Dates with My Spouse: A Reflection on Two Dates a Month, For One Year
I never want to stop making memories with you. -Pierre Jeanty
Love never gives up. – 1 Corinthians 13:17
Let us not love with words or speech but with action and truth. -1 John 3:18
So, we did it! It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always the most romantic dates, but we completed our goal of making time for one another and getting in two dates a month for an entire year.
You can read about our initial commitment to do this in my post from last year here.
It’s been a rough couple of months with the changes in my dad’s health, and to be honest, I didn’t even follow through with posting our last date photo from January onto social media because I couldn’t even smile for the picture. As you can see…
I felt so emotional and numb. I couldn’t fake that everything was okay when it wasn’t. My heart was always committed to our dates, but that didn’t mean that it was always happy and joyful conversation. Sometimes the conversations were real, raw, and opened up opportunities for us to really delve into how we were doing.
I was thankful for the time I had with my husband on our last date night (which marked the 24th date in a year), but it was a difficult night knowing that in a couple of days I would be leaving to visit my dad in the hospital.
Thankfully, the majority of our dates were light hearted, fun, and gave us the opportunity to just be goofy and spend time together.
But, the reality of that last date and the emotional state I was in, helped me to realize that I still needed to spend time with my husband, and we still needed to remain committed to each other despite ups and downs…stresses at work, changes with our family, financial changes, health concerns, lack of sleep, etc.
We need to be able to rely on one another and make time for each other when the going gets tough…because it does get tough, and usually it hits unexpectedly.
It’s easy to make time for one another and be present when everything is “going smoothly”, but when life gets hard, we have to stay committed and whole-heartedly in our marriage.
That’s part of the reason I really enjoyed taking part in this commitment because we made it and completed it together. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we knew it would be worth it, and it truly has been. We’ve looked forward to these dates in this past year, and we’re already planning dates for February.
Earlier this week, my husband made me smile when we were discussing what to do for a date night. He reminded me that this would be the first date we planned together for the month.
I quickly reminded him that we had completed our two dates a month commitment. I don’t know why I replied this way, but I assumed he’d forgotten we’d already reached that 24th date in a year. And maybe I even thought that he wouldn’t want to keep doing them?
His simple reply was, “Well, don’t you still want to keep doing two dates a month?”
I was taken aback.
I don’t know why I made the assumption that I did, but clearly, I was wrong. My husband was clearly still committed to spending time together, even if we were past that “last date” marker. And I am committed too.
I hope that these dates don’t really ever have an “end marker” in our marriage. I know that the amount of dates a month may change, or what we’re capable of doing may differ, but I pray that we’ll always make time for one another.
It’s important.
And in the crazy world that we live in, love has to start and flourish in our home. We want our children to see and know that their parents love each other. It’s hard work, but we want to make time for one another, and we want to always prioritize our relationship. We hope that our marriage will still be going strong long after the kids are out of the house and starting their own lives as adults.
I can’t explain all the ups and downs that came with this year in a single blog post, but I can say that our relationship isn’t perfect.
We know we’re imperfect people. We hurt one another at times. We get stuck in old habits and sins. We laugh. We cry, and we get angry, but we’re still committed to each other. Marriage is always work, but it’s work that’s well worth the effort put into it.
I know we’re still fairly young in our marriage (5 ½ years), but I also know that we’ve grown so much in that time. And I hope that we continue to grow as one, as God intended, in the years to come.
Pictures from our dates this past year…
