OK, How Are We Doing Date Nights?

It’s a tale as old as time — couple loves each other, couple wants to spend more time together, couple... can not figure out how to make that happen. Even when you live together, are raising kids together, and are spending nearly every waking moment in contact with each other about someone’s soccer practice or work schedules or dinner plans — it’s incredibly easy to feel like you’ve lost some connection with your partner. Experts love to tout the phrase “date night” as if it’s just a thing you can decide to do and put on the calendar, but it’s really not that simple.

There is so much privilege wrapped up in the idea of date nights. Whether the advice is to schedule them every week, to make them a priority, or to simply figure out how to have them, a lot goes into the idea. There is money to be spent at restaurants or movies or activities, there is childcare to acquire, there is finding a night or day or weekend free of all your responsibilities, and there is energy — energy you barely have at the end of each day, and now you need to rally more of it so you and your partner can fully connect.

It can be completely overwhelming.

But luckily, there are a lot of us parents out there doing this same hard work. And plenty of us are trying to figure out how to date our partners and connect with them in a way that doesn’t involve PTA, bedtime stories, or laundry. (But hey, zero pressure if you manage to make a date night out of all three of those things.) The first step in figuring out how to make dates work for you and your partner is to take away everything you know about dates — OK, now figure out what your relationship needs. And then go from there.

Remember What A Date Actually Is

You know how people love to say intimacy isn’t just about sex? And when someone is feeling a little disconnected intimately from their partner, that doesn’t always mean you need to jump into bed with them? Well, that’s kind of how dating is. A date itself is not the band-aid to any relationship woes — it’s the act of connecting, the alone time, the intimacy of being with your person and enjoying their presence. In a perfect world, it’s a connection with zero agenda or distractions, but like, this is the real world. And while that kind of deep relationship work is important and has its own time and place, dating your partner is simpler.

So don’t get all caught up in the “we haven’t been on a date in months” camp and feel like you’re failing as a couple. “My husband and I used to get so stressed when we’d realize it had been three or four months since we had been outside of the house without the kids,” Holly Young, a 40-year-old mom of three, tells me. “But then we started breaking it down, and we were like, ‘Wait, do we want to be out of the house?’ At the time, our kids were toddlers, and imagining all the work that would go into leaving the house was a bummer. So we figured out what it was we were actually craving — time together — and made it work for us.” Young says she and her partner started prioritizing taking the kids to school together once a week, and taking “the long way home” with a cup of coffee and the radio off so they could chat. “It sounds so silly and simple, but sometimes we come home and have sex immediately. That’s how much that time together helps us feel like us again.”

Squeeze It In When You Can

Several moms I spoke to had a similar vibe about date nights — they’re basically squeezing them in whenever they can. For my own husband and I, we absolutely count putting our girls to bed and then ordering something from DoorDash and watching a movie together as a date night. We usually make a couple of cocktails, get cozy, and just relax together. Because honestly, a date isn’t about the experience of whatever you’re doing; it’s the experience of being together and connecting. So however you need to make that happen, make that happen.

“We wish we could date more, but we try and do a game night monthly — usually ends up every two months — and we play after kids go to bed,” Jamie Roy, a 41-year-old mom of two, tells me. “But we are usually just exhausted at night.”

If you feel the same stress at being out past bedtime or trying to stay awake until 8 p.m. so you can watch a movie after your kids go to bed, it might be time to think about how you can squeeze in a “date” during the day with your partner. If going grocery shopping alone can be considered self-care, why can’t grocery shopping with your partner be considered a date?

“My husband and I jokingly call it our ‘Costco date,’ but that’s really what it’s become. Once a month, we leave our kids at home — they’re older — and head out for breakfast and then do our monthly Costco trip. We talk so much while running this errand, catching each other up on things we haven’t been able to really discuss, and we get to prep for our family by picking up dinners, snacks, and everything. It’s one of my favorite days of the month,” Kelly Harbins, a 45-year-old mom of two, says. “But we just love day dates. I think the habit started when our kids were little and finding babysitters was hard. We often meet up for lunch during our work days, or we’ll even leave a little early in the morning to carpool so we can get a coffee together.”

Make The Date Give You What You Need

When you’re trying to make time to just be together, consider what it is both of you need. Are you craving intimacy? Do you feel like you haven’t been able to have a whole conversation without a child interrupting? Do you want to do something fun, but with your partner? A date is for connecting, but knowing what kind of connection you’re looking for can really make the date worth it. “We don’t schedule dates, but we will just be like, ‘Hey. I miss you. Can we go do something tomorrow night?’ and then we go. Like trivia night at our local bar is so fun for us and makes us feel like we just started dating all over again,” Sarah Turner, a 38-year-old mom of two, says. “But if what I really want is, like, a physical connection, we just make plans to put the kids to bed early and then go to bed ourselves.”

Focus On What You Both Love & Are Into

So you’ve got a babysitter, and you’ve got some money to spend. Yay, you’re ready for a date night! But don’t feel like you have to do a typical date night. “For a long time, my wife and I never went on dates because we’re not big into restaurants or spending a lot of money on food. It’s kind of embarrassing it took us so long to figure out that a date could just be whatever we wanted,” Lacey Webster, a 35-year-old mom of one, says. “We love art and painting, so we do a lot of those sip and paint things. And sometimes we play Pickleball or go to a brewery and try beer flights.”

“We both enjoy food but also have a picky teenager, so we look for opportunities to try new things that end up being a date night because we know the kid won’t eat it,” Amy Grau, a 49-year-old mom of one, shares. “We do a lot of Beer Dinners at a local brewery as a ‘special’ date night. If we ever finally clean the pollen off the patio furniture, we’ll have plenty of fire pit nights and chilling on the deck after dinner.”

This ties in so well with the idea of making your date work for you. What do the two of you want to do? What are you looking for? What are you missing? It sounds overwhelming or complicated, but it’s really not. And if all you want is to be together, go for it. “Effort and consistency has been key for us,” 40-year-old Brittany Bryan, mom of one, tells me. “We make it a point to connect every single night and discuss what we have going on each week and try to line up our free time as much as possible. So date nights feel less important since we spend a lot of time together.”

Talk to your partner. Figure out what both of you are longing for. And then go after it. Even if the babysitter is Ms. Rachel upstairs on the iPad.