How to Date Your Spouse

Hello there. It's almost the summer months. And if you're trying to figure out what to do, especially if you have a boo and you want to do something fun, let me give you some options for dating your spouse. All right, y'all. So here's what you need to know up front. Jesse and I are actually very boring people. The mister and I literally are both introverts by nature. I know how to and am willing to put on my best, my shiny smile And all of the, how are you? And tell me more about that, and talking to people and making small talk. I am willing. People are valuable enough to me for that. I like having deep conversations. I'm not a party animal, but I like really zeroing in and talking to someone face to face. My husband is like, mm-mm. He could totally leave it all behind. So when it comes time for us to go out on a date night, let me just first of all tell you, most of the time we are very boring people. I can say that in 23 years of marriage, the majority of the time, if we have been out on a date, it is to a movie and dinner. And if we don't have time to do both, we get the hot dog at the movie theater. And I would also say that 95% of those movies are movies he has wanted to see. Knock down, drag it up, bang it up, somebody jumping off a cliff, action-packed Tom Cruise foolery. But I'm just happy to be out, so I don't complain. And if I want to go see a movie that I really want to go see, I'll go see it with girlfriends, or I've learned to enjoy going to see movies by myself because, you know, you can date yourself, right? But let me get back to the thing at hand. If you are looking for ways with your boo or with maybe a friend or two to really enjoy your life and engage in something beyond the normal, you know, going to work, coming home, cooking dinner, I want you to know that through various seasons of my life— we have 5 children— and there were seasons where going out just wasn't a thing. There are a few things that we have done that have been really, really fun, and I wanted to share those ideas with you today. So the first thing is you can date in, you can have a party in. So I think most of these actually will apply whether we're talking about dating your significant other, your spouse, your boyfriend, your whatever, or with a friend if you just want to hang out. But sometimes dating in is the best. Michelle and I are really good at this because there were years when she and I were actually roommates. And my daughter was about 9 or 10 years old. And so we would spend a lot of time in because if we wanted to do something, finding a babysitter's like, who gonna babysit? My friend is living with me. My parents maybe sometimes, but most of the time we would just have an evening in. So to this day, one of my daughter's favorite things to do is to watch Indian movies, Bollywood. In fact, just yesterday she got her 8-year-old involved and all the other kids sat down and watched Indian movies. Even her husband was watching it. So sometimes dating in just means figure out how to have a family movie night or a date night at home. Make your favorite food. But if you want a night out, bring the food in. At this point, between Grubhub and DoorDash and Uber Eats, you should be able to get something from somewhere. So I want to encourage you to think about what you would like to do at home. And if it's watch a movie, then that's great. If it's host a game night, then that's great. Host a potluck if you're going to invite other people over, but don't feel like if you can't get out, whether you have small children or not, that you can't have fun. When our children were younger, also when we couldn't get out, we would put the boys to sleep and tell the older girls not to bother us, and we would hole ourselves in the room and enjoy our lives. So be intentional. Just because you can't go out, or just because you're on a strict budget, that doesn't mean that you can't be intentional about focusing on the relationship that you want to prioritize. The other thing that we've learned to do is to go out but keep it simple. Yes, we were the people that brought the homemade popcorn in my big old purse. We sure did. We were the people that went and got the sodas and the candy and put them in the purse before we walked in the theater. Yes, we did. We did all that because we were broke. I would make the popcorn and even take my children during the matinee hour or the free movies during the summer. And then I would literally— telling on myself— I would literally have a big bowl of popcorn and I would put the paper bowls in my purse, y'all. And then we would get in and I would pass all the paper bowls down to the kids. And pour the popcorn in the bowls and bring Capri Suns. Cause it was all I could do to just get the kids there. When you go out with your spouse, one, if your spouse travels for work or even if he doesn't, and if you can handle it and be disciplined, we pay our bills on our credit card. We pay our credit card off at the end of the month, which means we gain a buttload of points throughout the year. And then we strategically use those points to stay at a hotel for free. We strategically use those points. To fly for free. We strategically use those points to get certain benefits that are a part of those cards. So when you are thinking about staying in town or going out of town, use points. That's what I want to tell you. Keep your money in your pocket. In town, a staycation doesn't have to look like spending a million dollars on a hotel. I get the best sleep. You ready to hear this? Here this goes. I, I get the best sleep in a Hampton Inn. Now, All Hilton beds are not the same. I have been to Hilton Garden Inn. I have been to other Hilton. Listen, it's the Hampton Inn. I don't know why they don't have the same bed in all the hotels, but I am good with a Hampton Inn. Book it in advance. You can get it for under $100. Stay for a couple of nights and explore an area of town. Treat your area of town, treat your city or a nearby city like you're a tourist. Because when you go on vacation, You do touristy things. Have you ever thought about the fact that in your own city, there are touristy things to do, or in a city nearby? Look at the things to do with your spouse, with your significant other, with a friend, and decide what you want to explore that weekend. And that doesn't even count the things that come to town. So there are always different concerts or maybe plays, or maybe exhibits in your museums that are only there for a specified time or for a specified weekend. There are always art festivals and food festivals, and I live in Dallas, so there's usually something to do. You can follow on social media accounts that will show you special things that are coming to town and then build your staycations around that. So you're not even having to come up with fun things. You're like, literally, let's go do that. And instead of driving 45 minutes to get there, let's go stay in a hotel, plan in advance, keep the cost low, or keep it free with your points. And explore a different area of town. You'd be surprised how exciting life can be when you choose to keep things fresh and new. What keeps life exciting, y'all, is that things are new. And that's why as people get older, they're kind of like, ah, I've done that. I don't want to do that again. But when you're young, when you're a teenager, when you're 20-something, it's all new. So one of the ways of staying excited about your life and having fun in your life is to keep things new, which means you have to do the work of finding new when new does not automatically come to you. When you're a teenager and you're in your 20s and even in your 30s, things are new. You move to a new city for work, you get married, everything is new and new comes to you. This is why you have to be actively involved in dating your spouse, because when you met them and fell in love with them, they were new. So the way you keep things fresh and spicy is to do new things. So staycation. Now, if you've got the money Do it now. Go to the place that has the good spa. Explore different hotels in different parts of the city that are going to give you a new experience. And that way, you know, maybe even if you have to work, I have taken staycations with my husband, y'all, during seasons where he had to work. He was off and I had to work. And I would get up, go to the hotel, sleep in, we'd have breakfast, then I'd come in, work half a day, and then go back to the hotel. Be creative about how you put your times together. So staycations for sure. He and I, we know what we love. We love sun, we love beaches, we love water. And when I say we love beaches, we ain't on the beach. We just like being where the beaches are. We just like mild weather. And so we try to plan for that. And we also like driving, but if he doesn't want to drive, then hence the train. We have learned that he is an amazing driver and I am an amazing rider. I'm also an amazing navigator. And so while he will do all the driving. I mean, every now and then he gets tired and I may have to sit in the seat for a couple hours, but if we drive, you know, 20, 30 hours to go to the East Coast or the West Coast, he's gonna do most of the driving and he loves driving and I love riding. Here's one of the things that we have learned about riding together. We do our best talking in the car, very little interruption. I mean, you know, the phone can be a thing, but we do our best deep talking in the car. He's undistracted. I'm usually undistracted and that works for us. Hey there. I hope you are having a great day. I'm glad you're joining me and I'm glad you're joining me for this episode of the Sister Circle Podcast. Listen, y'all, I want you to see my shirt. Y'all like my shirt? Daughter, sister, mother, friend. Beautiful. His. I wanna make sure you see it. See, I got another one. Daughter, sister, Auntie Friend. These are our best seller. We've been asked a long time to bring them back, so we did. Enjoy me while I'm in pink. Doesn't happen often, but there's a pop-up shop happening right now, and if you want to get this for your mom for Mother's Day, in time for Mother's Day, you want to go get it right now. So you have been given a gift. Enjoy. So I want to invite you to be creative about what you do together. We have gone on Segway tours in the city. He is not a game player until we're playing the game. We grew up in my house, Evan's family, playing games. I'm not really even a game player either, but I want to have family memories. I will say to my husband, do you want to play a game? He'd be like, no, that's okay. And then we start playing the game and he has so much fun that he joins in. And we have learned to even do that when we're together. So stay in staycation, or go out. Now let me give you some tips for making this trip something that you'll remember. Here's the thing, I believe in TripAdvisor, not Yelp. I mean, I will use Yelp, TripAdvisor, and actually the Google reviews are pretty good. TripAdvisor tends to be people who travel, not the people who are local in town. If a restaurant has amazing food, chef's kiss, TripAdvisor is going to tell you that. And somebody's going to say, I've had a lot of key lime pies in a lot of places. This one was really unique. It wasn't too tart. It had a graham cracker crust. They added raspberries. The whipped cream was homemade. You could tell that they had an almond— they go a little extra, okay? Yelp is going to be like, "Ooh, that restaurant was too expensive, but this place down the street, man, it was popping," because they're talking about happy hour. I'm interested in this travel experience. So, I believe that if you could get ahead, look at the hotel reviews, read the reviews on Google and TripAdvisor, because they're going to tell you not just what the stars are. You got to read them because they're going to say, make sure you don't stay on the 5th floor on this side because as of this month there's construction. They can save you a lot of headache. There's a place that I went to stay in Hawaii, and the TripAdvisor reviews told me, if you want to see the sunrise, stay on this side. If you want to see the sunset and potential whale sightings, stay on this side. Well, I wanted to see the sunrise, and I found out that on that side those were newer rooms. The reviews will tell you all the things, 'cause if you're gonna spend your money and if you gonna go somewhere, bam, get the details. So TripAdvisor, if you find yourself on a trip and you don't have a lot of time and you didn't plan ahead, get yourself the Hotel Tonight app because it will show you basically who is giving their rooms away because they're not full to capacity. And so you can get really, really cheap prices on Hotel Tonight if you don't have time to travel. But I would say figure out what makes you happy and go travel to more of those places. If you're like, I like snow, I like mountains, I like the idea of cuddling up to a blazing wood fire, you need to go somewhere in Colorado or Salt Lake City in Utah. Like, you need to do that. You need to head up and ski in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you know, in Tennessee. You need to go to upstate New York and try that out, or Canada. So picking your vacation and looking at your schedule to look at what is the time that I can maximize the amount of days where I can be gone for you and your spouse or you and your friend or whoever you're traveling with. And then deciding on what experience you want, because if you get on a cruise ship, yes, you're gonna sleep and you're gonna eat. You're gonna do all that. And that's amazing. But if what makes you really happy is getting lost somewhere. Then that's not a cruise because you need to get lost without a time. My husband and I, for our honeymoon, we went to Hawaii and we rented a car. We went to Maui and Kauai. We rented a car in Maui, did the Hana Road. It was great. But then we went to Kauai and rented a car, and we just were told, you can drive to the end of the island. And so we spent a day just driving to the end of the island, and we stopped at a little shack place for breakfast. You know, it's always when you travel, hearing people's stories. Why are they there? Why are they working in this restaurant? We did drive to the end of the road. We went in a cave. We went— we could see the ocean, but we just got lost. So that is value to me. So while I can enjoy a cruise, a cruise for me is not my highest and best value. I'll enjoy it, but my highest and best value is I want to get lost. I want to go somewhere where they speak another language, preferably Spanish, because I can speak enough of that to get by, and I want to just find my way. My husband and I, we would sometimes book in travel on his work travel. So I would go with him on work assignments, which was really cool. And then we might stay 2 or 3 extra days. Uh, we went to Japan, y'all. I shouldn't have gotten lost in Japan because people in Japan really don't speak English once you get outside of the main city, and they don't care about you speaking English. My daughter and I, we got lost legit. I was going in temples, I was walking by people's houses cooking noodles, and I thought I know Japan is safe, but if I needed to get back, I don't speak English, I don't speak Japanese, and nobody around here is speaking English. How am I gonna— but that is one of the most valuable experiences of my life, getting lost. So you have to ask for yourself and your spouse what will make it a great experience, because what you're building is like— in life is not just taking a vacation, you're not just having a date night, you are building memories and you are building up the things that you love. And in order to do enough of the things that you love, you're going to kiss a few frogs. You're going to do some things sometimes where you're like, that was whack. And so then you don't do it again. One of the best things that I would encourage you to do is also if you have a Costco membership, let them help you plan your trip because they're going to give you discounts on hotels, discounts on the car rental, discounts on the flights. And they may even have amazing package deals for you to take advantage of. Part of the journey, I think, in dating your spouse and doing things in or doing things around town or going out is making sure that you're maximizing the experience that y'all want to have together. Like, this is your life you're building, and you're spending your money, you know, in a little bit or in a lot to create experiences that are going to be the memories of your life. When my mom One of the trips she made to the hospital, she looked at my dad and she said, "We didn't get to Australia." She said, "But I think we made it everywhere else. Papua New Guinea, China, Europe multiple times, Central America, South America, Africa multiple." I mean, she said, "I think we made it everywhere else." Because at the end of things, what you're looking to create is memories. It's your choice. You can make this a life that you love. You don't have to get on a plane to do it. You can bring the experiences home, stay close, or go out. But y'all, don't wait. Don't wait until you're fully retired to enjoy life. You gotta live as you go. Gotta smell the roses as you go. You gotta choose to laugh and love as you go, even on a dime. Even on a dime. I'll tell you one more thing we used to do. I would load up the car on a Saturday, mostly when my husband was out of town, but occasionally when he was in town, he would join us and we would go garage sailing and we would go early in the morning and get some donuts because I was just sick of the little kids and I wanted them strapped down all day. And so we would go garage sailing and then we would, you know, get, get lunch out, you know, go to Taco Bell and get a bunch of cheap stuff and get one big drink with 5 little cups. And then I'd pour the cup in and pass them back. And we would just drive around. So driving around now might look like, let's get an RV. My husband wants to get or rent an RV. Lord Jesus, help me. And drive around the country. But you know how we started? Driving around the city, going to garage sales, buying a large Taco Bell drink and spreading that one drink between our family of 7. You have no excuse. You just get to choose at which level you're living out your life. But at every level, you still have to choose.