Dates have to be adaptive. If you have children, this is just a reality of life. You cannot expect life to continue at your pace.
If you don’t have children, you still know what I’m talking about. This past week, my wife and I planned our first date for the challenge early in the week.
We were going to go out Friday night to one a cool little section of our city. Have a quiet dinner and walk a little bit.
Then our son developed a fever. The plans we had for our daughters fell through and instead of them all almost being at someone’s house, they were all home Friday night.
Que the ominous music. There goes our date, right? Wrong.
We just had to be adaptive. We moved our date night to Sunday. We made different babysitting arrangements.
We were still able to do almost everything that we wanted to get done. We still went on a date and it was a ton of fun. We didn’t really do anything crazy. Our son’s fever went away so he went with us. We tried a new to us restaurant and then we walked around a little bit and just talked.
It was a fun night. It was a night that we could have given up on because our initial plans took some setbacks. Adaptive dates come from a commitment to dates.
Everyone’s life is busy. In our busy lifestyle one of the first areas that I see people make “budget” cuts is in the dating life. Maybe, it’s because dates seem so frivolous. There are many other things that seem more important but the truth is that there is nothing more important in the long run than creating fertile ground for emotional security to grow in your relationship.
This will have the longest and best results for every aspect of your family. If you haven’t been on a date yet, don’t despair. You still have plenty of time to get them in. Make a commitment to yourself, your partner, and your family to get out on a date. The benefits are tremendous.
If you have been on a date, keep it up. Post on my facebook page, www.facebook.com/joemartinocounseling what you’ve done. How do you adapt your dates? Let me know here or the Facebook page. I want to hear from you.