Category: Marriage

3 Reasons Why Dinner and a Movie is not a Date

Dating Your Spouse

I’m a firm believer that married couples should “date their spouse.” This terms means that couples should not settle for the routine of being married. While this routine is easy to fall into, dating your spouse should push you to grow. It’s for this reason that I am a firm believer that dinner and a movie does not qualify as a date. Here are three reasons why dinner and movie is not a date.

  1. Lack of communication– Communication is the key to a successful marriage or relationship. While there may be some communication during dinner, most of the time it is not meaningful. I like to refer to this just as talking to one another. Talking is a conversation that you can have with anyone. Communicating is different because there is an intentional investment that you are looking to make. You are looking to invest in your spouse, you are wanting to learn more about them, and you want them to return that investment in you.
  2. Lack of thought/creativity– Dinner and a movie is a fall back idea of going out that many couples go to. Dating your spouse should require more thought and planning than picking a restaurant and movie selection. A date should be an event or series of events that were planned to be a new experience for the couple. Dates should be opportunities to make memories. They should be opportunities to pour into your spouse. This is where reading The 5 Love Languages really helped my wife and I. While we both enjoy movies, and going out to eat, we still need to invest in each other. My primary love language is Quality Time. My wife would plan dates where every aspect of it was geared towards us spending time together. Not in crowded places or loud places, but where the focus could be her and I. She spent time thinking about these dates, how to plan them and how the events would touch my heart. When we go on dates, they should touch the other person’s heart.
  3. Lack of Potential for More– Dinner and a movie is exactly what it seems. When a date is meaningful, there is the potential for it to turn into more. For the event or activity to turn into something that you and your spouse can do on a regular basis. It should hold a special place in your heart. One date that my wife and I planned was where we went to a closed event with a chef. We could get a lesson on cooking and then eat the food that was prepared. This was a great date for both of us because we both enjoy cooking. This has potential for more because we could communicate throughout the night. There was a great level of thought put into the date and we could invest in each other. We are looking forward to the next time that we can do something like this.

A Year of Purposeful Dating

2017 has begun. Let’s not let dinner and a movie be the staple of our marriages. We should start dating our spouse or continue to date them. Invest in your spouse like never before. Plan dates, read books together, and love one another. What are some of your favorite date ideas?

From a Good to Great Marriage

What we all really want

What makes a good, no a great marriage? At some point we ask ourselves this question. Whether we’re dating, engaged, coming back from our honeymoon or having been married for some years. We want to know what makes marriage work. None of us get married thinking that one day we will get divorced. That’s not the end that we have in mind.

What does happen is that we get married, come home from the honeymoon, have a couple of kids, and things begin to settle into a routine. Is there anything wrong with falling into a routine? Absolutely not, but it’s also not how we have a GREAT Marriage.

Getting from Here to There

How do we go from where we are to where we want to be? That’s a great place to start. We need to have a vision of where we want to go. Ask yourself what do I want my marriage to look like in the next year, five years, ten years, for the rest of our lives. Great marriages don’t just happen by chance. People don’t just fall into a great marriage. Without a vision of where we want to go, we will just drift through life and our marriage. With the divorce rate as high as it is in the United States, it can be hard to find an example of a great marriage. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, just that you will have to go outside of the people you know for an example.

Pride

Pride has killed many marriages that had the potential to be great marriages. Pride is where we prefer ourselves over our spouse. It can creep in subtly in marriage. We think we have the better idea on how to do something, or we’re used to aspects of the house and family being done a certain way because it makes us feel better. There are so many ways that pride can sneak in. We have to be aware and combat that pride with a heart that is focused on our spouse. If I’m focused on them, then what I want or prefer doesn’t matter. The minute when our marriage focus shifts from us to me, then I’ve let pride in and it has the potential to destroy the marriage that I want to be great.

If we can start with these two things (having a vision and removing pride) and develop them in ourselves, we will be on the road to have a great marriage. We won’t settle for the status quo of what married life should be. We will strive for greater, seek more than #relationshipgoals we see on social media.

Deposit into those you Love

How is Your Love Tank?

How important is our spouse, our friends, and family? Are we making deposits into those that we have relationships with? There is something my wife and I like to do, we do these little check ins with each other. We’ll ask “How’s your love tank?” The purpose of it is to make sure that we are putting deposits into our relationship, specifically for the other person and not just being a one who withdraws.

happy-couple

Deposits

What is a deposit? A deposit is something that you do specifically for the other person in the relationship. You’re looking to make an impact on the other person’s heart. You want to “deposit” an act of love, an act that speaks directly to their heart.

When we are in a relationship with someone else, whether spouse, friend, or family, we should look to make a deposit into that person. When deposits are made on a consistent basis, it is easier when a withdraw has to be made. It’s easier to need your spouse to cover things at home while you’re working late to meet a deadline when deposits are made. It’s easier to ask a friend or family member to be with you after a surgery when deposits are made.

It’s Not about Me

Making deposits isn’t about us. This is a selfless act. You’re saying that I’m doing with act strictly because I care about the other person.

Being a person that only withdraws is selfish. I used to have a friend in middle school who was like this. Our school would serve breakfast in the morning before class started. Every morning I would try to get to school early enough where I could get some breakfast, and this friend would be there with me. However, I seemed to be the one always buying them breakfast. After awhile I grew tired of buying them breakfast and had to tell them no. Needless to say we didn’t stay friends for much longer. The point here is that this friend was only making withdraws from our friendship. Only making withdraws at some point you will use more than what you’ve deposited.

My wife and I read The Five Love Languages and one of the main aspects it taught us was how to make significant deposits into each other. To know their “Love Language.” People that we care about, each have their own way about what will touch their heart and be a “deposit.”

I encourage you to do a little relationship maintenance and check with your spouse, family, and friends to see how their tank is. Are you making more deposits or withdraws?