How to Reconnect With Your Spouse: The Date Night We Always Recommend

How to Reconnect With Your Spouse: The Date Night We Always Recommend + everyone always tells us it worked!

It’s amazing to me how often I get the same questions from readers and personal friends alike. I am doing my best to make sure I incorporate these into posts. On one of our recent date nights, I had the thought that this post needed to a little different than just a travelogue of what we did. I knew it was time to answer how to reconnect with your spouse, and the date we recommend to everyone.

Feeling Disconnected from Your Husband/Wife

What’s amazing to me is how quickly feeling disconnected from your husband or wife happens. Just a week or two of missing a weekly date night can start anyone down that path. When we add busy work and life schedules, parenting, and general lack of quality time, those feelings of disconnection come up quickly.

What I hear more often than these scenarios comes from couples who haven’t been on a date in over a year. They have had a new baby, one of them is traveling for work, or they have just fallen in a rut of streaming tv without a lot of connection. They want to get out and date and reconnect with their spouse, but it feels a bit strange to jump back into dating when you’re out of the habit.

The Date You Should Go On To Reconnect

I was recently interviewed on a podcast regarding business and blogging advice, and the host surprised me with an unexpected question at the end. It went from talking SEO and content strategy to a poignant “One last thing. If a couple is feeling disconnected and wants to reconnect, what date would you recommend they go on?”

Let me spoil the ending of the podcast and tell you my answer. I told her I’d buy tickets to a comedy show and go laugh together. That may shock some people, perhaps you were thinking therapy or something over the top romantic is in order. And while those are great things and maybe needed, I have a different philosophy.

Treat it like an awkward first date all over again, and find a way to settle your nerves. This is somewhat foreign territory all over again. Think low-key, accessible, and fun to eas yourselves back into date nights and connection. The easiest way to do this is to laugh together. Get the endorphins flowing and your serotonin spiked naturally. You’ll both be a great mood, and your hormones will help you reconnect the feelings of love again.

Easing Back Into Dating and Connecting

Sometimes that first date after a period of disconnect can feel intimidating and like it has to succeed for you to succeed. But a happy feel-good date without that pressure I find is a better fit for most couples. Take the pressure out of “This night has to go well!” and decide this night just needs to be fun, and needs some quality time together.

Every couple I’ve recommended this to has come back and said it worked! Even if you feel like two passing ships or are living with some pent up negative emotions, this date can help! It’s hard to not open up after hard laughter. It instantly helps form a connection to what made you laugh. We’ve found this to create some of the best conversations after the comedy show.

But even if you’re in the habit of dating, and you’re feeling pretty solid in your relationship, it’s always a great idea to find a date you can laugh at together. We’ve gone big, like flying to LA just to see Brian Regan. But we’ve also hit up local improv comedy groups, and our local stand up clubs. It doesn’t have to be big and expensive, but it certainly can be! The point of the night is to find something or someone that will make you both laugh. And use that laughter as momentum to help you break the ice and start the path to reconnecting with your spouse.

Creating Connection in a Busy Season of Life

Last month we had the busiest couple of weeks of our lives! There were so many holiday events to go to, I spent so much extra time with work projects, Jacob traveled for work, and we flew on location as an entire family to shoot our family Halloween costume. I was so thankful that I’d bought tickets to the JK Studios tour.

If you haven’t heard of JK Studios, they provide family-friendly clean comedy sketches. They started as a comedy tribe that put on shows every semester at my undergrad university. I honestly think their shows were my favorite part of my time at BYU! Oh how we looked forward to those witty, clean shows that made me laugh until I cried.

I knew I wanted to expose Jacob to the quirky culture and smart humor I’d so appreciated at that phase of my life. I know it may not be for everyone, the sheer amount of tweens surrounding us at this date indicated that. But it’s definitely something that we knew we’d find funny, and we’d appreciate it together.

Best of all, you can watch their shows, and so many other comedy shows online for free. I’d highly recommend going out to reconnect, but if there isn’t the budget or an opportunity to get out, create your own comedy night at home. We have a list of funny Youtube night videos curated for a date night in.

I know it takes time and effort to make marriage. And I never want to give the disillusionment that all it takes is a date night to for a happy relationship. Boy do they help, but there’s so much more! However, an intentional night out focusing on each other does wonders for reconnecting when you’re not feeling close. And a comedy show with plenty of laughs is just about the perfect way to set the foundation to rekindle a marriage spark that has been missing.

Photos by Brenda Eden