Today I'm going to talk about the importance of dates and more importantly, the top four things to do in each one you have. To begin our discussion on marriage and dating, let's discuss why they are needed. Dates are important for relationships because life is busy, stressful, and hectic.
Whether you have kids or not, you have work, you have a house, and all sorts of things vying for your attention so your spouse probably gets the crumbs. So, if you are not having regular dates with your spouse, you're going to soon feel like roommates. You're going to be two ships passing in the night because your relationship does not have an opportunity to create electricity. In the beginning when you were first getting to know your spouse, you dated them all the time. It was nonstop dates and that is the behavior that helped you fall in love.
But once you got married, you stopped dating each other, you stopped doing the very behavior that made you fall in love with each other. And then you wonder why you're still not in love. So if you want to fall back in love with your spouse and stay in love, having regular dates is a vital ingredient.
The recommendation is two mini-dates per week that are one to three hours each. The first thing to do for marriage and dating is cultivate emotional intimacy. Check the article here to learn more. Emotional intimacy by definition is really learning what's going on in one another's inner world.
Head is your agenda. What's on your day timer? What did you do during the day? What were your behaviors like during the day? Maybe you worked on this project for a few hours, then you went to that meeting for a few hours, etc. That's your head. Your heart is what you felt and why so mad, sad, glad or fear and why. Your feelings may be connected to the head items or they may be an undercurrent you've been feeling that has nothing to do with your agenda.
