Every night is date night

One of the most frequent pieces of marital advice you hear out there is to make sure you frequently date your spouse.  Once a week is the recommended amount.  I remember that so often as I heard that, I thought "oh yeah, that would be so nice, if I wasn't pregnant/nursing/had young children/on a budget.  Babysitting is expensive, young children are a handful for a teenager to watch, and bringing along a nursing baby isn't exactly a great set-up for a hot date.

Then I read an extrapolation of the date night idea - that date night didn't need to involved spending money, or even going out.  Date night could simply be time spent together at home with your spouse.

As I thought about that, I realized that, for us, every night is date night.  Once the kids go to sleep, James and I almost always spend every night together.  Even if one of us is out for an activity, we're generally home with at least an hour or two before we hit the sack, which gives us a little time together. If we're going to watch a movie, we watch it together.  If we need to clean up, we clean together.  If there is work to be done, we work together.  Truly, there is rarely a night of the week that we don't hang out together.  And so while the days of "formal dating" might be mostly relegated to the past, we have no shortage of time with one another.  And, gratefully, it doesn't take that much effort for us.  We genuinely like to do things together, even when the activity is preferred by one person over the other.  I'd rather be watching a sci-fi movie I'm only half-interested in with James, than watching something I like more by myself.  For me, it's all about the company.