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Thanks for this post Mamagrizzly, and thanks for your great comments Thatmom and Kathy! 30 and 35 years of marriage is a lOOOOONG time!

The last time my husband and I tried to go on a date was back in February. My sister was visiting and she offered to have the boys for one evening. We drove into town, with baby in tow, of course, parked and ran frantically to a restaurant to grab a bite to eat before dashing off to the movie theater, all to find out that babies are not allowed in the cinema!
It was a disaster. Poor baby was crying most of the time too.

My husband and I have to work on spending more time together regularly, but we can do that at home.

My husband and I are big advocates of date night. They don’t have to be expensive nor do they mean you have to leave the house but we believe husbands and wives need to set aside a regular time to be alone with each other every week. When we began homeschooling 23 years ago, our oldest was only 10 so if we went out, we had to hire a sitter, leave the children with grandparents, or trade babysitting with friends. We did this perhaps once a month. The rest of the time we planned something special for late in the evening when the children went to bed. Sometimes I would fix a nice dinner and we would eat by candlelight. Sometimes we snuggled on the couch with a movie. Other times we played board games or listened to music and talked. Of course, a nursing baby always joined us.

After doing this now for all these years, this is what I have learned. My husband really needs to have my undivided attention every once in a while. Sometimes we think date night is for mom but it really is for dad, too. My children needed to understand that before they were, our marriage was and one day when they are gone, we will still be a couple. They must understand that our marriage is a huge priority. And when they do get this, it brings the greatest sense of security to a family you could ask for. Once the older ones were able to watch the younger ones, we had a little more freedom to come and go and now that my “baby” is 17, we can leave for an evening and not worry. We have been married going on 34 years and, looking back, we both believe that setting aside a regular time to spend together without the children has been one of the best investments we could ever have made.

Date night invented by the restaurant industry? I always thought it was invented by the Ezzos in their detachment parenting materials… But anyway, I must say that babysitting swap with neighbors is a great idea - we’ve been doing that since our youngest was 2ish. We now have a biweekly date night (and a biweekly “friendzy” of children) and it’s nice. We’re gone a couple of hours and home before bedtime. Sometimes I think the kids enjoy it more than we do - they sometimes turn down invitations to other friends’ houses because of “friendzy”!

But I did want to spend quality time with my husband. We found many ways to do that without leaving the baby, and we found, over the years, that sharing the ups and downs of raising our children together is what really glued us together. As the kids got older it was easier to swap babysitting with close friends or leave them in the care of grandparents occasionally. It was still nothing like weekly, but we continued our tradition of nurturing our marriage in other ways.

In October we celebrate 30 years of marriage and best friendhood.

Our date night is Scrabble or a movie after the kids have gone to bed. Sure we go out once in a while. Although, I think our last official date was in July before our youngest was born. Oh, there was Tim’s company part in Jan, but that stunk so I don’t want to count it. Do I have to?