Inspiration for Date Nights

My previous romantic relationship was recently classified as "not successful," which is one of those things that generally sucks. A lot.

After a few days of just being all around miserable about it, I moved on to the RCCA phase of me moping around after a relationship and tried to take a hard look at the Root Causes and Corrective Actions for my part in the relationship not being successful. One of the issues I identified was that my tendency as an introvert to not plan outings doesn't lend itself well to building healthy relationships, so I clearly need a more concrete framework for date night.

Putting a few days into the idea during these holidays, this is what I came up with: trawl as many click-bait "top 100 date ideas" articles as I can stomach cherry picking any that I thought I'd enjoy with someone or wouldn't be a terrible way to push the envelope with someone, and write each one on a 2.5"x3" index card. Each card isn't an actionable plan, but a category of activity (i.e. "Go for a hike"), with space below it to fill in specifics. Whether the most specifics are something I do on my own or I sit down with my partner to spend an evening workshopping "exactly where would we be interested in hiking?" to fill in the rest of the space is unclear, but I'm interested to see if this proves helpful to me in the future.

Since others have already asked for this list, I figured I could post my current collection of cards here. Some of them have pretty obvious "more specifics" to be filled in, but some of them do suffer from the difficulty of figuring out exactly how to find a place to do them:

  1. Visit a local tourist destination
  2. Visit an aquarium/zoo
  3. Go to a library together
  4. Go shopping at a thrift shop together
  5. Go shopping at a flea market together
  6. Go on a local walking tour
  7. Go to a movie
  8. Go for a hike
  9. Go camping
  10. Night of coloring/doodling
  11. Host a dinner party
  12. Host a board game night
  13. Go an art gallery
  14. Visit a museum
  15. Work on a home depot project/build something
  16. Have a picnic
  17. Go to a pottery class
  18. Go fruit picking
  19. Take a cooking class
  20. Sample drinks at a bar/brewery/vineyard
  21. Morning coffee date/brunch
  22. Day at the beach
  23. Go to a used book store
  24. Make dinner together
  25. Go to an amusement park
  26. Go to a county fair
  27. Take a boat/ferry ride
  28. Go to a farmers market
  29. Go play pool
  30. Go out bowling
  31. Go to an arcade
  32. Go to a shooting range
  33. Train for and run a race together
  34. Brew beer together
  35. Visit a local nursery for house plants
  36. Read the same book
  37. Visit a botanical garden
  38. Work on a puzzle together
  39. Go play miniature golf
  40. Go garage/estate sale hopping

Popular Posts