Amanda and I are coming up on 25 years of marriage.
It’s been an adventure, with good times, hard times, and everything in between.
I’m no Love Doctor, but I can share one relationship nugget that has really helped us stay “happily” married for a long time.
“GO ON LOTS OF DATES.”
Amanda and I go on a lot of dates, Like WAY MORE dates than most other couples.
There are lots of reasons married couples don’t go on many dates, and most of those reasons are quite valid. Here are the two most likely reasons.
- COST: Going out to eat, especially at nicer places, is expensive, babysitters are expensive, and the more money we spend going out, the greater the likelihood of it causing financial stress, which often causes more strain on a relationship when our goal is to enhance it, not adding more underlying stress.
- TIME: We never have enough time, right? There are ALWAYS things that need to get done around the home. Plus, so many things are competing for our time, like work, friends, family, kids, and exercise commitments. Saying YES to spending time on a date means we have to say NO or push back on other commitments.
My relationship with Amanda is no different. We have lots of financial stress (a side effect of being full-time entrepreneurs is often never knowing whether you are going to make money or lose money each month).
We are also super ambitious with the number of things we sign ourselves up for that eat up our time.
But, we have found a way to spend an hour of quality time away from the house most days, to share a meal, to talk about life stuff, kid stuff, trips we want to take, business ideas, vent about work, family, etc., normal date stuff conversations.
Our relationship hack is that we go on BREAKFAST DATES most mornings.
We have a local breakfast diner not far from our house that we go to after we help the kids off to school, and we schedule it, just like we do work meetings or going to the dentist or the gym.
We minimize the “COST” of eating out by always sharing one meal.
We typically split an order of an omelet, skip the hashbrowns (for fewer daily carbs) and get an extra side of avocado instead.
It’s not a lot of food, but turns out to be just the right amount. When you go as often as we do, you end up not wanting a huge breakfast every time. We mostly sip on the coffee with free refills and chat about life. It’s great.
The food and coffee are delightful, but we keep returning because it’s a chance to connect, plan, shed stress, and enjoy one another’s company.
Now, I recognize that we have a distinct advantage over many couples in that both Amanda and I work from home and own our businesses, so we have the ability to control our schedules more than most.
But, if you can’t make a breakfast date work, is there another hour you can find in your day to meet up to just sit and chat, just the two of you?
I would encourage any couple to try to make it a priority, only because I’ve seen how it’s impacted my marriage.
We still occasionally go on fancier dates, and when we do, we often still share meals. Not just because we’ve learned that if we keep the costs down, we can go more often without it causing financial strain, but also because we find it more enjoyable to share a few different appetizers than order two huge entrees.
Anyway, that’s the way we do it.
I hope sharing helps someone out there…
Until Tomorrow,
Cheers to You and Yours
Mike Turner
P.S. If you are wondering why I put DAY 4 of 365, my birthday was on Jan 6th, and I committed to writing a daily journal for a year (and publishing it to hold myself accountable). I plan to use this challenge to share my journey to reaching some big, ambitious goals this year; this Vision Quest is one of them. I won’t always publish here, so if you want to follow along in my journey, you can subscribe to my email list here: turner.ck.page/mikes-blog