Poll: married people...how often do you have date night?

[Laila619]

Just curious.

If you don't mind sharing, how long have you been married? Kids or no? Also, if you do have small kids, has this greatly impacted your ability to get out alone with your spouse? Do you have a regular sitter?

 

[Sha]

We haven't officially instituted a regular 'date night' yet, although we've been meaning to for a while. The only reason is that things are kind of tight right now, financially speaking. If we had lots of disposable income, we would probably be going out a lot more regularly. As it stands - we only go out (alone or as a family) about once per month, sometimes two.

We do have a young daughter (10 1/2 months), but I don't think she's too much of a hindrance, really. Two of my friends would gladly look after her if I asked, and my mom also offered to come over and babysit if we needed her. We just haven't asked because of the aforementioned reason.

 

[TravelingGal]

We're lucky, we do date night every Thursday. We've been married 4 years and have a 2.5 year old daughter. My mom comes and watches Amelia on Thursday nights, but we also have access to our nanny, who can babysit.

We go out, but on nights we can't (for instance, tonight my mom can't come because she's a bit sick), we still do dinner and chat at home. We'll either play games (right now we like cribbage) or watch a movie. The idea is that we just hang out...we don't have to do anything special.

Date night is very important to us. Our way of showing that we still matter to each other, amid the craziness that is just life.

 

[ChinaCat]

We have a date night every Friday night where we actually go out of the house, sans baby. Saturday night we treat as a stay-in date night- after baby goes to bed, we order a pizza, open a bottle of wine and watch a movie together. No email checking, internet surfing, or reading allowed.

We have an almost 14 month old son and we've been married for 3.5 years.

It's probably the best thing we've done for our relationship since having our kid.

 

[athenaworth]

We don't have any children, but we still like to try to keep the romance going. Friday is our big date night, but sometimes it's just about us sitting at home having wine and cheese and listening to jazz music.

 

[soocool]

Married almost 21 years. One daughter almost 18 years old. We were lucky in that my sister had kids and we would trade off babysitting for each other once a week. So for the first few years DH and I would have time for just each other at least twice per month. My mom and dad wouls also babysit for us when we needed. When DD got a little older I was able to work out playdates with 2 other moms once a week and since I only had one kid it worked out very well for me.

Once DD was a preteen/teen sleepovers always freed us up for at least once or twice a month for date nights. Now that she is almost 18 DH and I have lots more time for just ourselves.

I highly recommend that if you do not have family nearby to find someone with kids who will get along with your kids and trade off babysitting. I should mention that I also have friends who are childless who would also babysit for me without having to ask and to this day will take DD to the movies, galleries, museums, etc.

 

[lizzyann]

We have date night just about every other week. Roughly 2-3 times/month. Hubby and I have been married for 7 years (Oct 18th!) and have an 18 month old son. Mostly we go out to dinner, sometimes shopping. I come back home feeling very refreshed. It is definitely something that is really good for our marriage. I am glad we make time for it. And I am thankful my mom loves watching my son for us.

 

[April20]

We don't have an official "date night". But we don't have kids and we usually do something together on either Friday or Saturday night. I'm gone a lot during the week because of work and we have a lot of other obligations, so we try to do something on the weekends. It's just not an official thing.

 

[packrat]

Date night to me would be..if I sat around and ate dates in front of the tv. We've done I'd say about 4 date nights. London will be 7 next month. All 4 date nights have been in the last couple years since Trapper was born, and he's 3 1/2. I finally got torked and told JD all I asked for is one night a month to be a husband and wife..we don't have many people who will watch the kids. My mom will but then I have to hear a lecture on how lucky I am to be able to go out (you know, lucky to go out 4 times in 7 years) b/c when we were little, she never did. She did keep the kids for us once for a night and then to the following evening so we could go out of town.

We've been married 9 years next month. Anymore I figure whatever, I don't want to listen to the lecture, and I don't want to hear the heavy put upon sighs that make me feel like nobody wants to be bothered with/by my kids and the eye rolling/head shaking, so..I just shut up and decided I'll buy myself gemstones.

My brother is back and he's already said he will watch them sometimes for us, and I know his girlfriend will too when she moves here, so that's something to look forward to!

 

[bricklayer]

We have a date night every week. It started out as Fridays but now it's usually Sunday.

No children, married just a few years.

 

[Haven]

We don't call it date night, but we go out together almost every Friday and Saturday night. If we don't go out, we stay at home and do something together, instead. We will usually go out to eat or cook dinner together, and then we'll go out either in the city or in the "downtown" area of our town. We go to the movies a lot, too.

We are lucky that we both have very nontraditional work schedules, so we get to spend time with each other and our friends during the week. That way we can have our weekend nights just for each other since we see our friends during weekdays or weekend days. For example, DH goes for a long bike ride with his guy friends every Wednesday afternoon, and I go out with my best friend most Thursdays. We see our families on Sunday, so that leaves the rest of the weekend to us! I do have book club one Friday a month, and no boys are allowed in book club, so we spend that Friday apart.

We've been together for over six years, married for over two years. No kids, just two dogs and three cats.

This makes me wonder if people eat dinner together every night of the week. We do.

 

[jaysonsmom]

My husband and I have been married for 10 years, and the kids are now 8 and 6. We only have date night for special occasions such as anniversaries, birthdays, or mother's day (which I thought was weird because my kids should celebrate me as mom)? We don't have relatives that live closeby to watch the kids, and we're "frugal". We wouldn't get a paid baby-sitter unless it's a special occasion, hence the 2-3 times a year we do go out on dates, it's a treat!

However, I have to say every night is date night with my husband. After the kids are in bed at 9PM, we pour some wine, snuggle up and watch a TV show/movie together or read in bed or ....... I really don't miss having a designated date night at all.

 

[lyra]

What's date night? lol.

We've been married 27 years, have 2 girls 20 and 23. We never needed date night, we spend a lot of time talking about everything in life on a daily basis. When the kids were little we brought them with us (often) or had their granparents take them (rarely). My husband's job is such that he's away around 3 days/nights a week, every week. So when he's home, it's special no matter what we do. Special these days is if we can get both girls to come out for dinner with us! Once they grow up, you don't see them enough! Having kids never changed our relationship. Maybe it was because back then (23 years 20 years ago) you put yourself first and had your kids adapt to you. It seems like nowadays it's the other way around. We didn't obsess about our kids then, we just did our own thing and everyone was together.

 

[Cehrabehra]

I've been married 19 years and have 3 children from 9-16. We have never been much into date nights but we do get out alone about once a month these days. I've known my husband since I was 5 and I guess it never was really important to us to be ALONE for the sake of our marriage or relationship - well, other than being alone in the bedroom

 

[kittybean]

We go out together to do something fun at least once a week--it can be a nice dinner, a casual dinner, going to the movies, going to play mini-golf, going to a museum or art gallery, taking a weekend trip together, or having a picnic and playing board games in the park. Otherwise, we spend time together almost every evening unless one of us is traveling. We usually eat dinner together and do some sort of "winding down" activity every night, be that playing board games, watching a show we like, baking, or planning projects for our house.

We've been married for a year and four months, and we don't have any kids or pets.

 

[zoebartlett]

My husband and I have been together for 7 years and we've married for a little over 2 years. We don't have kids. We don't really have a particular night set aside for date night, but I suppose if I had to pick a night, it would be either Friday or Saturday. I guess any night could be date night since we don't have many pressing commitments during the week after work, but it's hard for me to be in "date night mode" M-Th. My mind usually runs a mile a minute thinking about work, but Fridays and Saturdays are the days I try really hard to leave for family time, small as our family is.

ETA: Haven -- we eat together pretty much every night. We don't often cook together, and we make our own things for dinner pretty often (my husband's picky and some of our tastes differ). But still...we do eat (whatever we've made) together, usually while we watch a movie or catch up on things we've DVRd. I hate to admit this, but we always eat in front of the TV at home. It's a bad habit but we can't break out of it. I love going out to eat because it breaks us out of the monotony (sp?) of most nights.

 

[Amber St. Clare]

Married 27 years.

We don't necessarily have designated "date nites". We have nites where we do things we know things are important to each other--last week he took me to see Celtic Thunder because he know I love them--prior to that we went to BB Kings nightclub to see Southside Johnny because we both like them. It's not the amount of time we spend together, it's what we do together. We have friends who have a band and play one night a month at a local bar so we always make time to go as a show of support. Sunday morning breakfasts are sacrosanct--just the two of us.

 

[pennquaker09]

We generally try to have date night on Friday, and Saturday is family day. I say generally because, as a doctor, he might be on call or something like that. If we do go out, it's usually to dinner, or we might do something as simple as get coffee and talk. Having twin toddlers kind of makes the few hours we spend alone special. Even though, I think I love the time we spend together as a family more.

We've been together six and half years, and dates have always been something we have to find the time to do. Just the nature of marrying a doc. who is completely devoted to his patients and profession.

 

[swingirl]

What's date night? lol.

We've been married 27 years, have 2 girls 20 and 23. We never needed date night, we spend a lot of time talking about everything in life on a daily basis. When the kids were little we brought them with us (often) or had their granparents take them (rarely). My husband's job is such that he's away around 3 days/nights a week, every week. So when he's home, it's special no matter what we do. Special these days is if we can get both girls to come out for dinner with us! Once they grow up, you don't see them enough! Having kids never changed our relationship. Maybe it was because back then (23 years 20 years ago) you put yourself first and had your kids adapt to you. It seems like nowadays it's the other way around. We didn't obsess about our kids then, we just did our own thing and everyone was together.

This is pretty much it for me, too. (except my husband doesn't travel). We went on a lot of lovely family dates with our kids: movies, theater, museums, expensive dinners, etc. My husband and I always thought of our time with the "family" as the fun stuff. Now that our kids are older (23, 20) we still invite them out and believe it or not they love to come with us to the theater, dinner, etc. We've always enjoyed conversations with the 4 of us, sharing our day, thoughts, experiences, etc. So we never felt like we were missing some "alone" time. Heck, that's why we had kids. We had enough "alone" time before we started our family.

 

[Catmom]

We've been married 30 years and we do date night every Friday night that my hubby is in town. He travels a lot for work so we try and get some alone time when we can. We have two adult children still living with us.

 

[artdecogirl]

We have been married 26 years and when the kids were smaller we would do stuff with the kids, rarely did we go out just us, only for special events. We work different shifts now so some days we do not even see each other but on the days off we always do more activities then traditional date stuff, bike rides or take the kayaks out, we go to auctions on the weekends. So we probably do something just us 2 times a week. In the summer it is more because we do a lot of outdoor stuff together.

 

[blackberry16]

Since DH has been working night 4 out of our six year marriage, date night is sometimes the only thing keeping our marriage alive. We only see each other on Saturdays and Sundays. Saturday nights are always set aside to spend together. We especially cherish these more recent dates b/c we are TTC so we know that our alone time will come to an abrupt end.

 

[katamari]

We recently moved cross country, so now we are having, like, six date nights a week because we don't know anyone else to make plans with. Before moving, though, we tried to go out for dinner or drinks at least once a week, but we've never had a formalized "date night."

 

[vespergirl]

We only hire a babysitter about twice a month to go out & leave the house for a date night, but otherwise every Friday night we put our kids to bed & then order in dinner, have cocktails, and watch a movie. Our boys are almost 4 and almost 6 months.

We would like to go out every week instead of every two weeks, but we've had scheduling problems with our steady babysitters, so once that all gets worked out, we'll try to start going out just the two of us once a week.

Before we had kids, we probably went on dates 2-3 nights per week.

 

[packrat]

Blackberry, I hear you on the different shifts. Since JD's been out at the pack, which was about 6 months before we got married, he's been on 2nd shift, so the first 2 years we were married, during the week we saw each other about 45 minutes a day during lunch, and had the weekends together. Unless the pack was busy and he was working 6-7 days a week. Our together time usually ended up being housework/yardwork. Our dates were...going to the city to Menards to get stuff for the house. After London came I worked part time, but during the day, so I'd see him long enough every morning to say Hi/Bye.

We do pretty much everything w/the kids, and we talk constantly about everything the sun, but sometimes it's hard to have "talks" about the deeper things in a marriage or problems at work etc, when you're constantly bombarded w/Mom mom mom mom, on top of having opposite shifts.

 

[elrohwen]

We've been married for a year and don't have kids. I'd call every night date night - we hang out, have dinner, watch tv together, play a game, watch a movie, etc. The only nights we do our own thing is when DH has sports, maybe 1-2 nights a week, and gets home late. When we're home, we spend most of our time together doing the same things - we don't go in different directions and do different activities for the most part.

If by "date night" you mean night out with dinner and a movie, I guess rarely, because we're cheap and don't go out to eat more than once a month, maybe twice. But I don't think you have to go out to dinner to spend quality time together, so I think every night we're home together is pretty much a date night.

We work at the same company, so we usually eat lunch together too, conveniently with all of our close friends who also work here. It's a great arrangement! I love getting to see DH and our friends throughout the day.

eta: Haven, to answer your question, we always eat dinner together, unless DH will be home very late from sports (after 8:30 or so) and I don't feel like waiting that late to eat. We work together, and carpool when we can, so it makes sense to come home together and eat together, but even when we worked at separate companies we ate together every night. I can't imagine eating without him unless we had wildly different schedules.

 

[Jennifer W]

I suppose it depends on your definition of a date. We've never really had a date night, in fact we didn't even have them before we were married, much. On the other hand, every night is date night. Our child goes to bed at 7, then we generally hang out together for the evening. If he's working late or I go out with friends, we don't spend so much time together, but usually we spend good, fun time together every evening. We've been married 7 years this month, lived together a couple of years before that.

We don't have anyone who could babysit regularly in the evenings, and we live in the back of beyond anyway, so even before we had a kid, we didn't often go out in the evenings - it takes a fair bit of transport and planning, unfortunately. There is a really nice restaurant and a fantastic pub in out little village, and we used to visit them a lot pre-baby. If we had a sitter, we would do so again, but I can't really say that would be a date. It's such a small village and everyone knows everyone else, so you rarely end up talking to the person you arrived with in either venue. Fun, but not really an intimate date, as such.

 

[Steel]

No kids , 12 years.

I am one of the 17% that said 'what is date night'.

Is that when you wait till SO leaves the room to let a silent one rip?

I'm joking, but we don't do date night because we are occupied 100% by building this house. So we are building, organising the build, thinking about building or sleeping. In that order.

But we are more in love than ever.

Laila,
You guys will do just fine when your LO arrives, it will take time but you will find couple space too.

 

[Sabine]

We have a 14 month old, and we're military and currently don't live near any family, but we still do a date night at least once a month. If we had more money we'd do it more (babysitters are EXPENSIVE!), and our babysitter is also about to move .

 

[gemgirl]

We used to be so good at date night, going out for dinner every Friday night. But that hasn't been the case for a few years. Now we're lucky that we get an actual date night three or four times a year. My husband's work schedule is so flukey, and then there's always his tournament schedule...... So I just shop more .