136. Date Nights Won’t Save Your Marriage
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your marriage. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
Many times when couples begin to feel disconnected, they turn to date nights to try to fix the relationship.
And look, I have no problem with date nights - date nights can be great! But what I want you to understand is that you can’t fix years of being disconnected with one overpriced dinner and some small talk.
If you think date nights are what you need, listen to this episode. It will help you consider what the real issue is in your marriage, and learn how to solve it.
Click the link to listen, and let me know what you think - I’d love to hear from you!
If this episode hits home and you’re ready to work with me, book a call so we can chat. On the call, you’ll share what’s going on, what you’ve tried, and I’ll share how I can help. Can’t wait to connect!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos, welcome back to the Relationship Reset with me, your host, Karina F. Daves, marriage expert speaker and host of this dope podcast. This episode is called Date Nights Won't Save Your Marriage. So I want to talk about how many couples when they begin to feel disconnected will run to social activities, to couples activities.
And what happens plenty of times is that you're using date nights as a bandaid. Now I have no problem with the fact that you go on these date nights. I have no problem with scheduled date nights, with weekly date nights, monthly date nights. But what I want you to understand is that you won't be able to fix years of being disconnected with one overpriced dinner and a couple of drinks and some forced small talk. You will literally just sit next to each other or across from each other and feel the tension. You will feel that the laughs are forced, that the, you know, smiles are forced because the reality isn't that the issue being that you don't spend time together. The reality is that the tension shows up every single time you do spend time together.
See, you're trying to engineer this in a way that I think society has trained us and Hollywood has trained us to do big gestures when we have relationship issues. Whereas when you have a relationship issue, that big gesture is just a bandaid. So for example, if your partner literally says like, I just miss going out, fine, I don't have a problem with that.
But if your partner says, I feel disconnected, the way to solve much of that is going to be in the small at home habits and need to change the good mornings, the I love you, the I miss you text, the how's it going? How's work? Is there anything I can do to support you? Let me put gas in your car. ⁓ Can I make you a meal? ⁓ You know, you haven't gone out with the boys in a couple of weeks. You know, I can I can take care of the kids like you. You go and do what you need to do. That's feeling seen.
Right? ⁓ and so, what you end up doing is thinking that, you know, you guys should just go on date nights and that's how you guys will become connected. But the reality is that the connection between you and your partner are currently off and the way that you were trying to solve it is by continuously doing couples things when what you need to be doing is dealing with your couple problems. Does that make sense? You need to be figuring out what are the marital issues going on right now. Again, if the marital issue is that your partner just misses you and wants to go out and have, you know, some dinner and some drinks, fine. But if the issue is that they don't feel heard, an expensive dinner is not going to solve that.
If your partner feels like you don't see them. You don't consider them. You don't think about them, tickets to an expensive show is not going to solve that. That may be a start, but it's not gonna solve everything. It may do what you initially intended was for it to just shut down for a little bit, but it won't solve your marital issues. Do you understand? It's two very different things. And what I want to share with you is that you really need to start focusing on fixing what's broken in between your dates instead of just dressing up your pain for a date night. Cause that's essentially what you're doing. You need to figure out what's broken in between that because the connection isn't going to necessarily always come from just some cocktails and candlelight. The connection is going to come when you both feel safe telling each other the truth. And right now you don't. Telling each other the truth about what's underneath all of this is what's essential. And the first way to do that is to be very honest, not brutal, honest with each other about what's happening. Nobody in this marriage is Miss Cleo. So not only can you share with me what's happening, but can you also share with me how you think we should fix this?
Plenty of times we, this might be a whole other episode, but we leave it on our partners to fix the problem that we have with them. And we don't collaborate enough with our partners because we think we're doing all the work for them. No, there's a way for me to tell my husband that, you know, every single time he goes to bed, I feel like he should pass me a cup of water. Right. And if I have to remind him until he passes me the cup of water, that's us collaboratively working together because one day because he cares and because he's loving and because I know that he's not malicious, he's not a malicious person. He isn't sitting downstairs in the kitchen being like today, I'm not going to get her her water because he cares. I have empathy. Right. I have empathy for the fact that it doesn't matter. Let me just let him know, Hey, babe, don't forget to bring me the water. And then one day what will happen is I'll say, Hey, babe, don't forget me to bring. And what will happen one day is I'll say, don't forget to bring me the water. And he'll say, I already got it. You can't get there without collaborating. That's what marriage is. It's one big pot of collaboration. Not, I won't show up until they do this and I won't do that until they do that. Like it's too much. It's too much.
If anything of what I said on this episode resonated with you, you need to work with me, go to link in my bio and pick a call so we can talk about everything that's happened So far what you tried and how I can help let's get you back to a place where we're fixing What's underneath everything rather than continuously going on these? Vacations and date nights. Okay. Let me pray for you.
Father God, the enemy comes to steal kill and destroy and most of the time he does all those things, but I've seen plenty of times how the enemy works in us and we don't even know that it's him. For example, stealing our joy for a person, stealing our joy for a situation. Many of us are stuck in marriages where we feel heavy about seeing our partners. We're not excited. We don't get butterflies anymore. We just are just like looming and gloomy in our own house and having this sort of roommate situation of passing ships. So if I got in this moment right now, I pray over those couples and I just ask that you take away that gloomy and that looming this and instead give them the initiative and the drive to be able to collaborate with their partner to figure out what they should do and what's In Jesus name. Amen.
Okay. I love you so much. My name is Karina F. Daves. I'm a marriage expert, a speaker and the host of this dope podcast. I can't wait to talk to you again. Bye.
