Dear Danielle . . . We have three young children and cannot afford a weekly date to keep the romance alive and it seems a weekly date out is the only way to spend time with each other alone! How can we find the time to be alone and yet not spend any money?
Keeping our marriages a priority in the busy season of parenting young children is especially difficult. If you wonder just how difficult, check out last week’s post and some of the statistics I shared. Let those statistics and the others out there on the effects of divorce on children be your motivation for making (notice I didn’t say finding) time alone as a couple a priority.
Dave and I are in the midst of raising our young family with three boys 4 years old and under and another on the way. We’ve been very blessed to have my Mom retire and move to our area as our second son arrived, and being only 5 minutes away and very active in our lives, she very frequently provides free babysitting to get our time alone.
I know this isn’t the case for many couples raising young families, so I took a poll of friends who helped me compile these great suggestions:
- Dole out the money to the babysitter and find inexpensive dates for the two of you!
- Skip the expensive dinner out and go to the restaurant for dessert!
- Hit a local coffee shop for a coffee or tea.
- Stroll through your favorite store, even take care of some errands, and reward yourselves with an ice cream cone.
- Check out www.restaurant.com to snag gift certificates to your local restaurants at huge discounts. Wait for their 80% off sales and get $25 gift certificates for $2!
- Pick up a picnic dinner at your favorite sub shop and head to a local park to enjoy. Many state parks have free admission (and lots of privacy!) in the evenings.
- Release your inner child and rev up the fun…do what the kids do! Go to the local park and try the swings! Go to the local fountain and splash in the water! In the winter, go sledding or build a snowman!
- Check out your local calendar of events to find free concerts in the park, events at the museums or fairs and festivals.
- Cut out the babysitting cost by swapping babysitting time with another couple.
- Why just date night? How about date morning? Breakfast is a less expensive meal out and it is easy for a babysitter to serve up cereal and watch morning cartoons!
- Have a date right at home! No babysitting costs and just as much romance!
- Put the kids to bed early to free up some time for you and your spouse.
- Prepare a nice meal for just the two of you after kids are in bed and enjoy with your favorite movie. Don’t want to cook…order your favorite take-out and send one out to pick it up! (We do Applebee’s Curbside service!)
- Have some competitive fun and pull out a board game!
- Pick the night of the week with a show you both enjoy and make it a weekly “date”. Meet on the couch for a snuggle and a snack.
- Turn on the monitor and head outdoors to enjoy the cool evening with drinks on the porch, a dip in the pool or a swing on the playground (who says you can’t use it too!).
- Take advantage of naptime! This is huge for Dave and me. We have long used the 2-3 hours of quiet afternoon time on the weekends to spend together. It can be hard to give up those precious, daytime, kid-free hours when there are other projects and tasks to tend to. Let’s face it – we tend to have a lot more energy for romance midday and often head right into our own “naptime” ;-).
Making time together as a couple is a perfect test of setting priorities. Money and time are the two precious resources we have that can quickly reveal what we are prioritizing in our lives. If you find that you aren’t putting either money or time towards your marriage, you are likely not giving your relationship the priority it deserves in your life.
Want more date ideas? Check out this blog…
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