Marriage Actually - An honest look at marriage

The Datenight Dilema

by Kerri on March 11th, 2008

So, here it is. You have a night to yourselves. A free night. Just the two of you. An opportunity to spend some quality time together. What do you do with it?

If you’re us, you go out to a nice dinner. One where someone is waiting on you and you don’t have to cut up anyone one else’s food or ask for a booster chair or make sure that there are cups with lids and straws.

You decide that you’re gonna go crazy and not order the same dish that you usually order, spend 10 minutes looking at the menu, then order what you usually order.

You finish dinner, which included some nice adult conversation and not 20 minutes of, “How do you spell ‘window’? How ’bout ‘behind’? How ’bout ‘dog’? I’m hungry. Is our food coming? How ’bout ‘french fry’?”

You decide to check out the movies, but see nothing that you’re willing to give up 20 bucks for, at the end of which you’ll only have a sore fanny for sitting so long in one place. So you head to the bookstore to look through magazines while you sip your cafe mocha.

Yeah, that’s our typical date. No matter how much we say we want to do something more exciting or interesting, we usually end up doing the same old stuff. We’ve occasionally tried a different restaurant, an arts theatre, a new bar, or just something different to spice things up a bit. But, at the end of the night, it’s always coffee. :)

This predictable, hum-drum pattern of dating, according to the experts, may be keeping us from the excitement and enjoyment of those “new-love” feelings that we felt when we first met. You know, that flutter and giddiness that comes with a new relationship where things are still novel and unpredictable and makes you want to jump out of bed with a smile on your face, even though the uncertainty of it all might make you want to puke. Yeah…..that good feeling. :P

From the New York Times:

But brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong. Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale.

Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.

Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park.

So, from now on, it’s canoeing down the Great Miami, ice skating at Riverscape (though that didn’t go so well for me), or taking that photography class we’re always talking about. Could be fun. :)

How about you? Are you predictable in your date nights, or adventurers on the move?

HT: Hsien

photo credit: Tigerzeye

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POSTED IN: Marriage & Dating