Date Night Ideas

If you are married, I highly recommend setting up a weekly date night with your spouse. Think back to the years when you were dating – I’m willing to bet that if you’ve passed the honeymoon phase of your marriage, you have started to forget what it was like to date your spouse.

As things like work, kids, and life get in the way a marriage begins to suffer. Before you know it, you realize that you hardly talk anymore, unless it’s about bills, work, or the kids. There’s simply not the time to talk about the things that used to thrill us about our spouse.

In my marriage, part of the answer has been to implement a regular date night. My husband and I set aside a night each week that is just for us. We don’t talk about our kids, we don’t talk about work, and we don’t talk about bills. In all honesty, at first there wasn’t much to talk about at all. How sad is that? We had gotten so used to talking about the day-to-day stuff that we didn’t know what to talk about when we couldn’t discuss the mundane.

However, after awhile, an amazing thing started to happen. We found things to talk about. We started talking about our dreams and our goals again. We talked about all of the things that we used to talk about…before we were married.

If you’d like to start a date night, but don’t know what to do, I’ll gladly share some of my date night ideas to get you on the right track.

~ Dinner is always a great way to spend time together. It allows you to talk and once you have children, there’s something amazing to go out alone – with no interruptions.

~ In the summer, my husband and I like to pack a picnic and go out to the beach. A lake or other park works just as well.

~ Both my husband and I love music, so we sometimes find a good band at a local bar and enjoy music and dancing…just like when we were dating!

~ Sometimes we really splurge and do something fun. Since we live in Hawaii, we’ve been on a dinner cruise, to a luau, and to a crab dinner on the beach at a local hotel.

~ If you like sports, a game of basketball can be a great way to spend time together while also releasing tension.

~ I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but my husband and I love to play the Wii. On date nights when we aren’t necessarily pleased with each other – a good boxing match does wonders when it comes to easing our tensions.

~ Visit a local museum or your local planetarium.

~ Find a place far from the city and just look at stars – bring a nice bottle of wine.

~ We once went to Build-a-Bear. That was my favorite date night ever, even though my husband thought it was slightly cheesy.

~ Make sure you take a trip to the local carnival when it’s in town. Pretend you are back in high school and dating again.

~ How about ice skating? If you don’t know how, learn together.

~ Make a day of it and go to a local amusement park. Again, pretend that you’re dating again. Hold hands in line and feed each other cotton candy.

There are hundreds more date night ideas. Get creative and have fun. Get to know each other again and learn things that you never knew!

For more date night ideas and information about why date night is so important for married couples, check out two great books:

~ 40 Unforgettable Dates with Your Mate: This is a great book full of ideas for fun and exciting dates with your spouse. It’s also a great wedding gift for newlyweds.

~ Date Night in a Minivan: Revving Up Your Marriage after Kids Arrive: If you’re married with kids, this is a definite must read. It teaches you how to keep the fires burning while taking care of your family. After three kids and years of marriage, my husband and I hardly talked. I think many parents are like us. Make sure that your relationship gets the attention it deserves!

What are you doing for your date nights? Share your stories and give others ideas for their own marriages. Check back for more great relationship tips often, or sign up for our RSS feed to get updates when we add new information.

Take it from someone who has been through it, there is nothing fun about getting a divorce. Perfectly normal people turn into raving lunatics during the process of ending a marriage…and people who weren’t normal to begin with really go off the deep end. Even the most amicable of divorces often cause hard feelings and anger. I’ve often thought that divorce shows the worst side of humanity.

There are plenty of emotional issues associated with getting a divorce, and I don’t want to make light of those, but it’s important to understand that getting a divorce is akin to breaking up a business. Of course, it’s much worse than that because the “business” that’s coming to an end is not just a financial partnership – it’s an emotional partnership and often a parenting partnership as well.

Unless you have no children and no assets, choosing your divorce lawyer is going to be one of the most important decisions that you make. I have a lot of friends who didn’t want a divorce, so instead of choosing a good attorney, they spent all their time trying to save a marriage that was clearly over. Even after knowing that their ex had retained an attorney and was filing papers, they still focused their energies on “working things out.” Do not be one of these people. Maybe you’ll work things out before the divorce is final and get back together, and that’s great – but don’t make your decisions with that assumption or you’ll be really sorry when you get a grossly unfair settlement because you weren’t prepared.

There’s plenty of advice out there on how to choose your divorce lawyer. In my opinion, the most important thing you can do is to choose someone who you feel comfortable with. It’s also extremely important to select an attorney that has experience with situations like yours. For example, if custody is going to be a big issue, find an attorney who has tried a lot of contested custody cases. Don’t be afraid to ask them how many they’ve won. If you and your spouse owned a business, find an attorney with advanced experience in valuation.

The fact is that when you are getting a divorce, there are plenty of people who will be willing to give you advice about choosing an attorney, but in the end, you’ve really got to follow your gut on this one. You are going to have to work closely with this person for some time so you’ll need to make sure that it’s someone you feel comfortable with.

Another important think to consider when choosing your attorney is communication. I’ve heard more complaints from people going through divorces about not being able to get in touch with their attorney than anything else. Before you sign a retainer with any attorney, make sure that you discuss how you’ll communicate and when you can expect to get responses to your questions and issues.

Once you’ve hired your attorney, don’t be afraid to voice your concerns, if you have them. Remember that your attorney is charging you by the hour..actually, by the portion of an hour, so don’t call for small issues. On the other hand, if you have a legitimate concern or question, make sure that feel able to talk to your attorney about it.

Last, when you are getting a divorce, it’s absolutely key that you are honest with your divorce lawyer about every aspect of your divorce. They can not help you if you aren’t being upfront with them.

If you are in the process of ending a marriage, I know how hard it is for you, and I don’t want to sound callous or mean…it’s just that taking care of your financial well-being is that important.

Check back soon – we’ll talk about the emotional ramifications of divorce in a future post.

For additional reading on divorce, check out the following great books:

The Divorce Organizer & Planner: I used this exact planner during my divorce. If you are a person who likes to write things down, this is a GREAT book. It helps you to get all of your information together and to keep it organized.

Your Divorce Advisor : A Lawyer and a Psychologist GuideYou Through the Legal and Emotional Landscape of Divorce: This is a wonderful book written by both an attorney and a psychologist and really hits a lot of the legal and emotional issues that you’ll face during the end of your marriage.

If you are like most women, you obsess over her. You wonder if she’s prettier than you, better in bed than you, funnier than you…on and on it goes, a million thoughts constantly invade your brain and no matter what you do, you can’t make them stop.

Just like most women, you probably also think about confronting her. You’ve probably got a thing (or ten!) that you’d like to tell her, and really, who can blame you?

But, even after all the hell that you’ve been through, you still have some common sense left, and a part of you wonders if confronting the other woman is the right thing to do.

There’s a few things that you may want to think about before deciding whether a confrontation is what’s right for you:

1. How is the confrontation going to benefit you? Right now, you’ve got to make your yourself your very top priority. Is talking to this woman going to give you closure? Is it going to make you feel better? Now ask yourself if you’ll still feel better if she won’t answer your questions? Or worse, how will it make you feel if she goes into intimate detail about her relationship with your husband? You can’t control how she reacts to you – so if her reaction, or lack of one, is going to cause you more pain, then a confrontation may not be the best option.

2. Was she a friend? I think that it’s important to remember that, unless the other woman was a friend of yours, she really didn’t have any obligation to you. Your husband, on the other hand, did. A lot of my friends get really mad at the other woman, while letting their husbands almost completely off the hook, making excuses like, “That’s what men do.” What?!?! In my world, men who do that end up on curbs. But, seriously, don’t shift blame from your husband to this other woman. If you are planning on confronting her because you think “it’s all her fault,” it may not be the best thing to do. On the other hand, if she was a friend of yours, then she, too, had an obligation not to sleep with your husband. In that case, a confrontation is almost unavoidable.

3. Is your husband still seeing her? If you are planning a confrontation to get her to stop seeing your husband, it’s probably not a wise idea. Seriously, if your husband is still cheating on you, do you really want him back? If you do, it’s time to think about your motives and to spend some time working on your self-esteem.

I guess I made it sound as if confronting the other woman is never a good idea, and I don’t necessarily think that. There are times when a confrontation may be a good thing. If it’s going to help you in your healing process, then by all means, tell her how her involvement with your husband affected your life. Just don’t set your expectations very high – meaning, she’s not likely to see the situation the same way as you do.

If you’ve decided to confront her, it’s also smart to think about how you’ll do it before you run off and start a fight. Writing a letter or an email may be better than a face-to-face confrontation because it will allow you to say what you want to say without any interruption. Another benefit is that it will allow you to actually think about what you are saying before it all comes flying out of your mouth. If you are anything like me…that’s a serious benefit!

Has your husband cheated on you? Did you know the other woman? Did you confront her? How did it go? We’d love to hear about it!

Online dating has grown in popularity over the past few years. If you are interested in meeting someone new via the internet, there are literally hundreds of sites to choose from. They range from free to quite expensive and the services they provide vary widely as well.

One of the first things you have to decide is whether or not online dating is right for you. My little sister, a senior in college, has not yet met Mr. Right. In a recent conversation, she was telling me how worried she was that she’ll soon be entering the work force full time without even a casual boyfriend. She’s afraid that her available pool of potential dating partners is going to wither away to nothing.

I suggested that she try eHarmony if she was interested in finding someone and her exact words to me were, “I’m not that desperate…yet!” I think her feelings are common amongst those that are considering online dating as an option. A lot of people still see a stigma attached with meeting someone online. Maybe they feel that resorting to the internet means that they can’t find someone the “traditional” way.

I don’t see it that way at all. I think that online dating actually opens up the potential to meet great people that you may have never met any other way. The internet has the ability to connect us to people all over the world. Online dating may allow you to meet someone – even in your own town – whose path you would not have crossed otherwise.

Choosing to go online has also become a choice for many because they simply don’t have the time to meet people any other way. Many adults have demanding careers and it’s simply not as easy to get out to meet people as it once was.

Safety is also a concern when considering online dating, and this is one that concerns me a little bit as well. However, if you decide to go the internet route, making sure that you follow standard online safety suggestions such as not giving out your real name, phone number, or address and meeting someone in a public location at first, the safety issue shouldn’t stop you from what could be a very rewarding opportunity to meet someone new. While everyone should be cautious, the fact is that most people on dating sites are generally decent people who are just looking for that someone special.

In short, if you are too busy or just not at a stage in your life where it’s likely that you’ll meet Mr. Right, then using an online dating site can be a great choice for you. Another advantage for women is that there are typically many more men than women online – so we have lots more choices!

I actually used an online dating service once and while I found my dream guy through another avenue, I did end up meeting some really nice guys, a few of whom I am still friends with today. And two years ago, I attended my cousin’s wedding, she was married to a guy she met on eHarmony!

Please, check back, or consider signing up for updates as we’ll soon be giving in-depth information and reviews on many of the most popular dating sites.