| Date
Night
Summary: Never stop dating your partner. Unless you want to turn into roommates you better plan something special, just for the two of you, at least once a week. My partner and I were friends for about a year and a half before we officially started dating. I had been in love with her a while and made my feelings clear. However she had accidentally placed me in the "friend" category. Arrgh! Lucky be the man that escapes this fate! (Use a pirate's voice for best effect) As the months went by it looked like I may never climb out of the “friend” trap. So naturally, I started to look at my options. Fortunately my dad just landed a job in a town where I’d much prefer to live. Since I was still living at home at the time and not in a hurry to find my own place, I decided to tag along. I guess the idea of me not being around anymore was just the nudge needed to get me out of the friends box. A month before I was to move away she decided to give me a try. I think my exact words were “Uhhh, are you serious? Now? I'm moving in a month?” But hey, I was young and in love. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity. But I still moved anyway and decided to just do a relationship commute on weekends. At the time, she was 19 and I was 22. So here I was three hours away from my object of affection, and there she was just starting college. So every Friday after work, I’d jump in my car and head up to see her. I’d get there around 8:15 PM. On Saturdays we would spend the first part of the day together but in the evenings I would practice with my band and she would go out dancing with her friends. Sunday’s were slower and reserved mostly for the two of us. Around 5:00 PM on Sunday I’d head back home, and start the whole process over again. This was our routine for five years. This is something you can only pull off when you're young and in love. Try this in your forties and it will beat you down. When she graduated college she headed down to live with me. I was still living at home. After a year with the gang we moved out of my parents’ house and got a place of our own. Since the first five years of our relationship were long distance, every time we got together was special. There was little time to get on each other’s nerves or take each other for granted. However once we were living together we found how easy it was to just go about our lives and just forget about connecting with each other on a regular basis. If you’re not careful, you’ll drift from being a passionate couple to roommates with privileges. And then eventually, just roommates. So we decided to do something about it. We called it “date night”. The concept is simple. You reserve an evening together to go out and do something like a regular couple who’s dating. Movies, concerts, dinners, plays… it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s fun and interesting and you focus on connecting with each other. So here we are nineteen years later, still together, still in love, and now raising a daughter. In fact I’ve never been hotter for my partner and I think she looks better now than she did 20 years ago. She says I must be going senile or loosing my eyesight. And you know what? I don’t think we’ve ever missed a date night in all those years. How about them apples. That's it for now. Send Comments to: The Straight Dope Dad Originally Posted: 10-29-07 |
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