The 2 Kinds of Dates that Saved My Marriage
In full disclosure, I’ll admit that I didn’t date much before I got married. And by “not much”, I mean, the younger brother of my roommate once asked if his sister and I would go on a “fun date” with him and a friend (so they could practice taking a girl out for dinner) and that was the only time I was ever asked out until the man who would eventually become my husband asked me to get ice cream with him and I turned him down.
But that’s a story for another day.
So, obviously, I don’t have much to offer the world regarding advice for dating during one’s single years.
But I do have something to offer when it comes to dating one’s spouse because, well, I’m a bit of an expert in that department. (That is, if you accept 17 years of experience with positive results as “expert” level accomplishment.)
Once my husband and I married (because he did ask me out again the next chance he had), we did not have children for a long time. During that time we “dated” regularly, just the way most of the world thinks of the word. He took me out to eat. We traveled together. We did things we both loved (like visiting antique shops and going on hikes), things he loved (like attending tractor auctions), and things I loved (like visiting quaint little bookstores and coffee shops). We also played games and watched movies and danced in the living room whenever the urge hit us.
During those years we faced a lot of difficult things (infertility is the pits, my friends) but we also stuck together and enjoyed the things we could.
This is excellent for anyone who has the time and finances to accomplish it. (Ten out of ten, would recommend. If you can, go for it.)
But then, for us, something changed drastically in our lives: we brought home children.
And we didn’t do it the normal way. We didn’t birth them, we adopted them. They weren’t infants, they were 8 year olds. And right in the middle of the second adoption, we built a house without a mortgage, which drained every reserve we had (and then some).
Traditional dates take time and/or money, two things that were hard for us to come by.
Between our finances being tighter than they’d ever been before and raising children with life experiences and trauma that made it impossible for us to leave them much at all, traditional “dating” became something completely unattainable for an extended season of our lives.
I don’t know what would have happened at that point if I hadn’t stumbled upon a journal entry I had written when I was 21 (and being all philosophical about why I wanted to get married someday despite my severe lack of interested parties). This is what it said:
I don’t need a guy to take me out to eat or to the movies, I have plenty of friends to do those things with. I want a guy to wake up next to and share life with and catch their eye from across the room and know they see me.
Dating is valuable because it communicates two things:
- You are seen.
- You are liked.
Think about it—someone can only ask you out if they see you, and the point is that they want to spend time with you because they like something about you. And those two things? They make our relational brains/hearts go pitter-patter with endorphins because we are all wired to want to be seen and liked.
Despite the fact that in full adulthood, I was not nearly as philosophical as I was in my early twenties, this thought got my mind swirling and I joked with my husband that we were going to perfect a new kind of dating.
If the goal is to know you’re seen and to know you’re liked, there had to be other ways to accomplish those two things.
So we created the 2 kinds of dates that saved our marriage and we did our best to go on at least one of them every day.
Date #1: The 5-Second Date
How long does it take to tell someone they are seen and liked? 5 seconds, friends. That’s it.
FIVE SECONDS.
The foundation to the 5-Second Date is this:
If all I have is 5 seconds, how can I tell my spouse that I see them and like them?
It turns out, there are an incredible number of ways this can be communicated and the challenge of finding and executing them can be quite fun.
5-Second Date Quick-Start List
-holding hands at the table
-grabbing a quick kiss when you’re passing each other
-winking/meeting their eye when something is funny
-whispering something simple—“I like you,” or “You look good today,” or “Hey, love.”
-saying “thank you” when they do something but making sure that you’re pausing, making eye contact, smiling or squeezing their hand while you say it
-making sure you sit beside each other
-grabbing them a treat when you’re in town (which says you thought of them even if you weren’t together)
-reminisce about an inside joke the two of you have (this can include movie quotes that you both know, or funny things that happened that just the two of you will understand what you’re referring to).
The success of the 5-Second Date is definitely found in taking that extra moment to pause, any time you can, and make eye contact. Wink, smile, use platonic touch (an arm, a hand, a shoulder, etc…) to connect and make sure they feel seen and that you like what you see.
If all you have is five seconds, I bet you’d be surprised at what you can communicate, if you’re paying attention.
Date #2: The 5-Minute Date
If you’ve managed to communicate that you see and like your spouse in the five seconds you had as you passed each other in the kitchen this morning…can you imagine what you can do with five whole minutes?
Oh, friends. It’s a LOT. And if you thought five seconds was fun… five minutes is going to blow your socks off.
The foundation of this date is exactly the same:
If all I have is five minutes, how can I tell my spouse that I see them and like them?
5-Minute Date Quick-Start List
-bring them their favorite drink or snack
-stop them and point out something you really like about them
-play their favorite love song and sing/dance/or just hold their hand (most songs are less than 5 minutes!)
-think of a favorite memory you have of being with them and remind them (either in person, or send a text)
-play a quick game (like Wordle, or something like that)
-grab a coffee together (or bring them one when you come home)
-take 5 minutes to write a text that isn’t just info about the day (send a selfie or write about a memory or tell them something you’re looking forward to or send a silly joke or meme you think will make them laugh)
-make out for five minutes
-take an extra five minutes before getting out of bed in the morning to hold hands and talk about the day
-write “i love you” on a sticky note and stick it somewhere your spouse will find it
This list is pretty generic, but the fun is in making it personal.
My husband is a mechanic who works on farm equipment, and he knows that I really like flowers but I also really love grain (like oats, or rye, or wheat) so when he’s working at someone’s farm and they have grain fields? He’ll take the extra few minutes to grab a quick bouquet of grain for me. Every time he does this it communicates that he sees me and he likes me. Successful date!
I know my husband often works alone and his days can get long for him, so even when I was mostly trapped in the house with kids, I learned to make coffee midmorning and call him to see if he had five minutes to come to house for coffee. Sometimes he only had time to grab a to-go cup and keep moving, but those few minutes told him that I saw him and I liked him. Successful date!
Once our kids were at the place where we could leave them in the car alone for a few minutes, we’d stop for coffee and hold hands on the way inside, flirt as much as possible in the couple minutes it took to make our coffees, and hurry back out to the kids as soon as we paid. Successful date!
The beautiful part of the five-minute date is that many times it reminds you that there really are 10 minutes or 20 minutes that can be found when you pause for 5–and your five minutes on the porch together can turn into 15 and an extra kiss goodbye without much effort at all.
Remember, dating is valuable because it proves you’re seen and liked.
Traditional dates are worthwhile, of course. But don’t let culture trick you into thinking that traditional is the only way.
When a spouse passes away, it’s not the big date nights that the remaining partner misses the most. It’s the mundane moments—the togetherness. The five seconds and five minutes in our days when two people see each other and celebrate their affection for each other.
Through the most difficult seasons, the ones that often tear marriages apart, dating is the hardest to find time for but the most necessary if the couple is going to survive.
During the years when trauma had a death-grip on our home, our marriage would have never stayed healthy if we hadn’t dated regularly, if we hadn’t known deep inside that we both saw each other and liked each other. And it turned out it was possible even when we only managed to have a traditional date less than once a year—because we dated each other in the small moments day after day after day.
Don’t think we did it perfectly, there were plenty of weeks and months when we forgot and got caught up in life and all it’s ups and downs, and let me tell you—the underlying problem whenever our marriage got rocky was always one (or both) of us feeling inside that the other one didn’t see us or like us much.
So here’s my deepest encouragement to you—use your five seconds and your five minutes effectively so that when you finally have the chance for the hours or days together, you’re connected enough to enjoy them.
