Tips for prioritizing couples’ time
There will always be family obligations, chores and unfinished business, but professional clinical counselor Christine Ferens of the Kettering Behavioral Medicine Center outlines how to make date night happen.
Overcome obstacles
Difficult to find childcare. Organize a neighborhood babysitting exchange. Have friends or neighbors watch your children while you have a date night and do the same for them.
Dates are too expensive. Go to a matinee or the bargain theater, take a walk, have a picnic in the park instead of a fancy dinner or work out together.
Enjoy it guilt-free
Although relationship experts agree that having a date night is a key component to having a healthy marriage, obstacles like lack of time and not having someone to watch the kids can keep it from happening. Melissa Marchwick, Sittercity executive vice president, offers tips on how parents can have a guilt-free date night.
Hire a great sitter. The single most important thing parents can do in order to have a guilt-free date night is to hire an awesome sitter; someone who is trustworthy, responsible and that your children will love being with. Don’t know where to look? Sittercity has nearly 2 million caregivers nationwide, and about 2,270 in the Dayton-area alone.
Make sure your kids are comfortable with the sitter. The last thing you want to be doing on your date night is spend the time worrying about your kids. Hire your sitter before your actual date nights and have them watch the kids while you are home. This gives you the opportunity to see your sitter interacting with your kids.
Formulate fun activities. If the kids are engaged in fun activities, they'll have less time to miss mom and dad. Sittercity has created a website that features a wealth of fun activities for children of all ages: compendium.sittercity.com.
With infant twins to care for, not to mention a then-energetic 4-year-old daughter, dates were few and far between for Vin and Karen Romeo last year.
“We didn’t go anywhere,” Vin said. “Our big night out was usually a night in, watching a movie. We knew we needed to spend more time together, but it wasn’t easy.”
The Beavercreek couple is not alone. A Sittercity survey conducted among couples with children reveals that almost half, 43 percent, haven’t had a date night in more than three months and 18 percent of those haven’t gone out on their own since having children. And couples with children aren’t the only ones who are too busy for date nights, as there are work and family commitments to juggle as well as financial constraints to consider. But making the time is worth the effort, according to professional clinical counselor Christine Ferens of the Kettering Behavioral Medicine Center.
“When couples are so busy, they need to create time to reconnect,” Ferens said. “It is really preventative in terms of maintaining a healthy relationship.”
Keep it simple
Your courtship might have been packed with romantic weekends away, tickets to the hottest concerts and candlelit dinners, but time, money and motivation might be in short supply now. That doesn’t mean, however, that the romance has to be over.
“You can take a walk together, just the two of you, go to the park or even work out together,” Ferens said. “The important thing is making the time to enjoy each other’s company.”
Kettering couple Phyllis and John Caraway have dubbed Friday night as “Happy Pizza” night.
“It’s sort of like a play on a Chinese restaurant name,” Phyllis said. “We have the usuals, (Cassano’s and Godfather’s) but we tend to scour, looking for mom- and pop-type places.”
Thursday is sushi night in the Romeo household, with Vin feeding the kids, now 18 months and 5, and getting them ready for bed while Karen picks up carry-out sushi. The couple gets to enjoy a late dinner together followed by an uninterrupted movie — if they can both stay awake.
For University of Dayton graduates Carla and Bill Rush, winter date nights are usually at the arena, not a five-star restaurant. The Washington Twp. parents of two are Flyers basketball season-ticket holders.
“We both, pretty religiously, went to the games when we were at UD, so that’s our favorite winter date night,” Carla said. “It’s easy to get caught up in life, but we know that those are our nights all season.”
The payoff
Charlie Painter admits that finding time for date nights when his children were young wasn’t easy but, in hindsight, it was worth the effort. And those children are now in their 20s, and he and his wife Karen have been married for 35 years.
“With kids, you end up involved in their activities, and you tend to make friends with the parents of their friends,” Charlie said. “The kids always seem to come first, but you do need to have some date time. Sometimes those date nights evolved into family nights, but that was fun, too.”
Dates should be
guilt-free
“When you become a parent, you pretty much dedicate your life to raising those children,” Ferens said. “But you also need to take time to spend with the person you decided to make that life with — your spouse. Take a nice deep breath and know the kids will be fine without you for a couple of hours.”
New mom Laura Brockman of Dayton couldn’t have been happier about baby Collin’s arrival five months ago, but her Thursday date nights with her husband Phil have lapsed. While her new role as mom is time consuming, she isn’t willing to give up that couple time altogether.
“Last weekend we left Collin for the first time to go to New York City for the weekend,” she said. “We have found that dates are necessary for us to maintain our ‘Laura and Phil’ status.”
Other parents agree.
“I really think having that time away makes us better parents when we are with the kids,” Carla Rush said.
“Raising kids is a real test of your relationship,” Vin Romeo said. “If you can survive this test, I think you will appreciate each other even more.”
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