Month 5: Let’s Keep Dating

The advice everyone has heard of but rarely follows through with.

When it came to month five, I was so torn with what to write about! It’s been such a crazy busy month with the start of summer, we’ve barely had room to breathe and relax for a moment. Marriage has taught me, has taught us, so many new things that it’s hard to pick. But one thing that I felt 120% certain of was this message. Keep dating your spouse.

I think we’ve all heard this little tid bit before, whether you’re single, in a relationship or married, you’ve heard, “Never stop dating each other”. There’s even games and popsicles sticks or torn pieces of paper at wedding showers dedicated to providing the new couple with “date night ideas”, I know, I had them at mine lol. “Go downtown and stay at a nice hotel”, “Go to a 5 star restaurant, just because” or “Spend a weekend away”! And while these are all lovely and wonderful ideas, sometimes it’s the simplest of dates that can touch the heart the most.

Marcus and I had a very new age sort of “courtship”, we met in college and there we became friends first then dated shortly after. In the world we live in today, there’s not much of the formal invitation for a date or a scheduled date at that. Most of the times when we went on “dates” it was after an intramural football game or sorority/fraternity event which consisted of, “hey lets go to Sonic real quick cause I still have to finish my paper by midnight” or “let’s all go to Whataburger”. And yes, we would plan dates still, but when I look back on it, those 30 minute Sonic dates, or random trips to get an ice cream cone, are some of my favorite dates that I treasure.

We talked about anything and everything, about the house that we dreamed of someday, about our wildest and craziest dreams, about the weird things we used to do when we were kids and so on. There was no limit, our imaginations could run wild and our hearts were as open as they could be because we were safe with one another to do so. Now in marriage, we make time for date nights, I mean, it’s always going to be fun to get gussied up and go out to some place special and as you should! But it’s still the mini dates that we squeeze time in for that are sometimes the most memorable. The ones where we stop by McDonalds to get an ice cream because we finished our errands for the day. Or go for a late night Sonic run and talk about the silliest of things that happened that day. Where it’s okay if I don’t have any make up on…maybe I’m still in my slippers, who knows! But I’m with my husband and that’s all that matters.

I don’t know what marriage could look like if we didn’t make time for these little dates of ours. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of this life that we live that we forget to just be human and let the worries of the world go for a second. It’s like a breath of fresh air. So even if its 10 minutes drinking coffee on the patio, or a phone call on your way to work, I encourage you and your spouse to keep dating one another, continue the pursuit of their heart. I’m constantly learning more about Marcus everyday because of it, and that’s how we grow.