3 Tips for Dating Your Spouse
Dating is a funny term, with a variety of meanings, boundaries and expectations depending on who you ask. It’s a status of relationship, and it is also an act-the purposeful creating of intimate romantic connection between two (or more!) people. We have blended that act with the time before engagement or marriage, so we can use some focus on ways to help date years into the relationship.
Tip #1-You Still Need To Date Your Spouse!
As we’ve blended the act of dating with the early time in a relationship, it can become easy to lose sight of the importance of continuing to have the dates with our long term partner or spouse. As cohabitation, children, aging parents, and other life changes occur, the relationship can unintentionally be placed on the back-burner. Assuming that it will still be there without tending can find couples at a loss when consequences significantly impact their dynamic, both in times of stress, such as child-rearing, and in times of calm, such as gaining an empty nest.
The first and most important step is to recognize that you can never stop dating your partner. Committing to make intentional ways to connect both as people and as partners, whether from the start of the relationship or a new approach starting today, will set you up for a stronger, happier and healthier relationship.
Tip #2- Quality Over Quantity
When you live with your partner or spouse, you usually spend quite a bit of time in the same vicinity with them-eating dinner, taking care of pets and kids, or watching TV at the end of the night. However, much of that time is about making your life work, and not about making connection work.
Dating your spouse needs time set aside just for you both and the focus is on interacting with each other! Watching TV every night is a great decompressor, but you are both focused on the drama in the newest episode of Love Island. Put aside specific time for you to do something that lets you interact-play a board game, go out for a walk without headphones, get the sitter and go out for dinner.
Think back to ways you used to date in the beginning of your relationship. Did you used to go dancing, or watch a game together? Reconnect with some old ways to connect. Schedule it regularly-weekly or biweekly assigned so that it’s as part of your routine as all the other parts you give attention to in your life. By choosing to set aside this time, you can give the experience your full attention, rather than trying to make something fit in at the last second of your day when you are already exhausted.
Tip# 3- Talk To Each Other About Each Other!
Alright, so you’ve made some time and space away from regular life obligations…and now you’re talking about the kids, or the to do list for the week, or worse-sitting in silence. You may be a bit out of practice, and that’s okay!
Check in with each other about how they’re doing as a human being, not just a worker/parent/child/etc. What’s been interesting to you lately? What are you looking forward to? What’s something you care about that you want to do something about, or you’ve been engaging with lately and how is that going? Isn’t Johnny on Love Island the worst? Look back to the roots that are why you enjoy the person and made you choose them to live a life with. Give space for the inside jokes, flirt and let sexual tension build, laugh at the old memories, and make new ones!
(If you notice you struggle to come up with non-responsibility topics, that might also be a sign for you to spend some time reinvesting in yourself)
It’s cliché, but your relationship really is a garden that needs to be tended to regularly to keep it growing, in sun and storms alike. Make the commitment to prioritize your relationship to ensure that it lives and grows with you both now and over the years!
