My husband and I don’t go out together on an official basis much.  I love the suggestion to have a regular date night, but have found it not too practical for us.  It used to be the pressure to find a babysitter had me feeling so uptight and tense that it would take me an hour of the two hours we were out to unwind. 

Now we have two kids old enough to stay home with the youngers, so babysitting isn’t an issue.  But my husband often works nights, and on the nights he doesn’t and is home for dinner, a night out doesn’t seem to be the most relaxing way to spend time together.  But honestly, he would be willing to go out if I would.  I tend to find it nicer to relax at home together instead of feeling like we have to go out.  (Though I love when we can go away for 1 – 3 days, something we haven’t done for 2 years now, and aren’t likely to do for quite a bit longer, until the baby is older.) 

Tonight, though, we managed to get ourselves out, without any kids in tow!  A local composer whom we got to know several years ago when he was a neighbor was having a world premiere of his trombone concerto tonight, and I was able to get free tickets for the performance.  Wow, was it beautiful.  His wasn’t the only piece being performed; there were several others, like Mozart and Beetoven.  But his was the one that a big deal was made over, and he and his wife really appreciated seeing us there.

For me, it was nice to see that his career has really taken off in the last couple of years.  When we had his family over for dinner several years ago, he expressed what a challenging field it was.  And the experience of listening to a live orchestra perform music composed by someone I knew made it a much richer listening experience.

By the way, in case others have this issue, my husband and I have a different set of priorities when it comes to getting somewhere on time.  I really like to be on time, and he likes to get there at some point in the evening.  And that can create some challenges, like tonight when he said he needed to eat before we went.  I said fine, but suggested that eating and being on time weren’t mutually exclusive, and asked him to eat with an eye on getting there in a timely way.  While he was eating, I changed my outfit, organized baby clothes in the attic for storage, took winter clothes that fit my baby to his dresser, took out the clothes that aren’t weather appropriate for him and the toddler from that dresser, and finally went downstairs, thinking he would be waiting for me.  My husband was still eating.  In a very leisurely way.  And we were supposed to have left a half hour before.  There have been times in the past that I’ve been so bothered by this apparent disregard for getting out on time that I’ve let it get in the way of wherever we’ve gone once we finally got out the door.  But I’m finding it helpful to remind myself to keep the big picture in front of me, so that I don’t react negatively to things that are minor.  The big picture was wanting to go out to spend a nice evening with my husband to build our relationship.  Saying anything about how late it was would only have created unnecessary tension – it certainly wouldn’t have gotten us there on time – so I didn’t say anything.  During the intermission of the concert, he told me he really appreciated that I stayed relaxed even though we got there a half hour late. 

So in spite of the initial challenge, we really enjoyed ourselves, and most importantly, we achieved our goal of spending time together in a way that enhanced our relationship.

Avivah