10 Best Dates for Deeper Love

I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. Since 1997, I've been coaching powerful, purpose driven, world changing leaders who are ambitious in every area of their lives. My Sex Love Power podcast and my YouTube channel are the go to resources for couples and individuals who want the vision of love they see in their hearts to manifest every day in the ways they collaborate, communicate love and make love. Let's go. Let's talk about 10 hot kinds of dates that you can put on rotation to make your relationship deeper, sweeter, more connected. First, the adventure date Novelty is a part of what breeds more passion in a relationship. Going on an adventure might look like the physical thrills of going to a rock climbing gym, or even better, out onto a sheer rock face, maybe with some instruction if you've never done it before, but doing something that builds a little adrenaline. Or it might simply be the adventure of like we like to go to National Geographic talks that pour our brains into ideas and experiences and bodies of knowledge that we wouldn't have otherwise thought of and stretch us and give us amazing new things to talk about. So that's the adventure date. The next kind of date is my dream date. Now this doesn't mean that I would plan it for myself necessarily. I might ask my partner to plan it, but I would tell my partner what I really wanted, what kind of dream I have for a date that would be so romantic or so relaxing or such a departure from the ordinary. So this is an opportunity for one person to share what they'd most like and have the other person gift them that the next is not really that different, is definitely a third date for the two of you in practice. And that is your dream date. So what would your partner most like? And you would plan this one. So you would ask them what kind of date would knock your socks off. What could we do together that would be such a wonderful experience for you to share with me? And how can I bring that about with every detail being exactly what you would love. So it's a real opportunity to be creative and thoughtful and pour your imagination into crafting an experience for your partner. And that brings us to another kind of date that I really encourage you to take on regularly. And that is polarity practice in general for heterosexual couples. A lot of what people say they want is more kind of spark and sizzle and that means that we need more polarity. That means that one person needs to be in a receptive mode and the other in a penetrative mode or a driving mode. And that doesn't have to Be gender determined. The driving person could be someone who identifies as female, and the receptive person could be someone who identifies as male. But what we're doing in this date is I'm the one in charge, and you're the one receiving. And that can be really delicious. And what a lot of couples want early on and need practice in is for the male partner, they're a male, female couple, to stand up and be the one who's planning, who's taking charge, who's doing some things that look chivalrous, like holding doors and making arrangements and shuttling their partner through the experience. We have some old notions of that's what's romantic, and those might be accurate or might not be. But when we're practicing, one of us kind of holding the other one and the other letting go into that container, that's when we build those skills of polarity. So I encourage you to think about a date that will let one of you be in charge and let the other rest into and practice the skills of just receiving the other one being in charge. And I'm not promising this will go smoothly at first, because for many couples I coach, it's a challenge. One of you might be kind of challenged to take charge. The other might be challenged to trust that the other one is in charge or to stop managing or going, oh, wouldn't it be better if we did this? Or, you know, you should do that, and trying to take the wheel back. So all of this is practice. And I encourage you to use the polarity date as practice. The next kind of date that you can play with, I would call a pamper party. That's where the two of you create some physical nourishment. Kurt and I have done this by going to foot spa. You know, one of those places that specializes in massage. We've gotten couples massages. And, you know, frankly, for my buck like a massage, I'm real happy to actually just be alone in the room with the massage therapist. You know, your partner is almost a distraction from your ultimate massage. But like, a foot treatment or some other spa experiences can be really fun with your partner. You can spend as much money as you want to, or you can just do it at home and give each other massage with some oils or just soak your feet in Epsom salts, or we have one of those paraffin dips. Super fun. Dipping our hands and feet in paraffin. Feels good. So this is about pleasure and relaxation together at whatever level you like. And there's the service date. So this is where you look for an opportunity to be of service to others. The two of you go together into your community as either activists or volunteers and do something that makes the world a better place or speaks out against something that's not working well in the world. So you might go on a march together or do some political action or. My husband volunteers every month at. It's called Teen Feed, so a soup kitchen, that's for unhoused youth. And sometimes he'll take one of us with him. In general, over the years he's been doing it, I've been, you know, keeping the home fires burning and taking care of our kids while he was gone. But sometimes now he takes one of our kids with him. And so that's the kind of thing that you could do together. The next kind of date is the errand date. And this is like the least sexy thing in the world and has become a really sweet time for us because we put the intentionality around it. So we joke about, oh, yeah, it's our red hot Costco date, but really, if you go, you can do anything. If you do it with intentionality and connection, anything can be a time of celebration of the love and passion between you. So we have really great conversations. We celebrate our life together. We look for ways that we can be more effective and efficient in creating the kind of home and family and marriage that we want through those rituals of going to Costco together. You know, it'd be more efficient if only one of us went and the other one, you know, worked on the lawn or whatever. But we make it into a date so that we can be together and then we don't wind up saying like, oh, yeah, it was a weekend. I didn't see you at all. Because we had so much to do. We did it together. So an errand date is a great way to get stuff done, but be together. Then there's the staycation date. And this may have some overlap with the pamper party, if you were thinking of a pamper party as something you're gonna do at home. But staycation is really sort of saying, we're going to be in our environment at home, where we usually are, but we're going to make a special space inside it. This is a fish a date. It's like sacred time. We're drawing a line around it and saying, inside this space, everything that happens is the date. And we're doing this in order to connect with each other. So you set limits with the people and the animals around you. You don't pick up your phones and you look for the kinds of things you'd like to do together that would feel really special and sweet. You know, I think of, like, the book the Bridges of Madison county, where there's. I think it's kind of a drifter guy. It's a little bit sketchy, actually, but a guy passing through, and this woman has this torrid affair with him over a couple of days. Like, what if you did have this hot new lover at your house? What would you do together? And, you know, might be sex, but there are things besides that, you know, feeding each other or watching a movie that really kind of stirs your hearts and minds. Reading Pablo Neruda poems to each other. What can you do together that's really relaxing, sensual and sweet? That is a staycation date. The next kind of date is the nature date. So a lot of studies have been done and books have been written about the value of nature and the cost of nature deprivation. And I know that I am somebody who gets cold easily. And I have kind of an aversion to a lot of what happens in Seattle here in the winter. Like, I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be wet. I don't want to be uncomfortable outside. And yet every time Kurt says, let's go for a hike, let's go for a long walk, and I just consent, you know, I just surrender to it. I never regret it. I am never more miserable than I am joyful and now my resister. When you ask me if I want to do it, the answer is always no. But the truth is, getting out into a beautiful place together is nourishing far beyond the benefits to the relationship. It's good for your bodies and spirits. So being together at the beach, on a mountain, simply in a park, you know, just walking around the block together can be a micro nature date. And I encourage you to get that time outside in your bodies and in the marvels of our natural world, because it introduces you to the rhythm of life, which tends to give us more sort of patience and surrender, as well as a delicious time together. And then idea number nine is the laughter date. And this is a date where you intentionally make sure that you're laughing, that you're doing things that are funny. So one of the most obvious ways to do this is go to a movie that at least has some promise of being funny, or a comedy show. A variation on it is like, we like to go see the moth, which is storytelling. And sometimes those are very funny. Other times they're very poignant. But either way, that's very moving. And so that heightened emotional arousal from. From the thing that you're watching or listening to is a way that can draw you closer together and give you great conversation starters and things to talk about and reflect on together. It's a shared experience that is deeper. But I know that laughing together and just being silly. So playing games can sometimes be a laughter date for us, or just playing around in ways we're cooking dinner together, just being intentional about amusing each other. Remembering what cracks your partner up is a great way to be thoughtful and tune into what you know about them and love about them. And I don't know anybody who's not kind of more lovable, more attractive, more magnetic than they are when they're deeply amused. So crack your partner up and see what happens. And then finally, there's a date I call memory lane. And that is an opportunity. And we kind of try to take this opportunity at certain milestones, like around our kids birthdays. Kurt and I like to remember their lives and our life as the parents of that child, over the years of that child's life. So that's a walk down memory lane. And you can look at pictures. You can remember good times and challenging times. You can remember, remember people who have passed. You can think about early days of your relationship when you were first dating, or the time around your wedding or the time before you had kids, or the births of your children, other milestones. So memory lane is a time to appreciate and consolidate memories that each of you has. And the truth is, we never remember things the same way. Right. The meaning that I have on a particular event is always going to be different than the meaning that my partner has. And being able to share about those over and over through the years at different intervals lets us get a richer map of each other and a new perspective on our own lives. Oh, the meaning I assigned to that is not the only meaning one could have assigned. And it meant something different to my partner. And as we weave together my story about it and their story about it, we come to a new story. So this is a way that we can really deepen the intimacy and even know ourselves better, grow deeper and richer as humans with a life story. So I hope those 10 ideas spark years worth of phenomenal dates for you and your partner, and that this practice of dating helps you build the skin skills that deepen your intimacy. Love really is a habit. It is a skill set. And most of us never got taught how to have the kind of love that we really deserve. I call it legacy love. That kind of love that not only lasts, like just by not getting divorced, you can stick together. You know, staying together is not the ultimate goal. What deep success in a relationship looks like in my book is a love that goes deeper year after year, richer, sweeter, hotter. The two of you know yourselves and one another better all the time. And from the overflow of the deep love between the two of you, you bless the whole world and leave a legacy that's bigger than you. So that's my wish for myself, and that's my wish for you. And I hope these 10 dates help. Take care. I'd love to hear what you're going to take away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? Drop me a DM on social media anytime. Links are in the show notes. You know, reviews are really what help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thanks in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app before you move on with your day. And hey, have you subscribed? Hit that subscribe button in the app so you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.