O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Date Night: Making Time Together Part 1

Sharing tea or coffee during date night in marriage.Couples need time to be together without other couples, family, kids, TV, and the endless distractions of a digital world.

For many years I have suggested to the couples that they have two dates a week, minimum. One date can be an evening out, such as a movie or dinner. But it is essential that there be opportunity to talk. After seeing a movie, don’t just go home; go out afterwards for dessert or tea and discuss the show. A second weekly date should be something active, like a walk or hike, going dancing, or visiting a museum —anything that allows you to have a shared and active experience.

Date nights give you the opportunity to reconnect positively, without being distracted by  kids, stress, and other preoccupations When relationships deteriorate, it is often because couples haven’t carved out time together that is stress-free.

Date Nights Don’t Always Go As Expected

But what if you’re like Monique and Rob, a couple I saw who chose to go out to dinner and a movie every other week? Their time together didn’t go well; in fact, they felt worse after their dates than when they stayed home with the kids. When dates don’t live up to expectations for reconnection, this is  often because a couple use their date time to hash over stored-up resentments and go over all the stresses they are dealing with. These can be as innocuous as the teacher’s evaluation of their kid, or as big as an unexpected Visa bill. The date deteriorates into bickering, bitching, or nagging, which lead to feeling disappointed and irritated.

During the years our twins were young, we went out to dinner every Thursday night. We had a babysitter, a teenager in the neighborhood who charged a reasonable fee—the price of a burrito or two. She was eager to make some cash, and she was fun and energetic with our girls. We’d come home from our evening to find the kids fed, clean, and asleep.

The next morning the girls would describe the fun things they did together. Parents often mistakenly think that leaving their kids for the evening is cruel,  but in reality kids need a break from their parents as much as parents need a break from their kids. It is extremely important for your kids see that you have a life outside of them, and that they can survive with other adults or older teens. This protects your marriage and it helps kids learn to handle separation, a skill they need to learn before college.

Monique and Rob explored date night during one of their couple’s sessions. They realized that they were drinking too much at dinner. Alcohol may seem innocently relaxing and to increase feelings of amorousness, but all too often it does the opposite, exacerbating tense discussions. Monique had an important insight: that she was saving up all the negative issues to talk over during their one night alone together, since Rob was at work all day. Rob, in turn, felt bombarded and overwhelmed. He clammed up, leaving Monique feeling even more distant than before their evening out.

 Ways to Avoid Tension During Date Night

  1. Limit alcohol. Sharing a bottle of wine over dinner can cause tempers to flare.
  2. It’s OK to talk over important subjects, but don’t bring up your core areas of conflict (the family budget, your sex life), and don’t unload the week’s stresses and concerns. It’s tempting to do so because you finally have a moment when kids aren’t in earshot, but resist. Otherwise, date night will end before the movie starts.
  3. Instead, use the time together to update your love maps. Find out what has been interesting—not stressful— for your partner over the last week.
  4. Be attentive. Put the phone in your pocket, turn it off, and don’t check it. If you must keep it on for the sitter, then create a special ring tone and ignore other calls. When you go out, avoid distracting, noisy venues like a sports bar. Your’re here to listen to each other, not check the score.

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Turning Toward Each Other to Maintain Your Relationship

Couples who show affection in simple ways like holding hands have more positive perspective on their relationships.
Love and Friendship

The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Week: 

How to strengthen your relationship by turning toward each other every day

Couples who make time for each other on a regular basis strengthen their relationship.  We often underestimate how important the seemingly small things are to the health of a marriage.  Small positive things done often make a big difference in how loved each partner feels.  Expressing fondness and appreciation every day for five minutes a day adds up to thirty-five minutes a week.  How silly this sounds when you actually add up the minutes!  But I can tell you that it works.

When a couple concludes couple’s counseling, a sure way to prevent relapse into old patterns is to keep in mind the following ‘magic’ behaviors.

 

Things You Can Do to Keep Your Relationship Healthy and Close

1. Affection:  Kiss, hold, touch each other.  Play is good.  Make sure to kiss each other before going to sleep, and when you leave in the mornings.  Kissing when you come home at the end of the day is a ritual that many couples do, without much emotion attached to it.  It is still a good behavior but see if some of the time you can kiss and look each other in the eyes.  Linger a bit, but know that the rule applies that showing physical affection doesn’t mean sex.

2. Admiration and Appreciation: Find some way every day to genuinely communicate affection and appreciation for your partner.  A minimum would be five minutes a day each and every day.  Appreciations can be small acknowledgments such as, “Thanks for emptying the dishwasher” or “It feels really good to have you make me my favorite pasta tonight”.   Expressing admiration can be for big or little things, such as “I admire the way to handled the kids just now, you didn’t blow up the way I think I might have”, or “you look great today!”   Of course, don’t start pulling out the timer on your smartphone and timing these things.  The idea behind setting times is to help you understand that these small things add up—don’t short change your relationship by being stingy with affection, or expressions of fondness.

“It doesn’t count if it doesn’t come out of your mouth”.  Often we think things about our partners but don’t express it.  For reasons both complex and simple, people hold back their expressions of love, whether verbal or physical.  Couples get into habits of aloofness and distance.

3. Love Maps and Dates:  Date night is important because it lets you update love maps.  Every relationship needs at least two hours every week to be alone together.  Time to talk, to catch up on each other’s week, and to reconnect without the distraction of kids, or even other couples.  It is great to entertain together and solidify your community with friends, but don’t let this eat into your time together.  Couples often come to counseling confessing that they never have time alone with each other.  They are with their extended families, or the kids are around, or they have friends over to watch TV and have pizza. These activities are important and enriching, but should not be at the expense of time just the two of you.  Date night doesn’t have to be at night either.  You can schedule a lunch date once a week, or a morning walk.  Sometimes people say that they can’t afford to go out.  Paying for a babysitter, a movie, and dinner will add up fast.  Don’t let money be your excuse.  There are lots of free things to do – put time into thinking about ways to spend your time that doesn’t involve money.  A picnic or a trip to a museum on Free Day – but make time to brainstorm together.  If you don’t have family who can watch your kids, then ask other families to trade watching each other’s kids.  The kids enjoy play-date trades, and they may not consciously understand it, but seeing their parents take time away from them is good.  The world does not center on them.

When couples tell me they feel guilty leaving the kids, it is usually not the kids, but they who have trouble separating.

These are just a few of the things you can do to keep your relationship alive, and healthy.

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Updating Your Love Maps—Keeping Friendship in Your Marriage

“You like tomato and I like tomahto”

Know your partner well to keep friendship in marriage.
Cherry tomatoes, late summer harvest

Last night I made a salad for dinner.  I picked fresh lemon cucumbers and baby lettuces from the garden, topping it with a grilled chicken breast we had cooked the night before.  David added whole red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes still warm from the garden.At the end of the meal, the tomatoes were left uneaten, because while I love sliced cherry tomatoes, I don’t like them whole.  “Ah,” I jokingly told David, ”time  to update your love map!”

What is a love map, and why does it need updating?

When couples first get to know each other, they have deep, intense talks, learning everything they can about one another. As they’re courting (or going through the “mate selection process,” to use the sociological jargon) they learn each other’s history, concerns, preferences, and world views, while yet undistracted by jobs, maintaining a home, childrearing, or finances. They keep a cognitive map of the relationship and its history.

In his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Dr. John Gottman calls these cognitive spaces “love maps.” Making cognitive room for the marriage involves remembering major events in each other’s history and updating this information—the love map—as the facts and feelings of your partner’s world changes. Partners with good love maps know each other intimately and are well-versed in each other’s likes and dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams.

Why it is Important to Know Your Partner Well —Friendship in Marriage Depends on Updating Love Maps

But couples don’t always update their love maps. All kinds of stresses, personal problems, and life events can intervene in a couple’s positive regard for each other, and even destroy the deep friendship that is the basis for a good marriage. Anger and resentment can create “negative sentiment override,” in which everything—every conversation, mistake, action—gets interpreted more and more negatively. By the time couples enter counseling, they have forgotten what they love about each other and have stopped keeping track of relevant information about each other, meaning their maps are out of date. When partners stop paying attention to what is important to one another and instead keep a mental scorecard of mistakes, slights, and offenses, the positive perspective turns sour.

Because love maps are so important, one of the first homework assignments I suggest in couples therapy is the Love Map Exercise. For anyone old enough to remember the TV show “The Newlywed Game,” it’s the same idea. The questions are simple and fun. For instance, “Name your partner’s two closest friends,” or “What is your partner’s favorite music?” It is usually an easy assignment.

Updating your love maps requires communication about your likes and dislikes, and this is true for both partners. Do you like your cherry tomatoes sliced or whole?  After all these years, my partner didn’t realize I don’t eat whole cherry tomatoes.  But it is my responsibility to tell him this. If I don’t, he’ll keep adding them to our salads without slicing them first, and I’ll keep leaving them behind.

It may sound simple, but any map needs updating to stay relevant—even if the new information is just tomatoes, tomahtoes.

Reference:

Gottman, John; Silver, Nan (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York, NY: Crown Publishers imprint (Three Rivers Press).

Originally published here.