A Water Date will Calm and Invigorate Your Relationship

Looking for a good date night option?

Consider a date that includes water.

Water dates have rebooted my marriage multiple times. Water is calming and invigorating. And water invites each of you to show up and notice what is real.

As a result, water is good for the Friendship Role in your relationship. Water is great for the Lover Role in your relationship. And water helps to equalize the Partnership Role in your relationship.

How does water do all this?

 

Let’s take it one by one

First, let’s talk about the calming nature of water.

I just returned from an exciting adventure hiking The Alps with my husband. We had an amazing time circling a mountain range, hiking up and down as we traveled from one tiny town to another.

The hiking was a peak experience in my life. And I was pretty much right at my capacity when it comes to physical strength.

So, on the final day of our vacation, before we returned home to The States, we were in a little town with a lake and I asked my husband if he would rent one of those very touristy boats with me and float around the lake.

 

The sound of water steadies your relationship

The boat had a tiny motor and a steering wheel, which allowed us to move around the lake effortlessly, but with very little noise or adrenaline. Mostly, we were just floating.

The water lapped at the sides of the boat which created a soundtrack of gentle percussion.  Together we were rocked by the boat which tipped ever so slightly one way and then the other. Back and forth. Back and forth.

We didn’t say much. We just listened to the sounds of the occasional fish jump, or watched the wake made by a duck paddling nearby.

After about 15 minutes of these sounds and rhythm, I took a deep breath. All the adrenaline of those hikes and the energy output of our big hiking adventure, was exhaled. I felt my body synthesize it all. The cortisol evaporated. I felt a calm blanket the two of us.

 

How your relationship relates to the nature of water

The cool thing about water is how it seeks always to be level. There was a stream feeding this lake, as well as a stream flowing out of the lake, but in between the water flowing in and the water flowing out, there was this perfectly serene surface.

When you immerse yourself in a body of water, somehow, magically, a similar thing happens inside of you as well. You feel the even keel nature of the water showing you how to find the evenness inside yourself.

This leveling seeps into your relationship. You feel the companionship of floating. Flowing. David and I exchanged only a few words, but we were bonded by the rocking of the boat, and the flowing of the water.

 

Water will bring calm to your friendship connection 

The friendship role inside your marriage is what allows you to feel understood. There is a magic that the calm surface of water—shared between you and your sweetheart—offers.

You don’t need a boat. You can feel this flow simply sitting beside a flowing body of water like a small creek or even a fountain.

As the water seeks its own level, so, too will your connection. I don’t really understand why this works. I’ve simply experienced it so many times that I promise you can count on it.

 

How does this change your relationship?

Think about what would happen between you and your partner if you gave yourself 90 minutes to simply float? What would even out between you and your partner if you gave your relationship over to the even flow of a body of water?

What would change as a result? How would your companionship shift as you experienced the quiet noises of the water together?

A water date can also be invigorating

My husband and I had the good fortune to raft our way down the Grand Canyon. David rafted the upper section of the river, and I hiked down to join him mid-way.

We were looking forward to this trip because it was the first time we’d been away from our children and we’d just spent 10 years navigating David’s schooling, the death of 3 of my relatives, and 3 moves.

We’d been surviving. Dealing with crisis after crisis. Now this enormous river was going to reset our relationship.

 

The first hurdle in our water adventure

I’d been on the raft a total of about 30 minutes when we came to a GIANT rapid. David was captaining the boat, rowing giant oars about 12 feet long and heavy.

We were in the middle of the rapid when David calmly asked me to unstrap the spare oar that was tied next to me. I suggested it would be better to do that after we got out of the middle of this rapid.

“Please do it now,” he said. I looked behind me to see that the oar David had been using to get us down the river had snapped in half.

 

Adrenaline led to the discovery of laughter as a powerful release

The river had grabbed hold of this lumbering oar—4 inches in diameter—and smashed it as if it were a toothpick. I didn’t have time to ponder what the river would do to me were I to be flung out of the raft, but my body registered the urgency.

As the river tossed us this way and that, I did my best to unstrap the oar and lift it to David. Together, we lifted the heavy oar into the metal channel that held it in place so he could row.

Quickly, he took two strong strokes with that spare oar and we avoided the massive waterfall-like hole in the middle of the river.

Three strokes of the oar later, the river calmed, the adrenaline moment was over, and we burst out laughing. The kind of riotous laughter that only follows complete relief.

 

Shared laughter revives your relationship

“Why didn’t you tell me it was urgent?” I asked him. But I already knew the answer. This is my husband’s disposition. He never sounds panicked. It’s what makes him a great emergency room physician.

Have you ever had a moment in life when suddenly all the questions you’ve been asking for decades have an answer? For years, as we faced crisis after crisis, David never seemed rattled. I mistook his calm demeanor for disengagement.

I am a highly emotional person. You never have to guess at what I’m feeling. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Not so with my husband.

The laughter we both released in the relative calm of that river compelled one of our friends—who followed us down the river—to ask what was so funny. David held up the broken oar. Again, we burst out laughing.

 

How the broken oar helped my marriage heal

This is the healing power of the river. In the last 10 years, there was never such a specific moment as the snapping of the oar. We moved, and the commotion unfolded slowly over days and weeks. My mother had a stroke, was hospitalized for 7 days, and her death came quietly one day just after dawn.

The stress we’d been facing for years never had a moment of release. The pressure built slowly and released over time just like in your life as you face the normal bumps that come with being human.

But that broken oar was so clear.

 

Water brings you closer and helps you see the reality of your relationship

That broken oar became the pressure relief valve for not only this 2-minutes in The Colorado River, but also for the pent-up calamities we’d faced over the previous decade.

Calamities that had slowly alienated us from each other.

But the oar that broke, ironically, drew us together. We were a team. We faced the calamity and we could clearly see how navigating it together saved us.

 

The Partnership and Lover roles of your relationship are impacted by your water date

For the previous decade our Partnership—that role in your marriage that means you achieve together—felt strained. There was just too much we were facing, and it didn’t feel like togetherness. It felt like overwhelm.

But the broken oar revealed all those hidden moments to me when David had been equally calm. I’d mistaken his calm for a lack of caring. Now, I felt how much we’d been silently working together toward a common goal.

Likewise, for the previous decade, our Romance—that lover role in your marriage that keeps you wanting each other—had been neglected. We were too tired to WANT anything more than simply to survive the day.

But our laughter was like a lifeline. I WANT to surf the big waves with YOU said our laughter. Our laughter was a bell of return. A return to the passion we shared.

 

Find the laughter and feel closer to your partner

In a moment, the river invited me to see the passion we’d both had in the past decade to survive the frothy, furious waves of life. We didn’t have the cue to notice all that we’d surfed together, but this broken oar symbolized our desire to be each other’s safe place in the torrent of life’s storms.

You don’t need a raft-flipping rapid to help you WANT your partner. You just need to find that laughter. Laughter that comes from teamwork and togetherness and facing an adventure with both of you paddling in the same direction.

The Partner Role in your relationship is what helps you feel like you’re on the same team: accomplishing the details of life together. The Lover Role in your relationship is what reminds you that you WANT each other, keeping your chemistry vital and alive.

 

A water date invites laughter and play that are essential to your relationship

Life is filled with details. Details that seem to say, “You don’t have TIME to play.”

But I’m going to argue that you don’t have time NOT to play.

Why? Because when you play, you wake up the Lover Role. Obviously, that’s great for returning you to remember all the vitality and desire you have in your relationship.

But there’s another reason, and it’s uber-practical. When you WANT to be with your sweetheart, in addition to all the chemistry you reignite, you also WANT to face those Partner-details in life together.

What do you need from water?

What the “Friend” needs:

Do you simply need that floating time to synthesize your life? Floating on the water (or wading, or sitting beside the water) helps to bond you to your sweetheart.

It builds the trust that your Friendship Role needs to thrive. You’ll feel more companionable. Things that need to bubble up, will. Then, because you’re floating, you can more easily flow with those conversations.

 

What the “Partner” needs:

Maybe you notice that it’s your Partnership Role that wants some attention. You feel overwhelmed, like you’re the one doing all the work.

If that’s how you’re feeling, I recommend you rent or borrow a paddle board. Get on it together. Notice how you throw each other’s balance off. Notice what it takes to paddle together. Let yourselves laugh at the imbalance.

 

What the “Lover” needs:

Laughter is medicine to the Lover Role in your relationship. Laughter lubricates and ignites your chemistry. The more you wake up that Lover Role, the more lubricated all your Partnership tangles will be.

How about you?

What is your favorite way to experience the water? When has a water adventure frightened you? Soothed you? Healed you?

Text me at 970-210-4480, because I want to know about your adventures with water and how water impacts your relationship.