15 Date Night Ideas
15 Date Night Ideas in Surrey, BC
Whether you’ve been in a relationship for 3 months or 30 years, you know the importance of spending one-on-one time with your partner.
The thing is that it can be difficult to do this on a monthly basis let alone weekly. What with work, the commute to and from work, and then juggling all of your other responsibilities such as the gym, your kids’ schedule and extended family. It can get difficult to make your relationship a priority.
Quite often one of the things that keep us from going out on a date is the perception of monotony. It feels like you can’t think outside of the box and come up with some ideas for a date that aren’t going to a movie or going to your favourite place to eat.
We’re here to help you with that! Here are 15 different suggestions for date night. Some are free, some are cheap, and some require a bit more effort or money. We hope that they help you find something to inspire you to get out on a date and connect with your spouse in a different way.
Let us know if you have any success with any of these, or if you have any other suggestions that we’ve missed!
While we don’t normally recommend going on your phone when you are on a date, the Gottman Institute has created an app that gives some great conversation starters for your date or for dinner conversation at home. You can check it out by searching “Card Decks” on your iPhone or Android.
Tabletop Crepes and Games is a fun little shop in White Rock where you can get…crepes…and play any number of board games with your partner.
After the kids are in bed, move all of your living room furniture and put a picnic blanket in the middle of the room. Get some candles, maybe some cheese and wine (or ginger ale) and spend some time talking and connecting. Try to keep it light to start with, until you can feel yourselves relax and then explore the topic of “what are our values”. See what comes up. Be curious about your partner’s values and why they have come to that. The more curious you are, the deeper the conversation can go.
Go downtown Vancouver! Get on the sky train so you don’t have to worry about parking, grab a coffee and be a tourist in the city.
Head to your closest Indigo book store and split up for a while. See who can find the weirdest title of a book, or maybe the most interesting cookbook. Take a look through the travel magazines and talk about where you’d want to go together some day. Just dream for a bit…if money, time and any other things in your life weren’t a factor, where would you go?
Give yourselves each $5.00 and go to the local dollar store. See who can find the most things for $5.00, and then put them back.
Go to the gym together. The YMCA lets you join for just $20 for the first four weeks to try it out. Trevor Linden Fitness has a rate as low as $16 per month.
Try out a new restaurant that you’ve never been before, and maybe you aren’t sure whether you’d like the food or not. If you don’t, you can always go to McDonald’s after!
Start a new Christmas date tradition. Maybe you head down to the Stanley Park train without the kids, or drive around looking at Christmas lights with a hot beverage. My brother and sister-in-law start off the Christmas season by heading down to Seattle or Portland for Black Friday weekend. They do some Christmas shopping and get some deals, but mostly they get away to connect for a weekend.
Book a hotel out in Harrison Hot Springs. It’s far enough away to feel that you get away, but not too far that it feels like you spend your whole weekend travelling. There are some beautiful AirBnB’s out there now.
Indulge your spouse by doing their favourite activity. Maybe your man comes to a Christmas market like The Olde Farmhouse with you. Or maybe your wife will go with you to the Motorcycle show.
Have some close friends over for dinner. Connecting with other friends can be refreshing for your marriage if you’ve been so busy that you haven’t been able to see anyone else in a while.
If you both really like movies, find a movie you can both enjoy and go see it without the guilt that “a movie doesn’t count as a date”. You can hold hands and find ways to connect on either side of the movie, or just rest in the fact that you’re both enjoying the activity and being together.
Read a book together. Spend some time in bed together before falling asleep where one person reads to the other.
Plan your next vacation together. What are your plans for next year? Try to plan at least one weekend away just the two of you.
We hope you have found some inspiration in these ideas! Have fun trying them out, and let us know if you have any other suggestions in the comments below.
If you would like some help finding other ways to connect in your relationship, please feel free to contact us and book a session with a counsellor that specializes in marriages and relationships.