101 Date Night Ideas
By: Al Ferguson
Buy His Book Here!
Originally Posted: www.thedadnetwork.co.uk
Since having a baby or children, do you crave attention from your partner? Do you feel second best? Do you miss time to yourselves without interruption? Have you forgotten that boobs are actually really nice and not just functional feeding tools?
Well, we’re campaigning for all dads to take their partner on a date! Romantic, hey? We’ve cleverly named it, #datenightcampaign If you want to take part in spreading the dating joy, add this badge to your blog and simply take your partner on a date! Mums, you can take your partner out too? Or show this to your partner as a subtle hint?
And here’s the code to add it:
<a href=”http://www.thedadnetwork.co.uk/2015/01/101-date-night-ideas.html” target=”_blank” alt=”The Dad Network”><img src=”http://www.thedadnetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/image.png” style=”max-width:50%;height:auto;”/></a>
Please use #datenightcampaign to share the campaign.
It is so easy to get to 5 months with a baby and realise that you haven’t actually spent any quality time with just your partner. Keeping the house tidy, feeding the baby, driving the baby to sleep, bathing the baby and all the other new jobs get in the way of dating your partner like you used to. And even if you do get a rare couple of hours at the end of an evening when dinner is done and cleared up you’re so exhausted from having a mere 2 hours sleep from the night before that you simply hit the sack. (And by that I mean, go to bed…just to clarify!)
The wife and I made a very conscious decision before the boy was born that we would always make sure 1 night a week was clear from anything else and we would have a date night. And so far, we’ve been pretty good at keeping it sacrilege and carving out time for each other.
It can be tricky coming up with fresh ideas for dates though. Of course a takeaway & red wine in front of the TV is lovely and nipping out for dinner is a fairly guaranteed decent date, but when date night is hard to come by, sometimes it’s nice to spread your creative wings and try something a little different.
For Christmas, the wife got me a little jar filled with date ideas. (Thinking about it, is she trying to hint at something here?) Anyway, here’s some examples:
But the best bit about the jar is that it also comes with blank pieces of cardboard to add your own. Ok, so I must confess, this isn’t a post giving you 101 date night ideas, but instead it’s telling you that we are all capable of coming up with 101 date night ideas for ourselves. Here’s a few of mine so far:
# Book a spa day with a couples massage.
# Go clay pigeon shooting.
# Book a night in a hotel. (Leave the kids with grandparents if you can and look at Groupon for great deals on hotels. We get all our hotels mega discounted!)
And… once you’ve all left your comment sharing the hottest (or ‘coldest‘) date nights you’ve had, we’ll soon have 101 ideas to use as a secret pool of date night ideas that the wives won’t know about. It’ll be like Fight Club… the only rule will be that you don’t ever talk about the secret pool of 101 date night ideas created by real dads, tested on real mums…
The most important things, for us, to keep in mind for date night are 1) to make sure we have fun and laugh. That’s why the activity is really important. Whilst dining out is lovely, going abseiling for the afternoon or wine tasting might be more fun. And 2) to talk about anything and everything other than the baby or your kids. This is time for you and your partner to be away from your children to celebrate loving each other. It’s not time to solve your baby’s sleep problems or nursery issues.
So go on, share with us all your successful date night ideas and if you’re brave enough your date night flops! 😉
P.s. If you want your very own official Date Jar, perhaps as a gift to your partner, click here.
