Same Old Dates
By Amy Miller
THE SPECIAL OCCASION PRESSURES
The night before Valentine’s Day, we were talking about our holiday plans and my husband voiced to me that he has spent hours over the past few weeks trying to figure out a special activity for us to do for Valentine’s Day that wasn’t something we had already done or that feels “same ole, same ole” like going to the movies. We even have a STRONG bucket list of so many more date night activities to try, but sometimes those ideas don’t work well with the season or other facts. It’s crazy how even after 4 years of dates we are starting to feel bad about repeating some of our activities.
We have both admitted that before we were married it felt much easier to come up with creative ideas because anything we did would be new and exciting together. However, now it feels a little stressful, right?
Well for Valentine’s Day I told him I didn’t want us to feel pressure to do something extra special because what it comes down to is spending meaningful time together. And he had a bad cold, too, so I wanted our time together to feel comfortable to his needs at that time. So we ended up doing our go-to date activities of dinner and a movie, and man did we have a great day!
We took the pressure off ourselves of trying to do something grand together and because of that our conversation flowed so seamlessly, nothing negative happened, and we even learned something new about each other in our conversations over lunch!
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Me and batgirl are pretty tight[/caption]
Why you should take off the pressure
This experience taught me that every date night doesn’t have to be something new, and that it’s ok to do the same old dates you truly enjoy. It’s important to do something different occasionally because you don’t want to get complacent, but there’s a difference between complacency and comfortability. When you feel more comfortable doing an activity together, I believe your worries are more at ease which opens the door for increasing your emotional and even physical intimacy.
It’s very very similar to the first few dates with a person! You don’t want to do something so out of the ordinary that your date is too nervously focused on the activity rather than focused on getting to know YOU. The more comfortable you feel with your surroundings, the more open and positive you can be towards each other.
For those other occasional date nights when you want to mix things up, get my list of 100+ Date Night Ideas For Keeping Your Marriage Fresh! You can instantly get this printer-ready list by subscribing to my newsletter here!