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:
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:
- Visit a local tourist destination
- Visit an aquarium/zoo
- Go to a library together
- Go shopping at a thrift shop together
- Go shopping at a flea market together
- Go on a local walking tour
- Go to a movie
- Go for a hike
- Go camping
- Night of coloring/doodling
- Host a dinner party
- Host a board game night
- Go an art gallery
- Visit a museum
- Work on a home depot project/build something
- Have a picnic
- Go to a pottery class
- Go fruit picking
- Take a cooking class
- Sample drinks at a bar/brewery/vineyard
- Morning coffee date/brunch
- Day at the beach
- Go to a used book store
- Make dinner together
- Go to an amusement park
- Go to a county fair
- Take a boat/ferry ride
- Go to a farmers market
- Go play pool
- Go out bowling
- Go to an arcade
- Go to a shooting range
- Train for and run a race together
- Brew beer together
- Visit a local nursery for house plants
- Read the same book
- Visit a botanical garden
- Work on a puzzle together
- Go play miniature golf
- Go garage/estate sale hopping