That is days without time by ourselves. Our family time was important, but we wanted some alone time together. We wanted to start dating again, but had no idea how to make it possible while having little children.
Dates allow us to BE a couple, to love each other, to discuss the things we push to the side when life happens. When we honor our time alone as a couple, we are showing our relationship respect. It shows the commitment to our relationship and shows that we are a priority. One of our nearest and dearest friends was over for a family dinner one night and we shared our hope to make time for ourselves as a couple. Our friend was excited to hear this because she was interested in doing this for her family too.
We loved the family, and we trusted them. Finding someone to trust with our baby is the hardest hurdle to overcome when we are looking at dates. If you have close friends that you trust, but one of you have more children than the other, or the age range is quite large, you could set guidelines on how it would work. Maybe it would be a two for one date night.
The important thing is to have a conversation before you make the commitment. Be sure all parties are content with the agreement, and know that you can always try it the first time, and readjust for the second!
We started with just one day a month. Then we each blocked off time in our calendar as far out as we could this was usually three months ahead. Finally, when the day came, we could drop off our child and go! It was perfect because our children LOVED playing together, so our date times were play dates for them. We blocked off dates every month in our time budgets so we could be together as a married couple.
