Date Night Sexy Talk

Hey, baby, you recycle here often?

My husband said to me not too long ago, "I've heard that marriage is supposed to be hard work.  I feel like I'm just calling it in these days.  Should I be working harder?"  I didn't have much of an answer for him, and wasn't able to really define what type of "work" we were supposed to be doing.  I am lucky and grateful that after nearly 17 years together, we are stable enough to be able to take each other for granted at times when things are crazy, but I also am well aware that people grow apart and marriages tend to fail when that pattern continues indefinitely.  So one of the things that we vaguely resolved to do is to have semi-regular date nights.  It seems like it should be easy, right? Get a sitter, go out for dinner, see a movie-- how hard can that be?  We are also lucky to live in a city where not only is the food great, but you don't ever have to dress up.  You just have to decide which dress fleece is the most flattering, and out the door you go.  (I usually try to pick the one with the least amount of dried snot and food residue on it.)

Honey, let's go vegan, all the way.

The thing is, Date Night is supposed to be a time for reconnecting, for rekindling that spark, and for eating dinner without constantly moving things toward the center of the table and repeatedly picking up things that have been flung onto the floor.  When you've been wrangling kids all day, or if you're tired from work, it can be hard to get into the right mind set.  For instance, our date nights, once we do manage to get out the door and out of the neighborhood, tend to start with sexy talk like,

        "My mom called today."

or

        "Julia didn't poop today."
        No, she actually pooped this morning. 
        "Oh, she did? How was it?"
        Rabbit pellets.  
        "Yeah, that's not surprising."

At least 50% of the time, we don't have a concrete plan for where we're going, and one time we hit an all-time low by having dinner at a local grocery store.  The sexy talk that night started with, "We're out of milk."  Granted, New Seasons has great ready-to-eat food, but it really doesn't provide the right Date Night atmosphere.  That night, we resolved that one of the requirements of date night was to eat somewhere with table service.  Period.

Since then, we've expanded our repertoire. We went to a comedy club. We went on a short kayaking trip. We tried a ballroom dance lesson. We've met up with another couple. We're getting a lot better. It's still difficult to get out the door, but we're getting the hang of all this hard work. Hopefully we'll still be dating another 17 years from now.