To-do list should include date night

Marriage is hard. No one told me that when I first got married, or maybe they did, and I wasn’t listening. I have learned that it takes work to make a marriage work

I started dating my husband when I was just 17 years old. Decades later, I still love him dearly. More importantly, I really like him. We truly enjoy spending quality time together. However, as the kids get older (we have three 17, 15 and 11) , I am finding it more difficult to carve out time for “us.”

For some reason, it seemed easier to plan date nights when the kids were little. We had to be intentional about putting a date on the calendar, because we had to plan for childcare.

Now that the kids are older and they don’t need a babysitter, I am recognizing how fast the years fly by. The kids are going in so many directions, and soon they will be gone. So if the opportunity for family time presents itself, I tend to choose that option over a date night.

A few weeks ago, I realized that it had been months since we had been out on date, so we put it on our to-do-list. We didn’t travel far, just a few miles away to downtown Wake Forest. We stopped at a wine bar for a drink, went for dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant and then ended up dancing at a place that had live music.

It turned into one of those rare nights when you look into each other’s eyes, open your heart and bare your soul. We talked about our hopes, dreams and fears. There was a lot unpack, and I felt a connection that I had not felt for a long time. It felt really good.

And it turned out to be a good reminder that on the list of things-to-do, our marriage needs to be at the very top.