Promise #6: Get away from the world of fools breaking you down

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Every night is date night when you’re living in paradise. Wednesday night is date night when you’re not.

My husband and I started our date night ritual before it was part of the vernacular. That was 14 years ago (not counting our “real” dating years). If you do the math, we’ve enjoyed more than 700 dates.

I’m not 100% sure, but that might be as many dates as Date Night Director Shawn Levy has had with his wife. The only difference is that we’re not a bit bored.

Our ritual started like the Levy’s—we always visited the same restaurant, ordered the same food, etc. A year later, we moved far away (from the restaurant) and started a family. Many things changed, but our commitment to date night endured.

How? We make it easy to enjoy. We don’t go anywhere. We merely travel to the bar in our basement. We don’t need a sitter or a plan or a block of time. There’s no traffic. No crowd. No hoopla. No reservations required. We sit in the same spot. We enjoy the same drink(s). The only thing that changes is the conversation. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you google “date night” you’ll plummet into a virtual landfill of ideas: snow shoe tours (exhausting), cake decorating (stupid), RV romance (senior), hot tub love (expected)…

The key to date night is acknowledging the cheesy brilliance behind the Bee Gees’ classic “How Deep Is Your Love.” For us, date night is about doing the one thing we’ve always loved doing: hanging out, talking, laughing and bantering a bit. On a good night I’m reminded why I fell in love 16 years ago. On a bad night (it happens, we’re human) I’m reminded why I’m still in it to win it: “we are living in a world of fools breaking us down when they all should let us be”…for at least one night a week.