How often do you do stuff with your partner

[yayayayayaya]

DH and I have date night on a Thursday and Saturday nights, but it's always at home and usually just ends up being dinner together and then in front of the tv for an hour or so.

We've recently implemented a fortnightly out of house date night - getting my mum to babysit for a few hours so we can actually get outside.

It gets me quite down tbh.

DH always goes out once a week after work with friends and might start playing football again a couple of times a month soon.

I do my walking group most weeks and a book club once a month. I also try to do dinner with a friend once or twice a month, when the kids are in bed. DH will also do the same.

I feel like there's such little time for us as a couple. But Perhaps my expectations are too high. We only have my mum to help with babysitting and I don't like to ask her all the time as she does a lot for us already.

I definitely feel like I'm the driving force behind us having "couple" time together, which irritates me. Left to DH I'm sure we'd only ever stay in.

All of the people saying no one to babysit find someone! We did swaps with friends in the same situation (no family to help). We saved up and paid for babysitters and spent ages finding good ones. It's so important.

Why do you need to go out to spend time together?

I agree. We had a babysitting circle and took turns.

What you have sounds fine to me. I think what is more annoying is that it is YOU that has to do all the planning. No effort on his part.

Our little one is 10 months and we’ve only had one ‘date night’ since he was born. It was valentines and we went out for dinner. We went away for the weekend and my friend made a big thing of asking if we were going ourselves but I said no, our little one was coming too. In my mind he’s only small for such a short time and we will have the rest of our lives to go swanning round fancy hotels without him.

I find the whole ‘date night’ thing a bit cringe. Kinda feel like being sick in my mouth every time someone says it. It’s the same when people ask my child for a ‘play date’ though, it’s just very American. I feel a date night is a bit forced and might actually end up putting you under pressure. It’s nice if there’s a film you want to see or your favourite restaurant you just want to go to but to schedule it and force yourself to go out when you’d maybe rather just stay in is pointless to me. Our little one is a ridiculously good sleeper so we have every night after 7pm to ourselves but don’t really need to label it date night to be able to spend time together 🤷🏼‍♀️ I’d say take the pressure off and set smaller aims for where you’d like to go now and then rather than making it into a whole big thing

I think it sounds like you have a lovely balance.
It is the nature of the beast that when you have small dc, you can no longer spontaneously go out, and tend to save up babysitters for things you really need them for. Then you have your 'couple time' at home together.
I think you are painting a bit of an unrealistic picture to be going out more regularly than you already are, when you have 2 small dc.

Of course, if you want to, then you can develop a relationship with a sitter you can pay. As many of us do / used to do when wanting to go out.

Yeah, a kid on oxygen who needs a gastrostomy feed at 9pm and 10. 30 pm plus two year old twins. People are literally knocking my door down to ask me to join their babysitting circle 😂😂

We can spend time together in the house just fine. We sint all need to get dressed up and go somewhere special to "connect" with our DPs

We’ve not gone out together since Valentine’s Day 2020 - just before lockdown. Even then, we had our toddler with us.

He doesn’t get home until about 9pm, seven days a week. I’m busy doing stuff until about 10pm. He then goes to bed. We literally speak to each other for 5-10 minutes a day. All those meaningless conversations you have with your partner, we just don’t have them. Trivial things that have happened in the day. We never get the chance to discuss them. Sometimes something happens and it’s four days before I get round to telling him. It turns out those conversations are not so meaningless after all.

I think a couple of 'date nights' a week and getting out properly once a fortnight is pretty good for a couple with young kids. Just part of the sacrifice you make when starting a family, can't expect to maintain the social life you had before.

I think it's also important to keep time for socialising independently of each other (which it sounds like you're managing, although he currently gets more, so you might want to even things up on that front).

We have no family nearby and all our friends have young kids. We've been out for a dinner date once in 7 years since having kids. We've had a day/night away together without kids also once in those 7 years (friend's wedding). We have a fantastic relationship and are very happy. We go out separately or together with kids. We really don't feel the need for date nights. I've never heard of a date night in the house, what is that, no kids?

We did very little when the children were small - no local family to babysit unfortunately. My parents had them a few times so we could have the odd weekend away, but generally speaking we either did stuff as a family or with separate friends.

Now the children are adults/teens we do a bit more. We joined our local health club this year and go a couple of times a week to use the pool and play badminton. Usually finish off in the bar too. We might even venture to the cinema this week!

We have small children and both work full time, so not a great deal of time but there is an obvious reason for that.

When we get the chance, we do like to go for a meal together or occasionally a night away in a hotel somewhere. When we had children, we knew that it would affect our ability to do coupley things for a few years. I don't believe in taking the piss asking for babysitting when our parents help us with work childcare as well.

We share a hobby that we do two evenings a week and sometimes a day at the weekend too. We share a friendship group who we go out with regularly, we go out for meals regularly, and we have lots of TV series/film franchises that we enjoy together, so whatever we're doing in an evening, we will get together for at least an hour before bed to watch something together. We always go to bed together unless one of us is out late with one of our own friendship groups (I would never expect the poor bloke to come and meet my uni friends with me!)

We get plenty of time to do our own thing as well, and also have our own hobbies as well as our shared ones.

We've been together 5 years, lived together for 4.

One 18yo stepson.

At this time in your lives I would do more joint family things where the kids are there too. It's still an activity with your DH and you build lovely memories.

Rarely, if we ask MIL to help out it's usually to see friends/a gig, and we don't have anyone else to babysit. It wouldn't really occur to me to get someone I don't know to babysit, that seems like madness. Plus I had a baby in 2019, so Covid meant we're really only now living a normal life with a child.

We do occasionally both take the same day off work while our son's in nursery and go out for lunch/go for a child-free day out. We both work from home so are around each other 24/7, so it's not like I miss his company 😂

We rarely get to go out together without children, maybe twice a year. We do sit together and have a drink while the kids watch a movie on the weekends and that is lovely.