would take me out on a date every single week. In all honesty, I thought he was crazy.
Not crazy for coming up with this plan, not crazy for wanting us to spend this kind of time together, but just crazy in terms of making it happen. All I could think was, how are we actually going to get away from our kids one night per week for the foreseeable future. I thought about the logistics in terms of both time and money. How could he be so sure he could make it happen.
But in true Brandon fashion, he has done exactly what he said he was going to do—we have gone out on a date, just the two of us, every week since he said he was going to date me.
A few things we quickly realized:
**We love spending this kind of time together. We get dressed, we choose a new restaurant, we order old favorites and we sometimes try something different. We sit across from each other and we visit, uninterrupted. Afterwards, we sometimes go straight home, we sometimes go out for dessert, and we sometimes just drive around or even go sit somewhere and talk. It is a special and uninterrupted time where we can just be. Did I mention that our evening is uninterrupted?
**When Brandon first pitched the idea, I immediately thought about time and money. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that it doesn’t cost all that much for just two people to go out to dinner. We don’t order drinks and we often end up sharing something because we both want the same thing. We are also talking about two people ordering versus all seven of us which is what we’ve grown accustomed to over the past 20 years. We also realized that before we were married, we dated. And we had zero money. If those two kids could make it happen back in the day, it makes sense that we could scrape together the funds to do it now.
**The only other thing that I thought would hold us back is the weekly commitment part. I wondered, how were we going to find the time every single week. Turns out, this is important to us, so we have made it happen. Some weeks we go out on a weekend night, one week we went out on a Tuesday night, and a couple of weeks ago our schedule was so packed, he asked me to go out with him to breakfast on a Friday morning. This time together means a lot to both of us and that gives us permission to make weekly dates happen.
**The other part we realized about dating as a weekly commitment is that we have dedicated far more time to far less important things. When I think about all of the weekly extra-curricular activities, weekly meetings, etc., all of these we have made happen at one point or another. Of all the random things we have done on a weekly basis, none of them hold a candle to our marriage and the way we want to live out our commitment to one another.
Date nights (or date mornings) have become a part of our lives. We know it and our kids know it. They are used to seeing us going out together and they are excited to hear about where we went and what we did. We love being this example to them as much as we love what dating has done for our marriage.
Dating is how this whole thing started over 20 years ago. We love having it back as part of our Unbinded Life.
