by Carolina Dream Chapman

Created on: February 21, 2007   Last Updated: May 03, 2007

Having a night out with your spouse on occasion is very important to the health of your marriage. My husband and I decided early on in our marriage that we would keep dating even after we said 'I Do'. We believe it is very important to do this in order to keep the relationship healthy.

We have always tried to make sure that we get one night out every week. It may be a nice dinner with grocery shopping afterwords but during that nice dinner I am his sweetie and he is mine and nothing else matters for awhile.

I realize it is not always fee-sable to go out as a couple every week. As we did have times when our son was growing up when it was impossible. But we kept once a week as our goal and if for some reason we couldn't we would just plan on the next week with great expectation.

During the time that I took care of my dad full time, the once a week outing with my husband is what helped me maintain my sanity. Because just as you can not talk about everything in front of a child, you also cannot talk about everything in front of an ailing parent. And the stress can be very overwhelming to say the least. Trust me it wasn't easy to have a night out then either and sometimes it didn't happen. But I do have to say that it was definitely needed and we will never be able to thank the family friend who would come almost weekly to sit with daddy during that time so we could get away for a few hours enough.

Having an evening out doesn't have to be some huge ordeal. It only has to be a few hours that are dedicated to just the two of you enjoying each other. It can be something simple like a drive in the country, or going to the park together or having a picnic or going hiking, or out to dinner, or a quick movie or just going out for ice cream. It doesn't matter so much what you do as long as you do it just the two of you away from the stress of everyday normalcy.

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