How to Creatively Date and Pursue Your Spouse

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is for suggestions on creative date nights. I don’t do an amazing job of this in my own marriage, but I am growing and trying to take some ground in being more creative and intentional on our date nights. I have written about date nights before, so I won’t discuss the why in this post. You can find the reasons why we struggle and some creative solutions in the post 124 Killer Date Night Ideas.

But, for the purposes of this post… I want to share a very simple date night idea for you and your significant other. I want to challenge you to take a small step in being creative and breaking out of the "dinner at one of your three favorite places/movie" routine.

1. Get 5 note cards and 5 envelopes.

2. Pick 5 different parts of town (this obviously works best in a big city, but can still be modified for smaller towns).

3. Plan a unique, creative date night in each part of town you pick and write the details on one of the note cards.

   • Let me give you an example: One of our date nights was in Uptown Dallas. The date night was a three-part date: appetizer at Central Market, dinner at Smoke in West Dallas, and dessert at Pink Berry.

4. Put one note card in each envelope, seal the envelopes and randomly number them from 1-5.

5. On your date night, your significant other picks one of the five envelopes.

6. You and your date have a great date night, and just like that you have four other unique date nights for you and your significant other!

Other EASY Creative Date Night Ideas

I have two sets of friends who each do a date night challenge every month. Each month they alternate which spouse comes up with a creative challenge for the other spouse to carry out. Here are a few of their ideas:

1. Take your spouse’s initials. Plan a date night around the three initials in their name. You can do the same date night around the initials of your kids.

• For example: Kristen’s initials are KLK. A date night could be dinner at KFC (if I hated her and we both wanted to die this month), or better yet - dinner at Kenny’s Wood Fired Grill, followed by a walk around White Rock Lake, ending with some Krispy Kreme donuts.

2. Plan a date night around a color.

• For example: the challenge is to plan a date night around the color blue. We could eat sushi at Blue Fish, go listen to some blues music at a club or watch the Mavericks in their blue uniforms lose a basketball game to the Spurs.

3. Plan a date night around a random word.

• For example: plan a date night around the word “supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus.” The date night might include eating soup (Super), Calamari (cala), learning how to blow glass (fragalistic), etc...

4. Date Night Jar.

• This idea comes from Dr. Scott Stanley in his book, A Lasting Promise. In the book, Dr. Stanley suggests creating a jar or basket that includes a bunch of slips of paper. Each paper has a challenge or activity written on it. You randomly pick one slip of paper and do the challenge/activity written on the paper. For example, the paper might include something like: go to Target and buy a new board that you play together, watch your favorite episode of Fright Night Lights on Netflix, or make out with each other for 10 minutes and do nothing more.

• A few years ago, we filled out around 20 slips of paper and still enjoy picking out a Date Night Jar challenge!

5. Here are few other ideas: Plan a date night based on a theme (i.e. fall), a song lyric or title (i.e. Wagon Wheel), or numbers. 

That’s it! Nothing too complicated. All it takes is a little creativity and some advanced planning. I guarantee this will spice things up in your marriage and help you get out of the routine ruts that couples typically find themselves in. The possibilities are truly endless.

Your Turn:

Go on a creative Date Night. Please share any other creative ideas in the comments. Don't be shy! I have a prize for the person who has the best creative date night idea - leave a comment below or on Facebook!