Part of a great experience dating after marriage (and kids) comes down to having a simple plan that doesn't require a lot of thought to implement when you make time to spend together. If you're anything like we are, you may need to coordinate together to manage any logistics that need to happen before the date (plan any activities, buy what’s needed, arrange childcare, mark a shared family calendar, plan to leave work early, whatever).

Most dates we go on together happen NOW rather than planned for later.

Whether it’s a spontaneous thing in the moment, or a day-time thing planned the night before or a night-time thing we could look forward to since that morning...there’s not much waiting involved, and that’s intentional (much harder to procrastinate or let the modern urgency addiction try to talk us out of this important quality time together).

We try to make it so we can just get up and go. 

As busy as we are, it can seem a bit overwhelming without some of the plan already worked out beforehand. That's why we developed the "Pull a date out of a hat" ritual.

In short, what you do is:

• Take a sheet of lined notebook paper.
• Scissor it in half.
• Write a date idea on each line.
• Flip each idea over and jot on the back an hour number (e.g. 1, 2, 4 etc) and a cost signifier (we use the hour number only for free date ideas, $ for cheap up to $$$$ for more expensive)
• Cut each line out so there’s one idea per slip
• Fold each slip so only the number and cost can be seen
• Toss the ideas in a container for later

Here’s what our date-ideas ‘hat’ looks like…

Here are 50 date ideas of ours you may want to swipe for your own

(the number after each idea is just our time estimate in hours, and any $ dollar signs is a sliding scale from $ one dollar sign cheap to $$$$ four dollar signs more expensive):

1. Bake brownies together 1
2. Intimate shower together 1
3. Hand-holding 'walk n' talk' 1 (one of our most common quality time ideas together: exercise, quality-time plus a good regular date to facilitate talking about things privately)
4. Write down 3 gift ideas you may want the other to get you in the next year 1
5. Clothes-on makeout session 1
6. Play a favorite card game 1
7. Verbalize a held grudge against him/her and commit to forgive 1
8. Play a smartphone word game 1
9. Oral pleasure for her 1
10. Cooking together while the kids are with a caregiver out of house 1
11. Back, shoulder and neck massage for him 1
12. Throw frisbee together 1
13. Feather play 1
14. Premium coffee date out of house 1 $
15. Silly couple’s selfies Fiverr photoshop order 1 $
16. Tennis 2
17. Watch an action flick together at home 2
18. Vision planning the custom house we plan to build together 2
19. Take the pet(s) to an enclosed play area + picnic lunch 2
20. Watch a romantic comedy movie together at home 2
21. Play a dice game 2 
22. Choose pictures together for family digital photo album upload 2
23. Organize the kids' play room together 2
24. Sexual Roleplaying: Oops! No money for dinner delivery 2
25. Make and eat alcohol popsicles 2 $$
26. Walk/drive around, give $100 USD to a stranger having a bad day 2 $$
27. Basketball one-on-one 2
28. Champagne and orange juice mimosas in the middle of the day 2 $$
29. Drink wine and make holiday craft decorations together 3 $
30. Driving range golf 3 $$
31. Brazilian steakhouse dinner for two 3 $$
32. Fun shopping in an adult store 3 $$
33. Grocery shop sans kids 3 $$$
34. No limit Hold’em with poker chips, winner chooses next two dates 4
35. Volunteer randomly 4 (find the first cause you see on social media asking for volunteers and go together)
36. Baseball game with beer and hotdogs 4 $$
37. Dinner out and next vacation conversation/planning 4 $$
38. Wings, beer and sports night 4 $$
39. Casino blackjack with $100 USD per player budget 4 $$$
40. Mall shopping: buy each other a new outfit and shoes 4 $$$
41. Dinner and window shop upscale mall 6 $$
42. Create and bury 10 year family time capsule 6 $$
43. Dance class(es) together 6 $$$
44. Cooking class(es) together 6 $$$
45. Buy a new book and read aloud together 1 hr / day til finished 12 $ (We like Stephen king and John Grisham a lot for this)
46. Motel overnight (with hot tub) 12 $$
47. Rent a houseboat for the day 12 $$$
48. 3 night couples-only trip 72 $$$$
49. Bake cookies together 1
50. Wine, cheese crackers and Rom-Coms night 4 $$

As you can see, the way we do it ourselves isn't fancy.

Some of these ideas are things we do a lot.

Others are things we just added recently to our “pull a date out of a hat” and we haven’t experienced doing that thing together.

In our humble opinion, EVERY couple could benefit from creating a ritual for how you do dating with him or her. Something simple to make it easy with some basic pre-planning of what to do, where and how-- so when you’re wanting that quality time, you can do it without too much thinking. 

Your date ritual could be different from ours: something we hope continues to help keep us together and happy as a couple. 

Marriages are dying every day because of couples’ failures to continue dating-- years and decades after the courtship period-- when it feels hard to make time due to our urgency addictions, modern busyness, procrastination and inertia.

Yet we MUST make time to date our significant other regularly-- especially after marriage and children. It’s important…but IT'LL NEVER BE URGENT (until and unless it becomes almost too late). You can make it easy despite a busy life by creating a date ritual with some basic pre-planning of what to do, where and how.

This second article covers the topic in-depth of how we personally try to ensure quality time together, both free and costing money-- time without kids, having zero errands to run, no tasks to complete and with no agenda except enjoying one another’s company: Pull a date out of a hat? (100s of go-to date ideas in 3 hours or less) -- Mr. and Mrs. Cubic Zirconia