Although Prioritizing Date Night seems like an episode that might be helpful before Valentine’s Day, I purposely waited until after because I believe date night is all of the time.  It shouldn’t be something that is focused on once a year. Date night is an investment. And what you choose to invest in is important. Being busy, having kids, and not being able to get away are not excuses. Choose to prioritize date night with your spouse – it is worth it!

In This Episode, Allie + Brian Discuss:

• The value of date nights as an investment in your relationship.

• Viewing date night as a hobby, not just something on the calendar.

• The importance of relieving yourself from the pressure of date night.

• Date night ideas for every couple.

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Date Night Ideas for Every Couple (this is FREE! Don’t miss out!)

• These Solid Walls – this no longer exists, but you can grab my Getting Started with Affirmations PDF here.

Need some date night ideas? 

Brian + I put together a FREE guide that is loaded with all kinds of date night ideas! Whether it is a date night at home or out,  this guide is for you!

i want date night ideas!

If you have a question, comment or a suggestion about today’s episode, or the podcast in general, send me an email at hello@alliecasazza.com or connect with me over on Facebook & Instagram. 

Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to.  I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days.  I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it.  Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and i know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood.  I’m Allie Casazza and this is the The Purpose Show.

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Hey ladies!  Welcome to Episode 15 of The Purpose Show.  This episode is all about prioritizing date night, no matter what season you are in.  My hubby is here with us.

BRIAN:  Hello again!

ALLIE:  So we purposely waited to do this episode after Valentine’s Day, although it seems it is an episode that might be helpful before Valentine’s Day.  I purposely waited till after because I believe date night season is all of the time.  It shouldn’t be something that is focused on once a year.    

When you have that attitude, your expectations and pressure to make Valentine’s Day super special, crazy romantic, goes away.  Because you have that time together all of the time.  It doesn’t mean you have to go out of the house. It doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of money.

We have walked through probably every season of date night imaginable.  We wanted to share our take on all those different seasons, what we did in each one, and give you some inspiration and ideas to hopefully have you putting a date night time block on your calendar this week.

BRIAN:  What I have learned over the years, and what we have done together is using date night as an investment.  For example, if you don’t put any money in a bank to save it, there is never going to be any money saved.  There is never going to be any money there.

So I need to put in that time into our relationship bank throughout the year. I feel like it is an investment in our relationship, in our marriage over time.  You need to see that I am showing that I care by investing in spending that time.  That’s one of your love languages, too.

To put that time in throughout the year is important.

ALLIE:  Where you invest your time, honestly money too, is important. Sometimes there are seasons where you can’t really do much, but when I see that you are free with going to nice restaurants with me and putting that financial and time investment into me, just makes me feel so loved.  And of course, those are two things that are my love languages.

Investing in another person, spending time with them. If guys were initiating, “hey when are we going to do date night this week?”, and you had the babysitter on the phone on hold, have the calendar open, we would just swoon.

It makes us feel so loved to know that your husband wants to spend time with you.  That he is concerned about missing that time with you.  I think there have also been seasons where you were not that way and I carried it.  We have been married for a while and it is a maturity of “couplehood”.

BRIAN:  There were times when there was a pressure for me to plan a date night, or bring it up, or talk about it.  Things get busy. Things happen – good things, bad things – sometimes we would forget.  You would feel so sad.  You would feel it was a “if I didn’t do it, then it wouldn’t get done” kind of thing.   

But we have come to this place where we know that we need this for each other.  We plan it together.  We both just collaborate with each other.  We know that we want to go out on a date night every week or every month.

ALLIE:  That is such a good point.  In the past my attitude, as a young wife, was very much – my love language – time and money spent. I didn’t realize it at the time.  But if Brian gets me a present or invests in me financially, or spends time with me, those are the things that fill me up the most.

I didn’t really know that at the time, but back in the day, I had this expectation of “if you don’t think to spend time with me, take me out, even if it is just at home. I am not high maintenance when it comes to what we are doing, but if you don’t initiate spending time with me and having a date night with me, then you obviously don’t love me at all.”  That was my attitude.

BRIAN: It was hard for me to understand it that way, because it wasn’t my love language.

ALLIE:  I wasn’t really even communicating it.  It was like, “read my mind.”  The classic man/woman marriage struggle.  It was really, really hard.

Over the years we realized that it was such an expectation, really unrealistic, and really unconstructive, actually destructive.  Lots of arguments about that. It was just so hard.  Now its very much, “there’s no need for you to carry all of that, even though you kinda do.”

Recently, when sickness hit us we kind of skipped a couple of weeks.  You were the one who was “hey we should go out, let’s plan a date night, when do you want to go?”  It was nice.  The pressure is gone.  You actually enjoy spending time with me and want to spend time with me.  We have formed this habit of going out together as a couple.  When it is not there, you notice and you miss it.

Because I am fun to be around when I am not having my arms crossed and standing in the hallway with my heels on and my purse like, “are we even going to go?  Do you even love me?”  That’s gone now.  It is definitely this collaborative “coupleness”.

Date night is one of our hobbies. We love doing that together. We make it so fun.  “What do you want to get to eat this time?”  “Oh, I wanted to try that new drink, lets go to this new restaurant.”  “Afterwards do you want to walk around Target, go the lake?”  We will talk about it and we get excited.  The expectations are dead.  It is a collaboration together of how we are going to cultivate love in our marriage.

BRIAN:  Date night doesn’t have to be like that Valentine’s Date Night.  Like, “we have to go to dinner. We have to go to the movie. We have to go to this crazy romantic place because it is ‘date night’.”

I feel like date night is just you being you and me being me.  Putting everything aside and spending that time with you.  We have done it every way in the world.  Being at home with a dollar in the bank account. Or with lots of money in the bank account, it doesn’t matter.

At the house, with the kids with us, we would figure out to have them do something together while we go have dinner with ourselves that night.  Or just got something super-cheap that we enjoy, maybe a snack or something special to us.  It just depends on the situation.

ALLIE:  This is just our season right now, and I think we get questioned so much.

On Instagram I always share “date night” and what we are doing.  We love it so much.  I think it looks so shiny, “wow! Date night at a restaurant every week” and some feel that if they are not doing that then they don’t have a good marriage.  It’s just not that way.

We are not that couple at all.  We are super mellow.  We just love spending time together.

This is our season of greener pastures.  Our struggles are minimal right now and we are very thankful for that. We have come through a lot of hard times.  You can hear some about that in past episodes. This is just our simpler, easier season and we are just enjoying it right now.

That was my word for the year.  Enjoy.  We are just enjoying each other and going out to dinner and not having to worry financially about that has been very nice.  But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have awesome date nights on a shoestring budget.

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**Note: These Solid Walls no longer exists, but you can get my Getting Started with Affirmations PDF here.

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ALLIE:  Let’s dive in a bit more for the next couple of minutes of our date nights over the years.  I want people to ditch the excuse that their busyness, their kids, not being able to get away, is why they don’t  have time with each other. Let’s talk about things we did before this season. At home date nights.

BRIAN:  There was a point where we didn’t have a babysitter.  When we moved to Arkansas, we didn’t have family.  We had friends and people from the church…

ALLIE:  We weren’t going to ask them to babysit.

BRIAN:  We didn’t have the help that we have now in California.  We didn’t go out on a date for months and months.

ALLIE:  The only time we did was when we came back to California to visit and we would sneak in a quick date night while the kids slept at Mimi and Poppie’s house.

BRIAN: For that situation, we would put the kids to bed.  I would get stuck late at work.  We would make dinner together. Or you would have it made.  We would just sit and try to have a nice dinner that was different than normal that we shared together.  We spent time like that. Or we rented a movie from Redbox.

ALLIE:  Yeah, just something simple….

BRIAN: We would just sit and watch a movie.  Just saying, “we are going to just sit and watch this together”, it was fun.

ALLIE:  There were times where we were just exhausted.  You would fall asleep sometimes during date night. I would fall asleep sometimes during date night.  We would just be struggling.  We were struggling so much in those seasons. There were a lot of life struggles.  Sometimes we were just not in the mood.  But that’s not the point.

Nothing can be based on emotion or mood because then nothing will ever get done unless you are happy or in a perfect mood.  That’s just not going to build a lasting marriage.

I think when you are exhausted, when it has to be late, when you want to fall asleep, it’s ok but you have to make the choice to prioritize date night, no matter what’s going on.

Date night needs to be removed from the stereotype high heels, dinner out with a babysitter, a $400 price tag every time you step out.  It’s ridiculous. It’s unrealistic.

It can be talk a bit on the couch for 15 minutes while you catch up about your day.  Kiss a little.  Love each other a little bit.  Just be in the same place in the same time alone for a second.  The seasons will ebb and flow like everything in life, but the point is to prioritize it.

If you are broke daters, rich daters, at home daters, adventure daters, sit and talk at a restaurant daters.  It doesn’t matter what kind of couples you are or what season it is.  I think the point is to say “I love you. I am in this to win it. I want to connect with you once a week or once a month.”

BRIAN: I think there are so many different ways, so many things that you can do… being at home, order something at home, going out, adventure things, things that are fun.  There are so many things nowadays that you can do together.  I think the point is that no matter what it is, it is choosing to make this a time where we spend together.  That’s the main point.  It doesn’t have to only be a certain way.

ALLIE:  Right. Or be surrounded by pressure and expectation.

BRIAN:  The point is that I am purposefully choosing to spend this time or this night with you and do something with you.

ALLIE:  Yeah.  It can be in the morning.  There were seasons where we would get up at the butt crack of dawn. (Sorry I said butt crack if you’re not listening with your headphones and your kids are right there.)  We would get up and have coffee together. We were freaking exhausted.  But we just made it happen.

BRIAN:  When I worked nights, sometimes your mom would watch the kids while we went to a breakfast date.  {laughing}

ALLIE:  So we put together a free download that is just loaded with all different kinds of date night ideas for every couple.  Date night ideas at home. Date night ideas out. All different kinds of things. Super fun.  I think it is one of the most fun, free downloads that I have ever put together.

Go to alliecasazza.com/shownotes/ep-015  or you can just go to alliecasazza.com/shownotes and find episode 15.  You can download that for free.

It is really, really great.  I am looking at the list right now. It is so long and so full.  It is just super, super fun to have on your fridge as a reminder to love on each other. Spend time with each other. Have fun together.

Be encouraged you guys!  Promise that you will take action. Get out your calendar. Put a little block of time for time with your spouse on your calendar this week. Take a screenshot and send it to me on Instagram.  I want to see!

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This was an episode of The Purpose Show.  Thank you so much for tuning in.  If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, head to alliecasazza.com for free downloads, courses, classes and to learn more about what the next step might look like for you.  I am always rooting for you. See ya next time!

The above image is owned by Online For Love.