Date Night Dilemma: Cultivate Your Dream Team

What is it that creates a great date night for The Partner Role in your relationship?

The “wrong” date night can actually cause more conflict, but an effective date night bonds you. So how do you know what to choose when you’re planning your date night?

It’s important to create “dates” that nourish the complexity in your relationship.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you know that I believe there are three roles inside your singular relationship: Partner, Friend, and Lover.

• The Partner helps you ACHIEVE and you feel bonded as teammates.
• The Friend understands you and, thus, you feel like you BELONG.
• The Lover WANTS you, and when you feel wanted, your confidence soars.

This is the first in a 3-part series to help you understand the three roles inside your singular relationship, and how each of them need just a little different type of nurturance.

Our goal today is to understand what The Partner Role needs to have a great date night that will nurture the totality of your relationship. Because when The Partner Role is nourished, you have far less conflict.

 

What role does The Partner have in your relationship?

If The Partner isn’t happy in your relationship, out comes the shadow side of The Partner—The Saboteur—and that Saboteur begins destroying your relationship shouting things like, “This isn’t fair!” or “I’m the only one who does any work around here!”

I love The Partner, because The Partner does the heavy lifting in life, keeping people fed and the bills paid, but The Partner is also the fastest one to do some damage in a relationship. So, we need to take good care of The Partner.

 

Plan a date that allows The Partner to thrive

A dream date night (or daytime date) for The Partner is to get an onerous task accomplished so it’s no longer a burden. The Partner dreams of having a teammate to help with all the difficult tasks of adulting.

Life is filled with details that require DOING. When you have your partner next to you for some of that doing, you bond. You BELONG. You’re part of a TEAM and that’s more fun.

Here’s a couple suggestions that make The Partner get excited about date night:

• All those pesky banking and money apps that are a mess? Can we clean them up together and get on the same page financially?
• The garage that’s a pile of recycling and abandoned potted plants? Can we declutter and find a better system for the recycle?
• The ever-present week night conundrum: What’s for dinner? Could we decide who will cook when and find some fast, but nutritious, meals?

 

Traditional romance isn’t always the best for your date night

I hear you, “Rebecca, there is absolutely NOTHING about those topics that sound like they qualify for a date night!”

I know. Tossing out old potting soil doesn’t sound romantic, but let’s get some perspective. How many times have you been in the middle of a romantic candlelight dinner and you’re talking about how good the food is and your clueless partner says, “This food is so much better than what we eat at home.”

And your heart stops. Your gut seizes. You put your fork down, scoot your chair back from the table. And you say, “Well, you try slaving away to make dinner every single day only to have the kids say, ‘I hate beans!’ Let’s see how delicious your food would taste.”

It’s as if all the oxygen is snuffed out of the room and the candles go out.

Suddenly, your date night has ignited all the regular arguments you have with your partner rather than helping you fall more deeply in love. We’ve all had this happen, right?

This is the toxic power of the Saboteur.

 

If you don’t tend to the needs of The Partner, that neglected Partner will suck all the joy out of your relationship

Consequently, I recommend feeding the date night needs of The Partner first because The Partner is all about justice and fairness. Until those needs are met, ain’t no romance headed your way.

But please don’t think dating The Partner is boring. Not at all! You’ll be shocked at how much romance is awakened when The Partner role in your relationship is satisfied.

 

An example from my marriage

I love systems. I love order. But I also love camping, skiing, and kayaking. All those activities come with a lot of gear. Gear that was just getting stashed in our garage in a giant pile.

I kept asking my husband to clean the garage with me, but hiking or boating always trumped our time together. Until my birthday.

David asked me, “What do you want to do for your birthday?”

“I want to clean the garage,” I said.

“That’s not special enough,” said my husband, “We can’t do that.”

But I made him believe that, to me, cleaning the garage was exactly the most special thing I could imagine.

When my birthday arrived, I made turkey and avocado sandwiches (my favorite) and we had a fridge filled with fizzy drinks. My other favorite.

We worked. Then we snacked. My favorite, favorite way to spend time.

I was dancing around the garage to the show tunes blaring on the speaker. I grabbed my husband to dance with me amidst the new cans for the recycling, then I smiled up at him, “Isn’t this great?”

 

Why does achievement deepen your connection?

For me, I was now relieved of that mental taxation I felt every time I walked into the garage to find a shovel, or carry out an empty cardboard box and was faced with chaos. Every time I had to look at that mess, I felt alone. Abandoned even.

Now, I was feeling the opposite. I was listening to my favorite music. I had my favorite guy. And TOGETHER we were solving a big problem that was tripping me up. I felt bonded: it was US against the world.

My husband was convinced.

He felt the surrender in my hug at the end of the day that let him know a burden had been lifted off my shoulders. And he could tell that he was my hero. He was showered in the kind of kisses that say, “I worship you.”

 

The power of a Partner-date

When you solve a problem that has been niggling at your partner—especially one of those adulting problems that is fraught with overwhelm—you become their savior.

I ask you, which is more likely to get you some really good sexy romance…organizing gear into boxes or commenting about the good restaurant food you never get at home?

Can you see how powerful a really well thought out Partner-date night can be?

Let’s take a deeper look:

To understand the dating needs of The Partner, I’m going to tell you a football story.

Just recently, I watched the college football championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Ohio was ahead in the score, but the score was close enough that Notre Dame could close the gap if everything went their way.

In order for things to go their way, however, they needed more time. So, Notre Dame used one of their timeouts to stop the clock. This surprised me because Ohio State had possession of the ball, and there was more than 4 minutes left.

I’ve only seen teams employing their timeouts when they have the ball. (Some of you are thinking, “You don’t watch much football, Rebecca.” And you’d be right.)

This taking of time outs, however, felt very forward looking. It did open a door of possibility for Notre Dame.

Then I watched Ohio State make the opposite decision: to run the clock down. They let the play clock run—which was set for 30 seconds—until it expired, then they called their time out.

This whole idea of each of the teams playing with time to their unique advantage fascinated me. And it’s not unlike how we need to see the relationship with The Partner Role in our relationship.

 

You and your partner are on the same team

The Partner sometimes needs an enormous investment of time. But my promise is that time is returned because you will have less conflict. Or your life will run more smoothly. Or you’ll feel more united to your partner. Like you’re teammates.

The shadow of your Partner—The Saboteur—is fast to demolish any intimacy in your relationship. But The Saboteur can be very informative because it lets you know where things feel unfair or inequitable.

Just like Notre Dame looked ahead in the football game and took those strategic time outs, your relationship needs you to be strategic with your time to address places in your relationship where unfairness is brewing.

When you can get ahead of those inequities—either with systems or with understanding—you avoid the deep wounds that come with conflict, yelling, and accusations.

 

The key element to remember when dating The Partner is to be strategic

Strategy means you identify the precise problem you’re trying to solve.

In the football game I just described, time was the critical component. Time is sometimes what The Partner needs. But sometimes it’s a better system—a shared app to keep banking simpler, or a specific place where the dirty laundry goes rather than scattered on the floor.

When you can identify the problem, The Partner date can address it.

This week be strategic about the Partnership of your relationship. Discuss these 3 questions:

• What inequities do you fight about? Or what inequities are brewing?
• How could you and your partner strategize together to mitigate the unfairness?
• Identify the precise problem that’s causing strife, or has the potential to cause strife.

I have watched magic happen in relationships when we take time to really identify the problem of perceived unfairness.

 

Here’s and example:

A couple comes in to coach with me. They suffered from a common fight in many relationships: the hangry moment when they’re asking, “What’s for dinner?” There’s no plan for dinner. And each person blames the other because they’re both hungry and tired.

I kept suggesting they take the time to make a meal plan, deciding who would cook when, but every weekend they were busy playing outside—skiing, kayaking and the like—and those weekends were where they bonded.

This is a classic duel between The Lover and The Partner.

Those weekends were filled with activities The Lovers wanted to do: play! Play! Play! And neither of them wanted to give up any play time, especially because they needed the connection provided by all the play to make up for all the conflict caused by the brewing unfairness The Partner perceived during the week.

Next time they had a session with me, I invited them to make a plan to address the weekday hangries. They resisted. This couple really didn’t want to deal with adulting. Adulting was so boring to them.

But they were breaking the bank with week-night takeout, so I convinced them to give an alternative a try.

Right there, during the session, we came up with 4 easy dinners. They were both big sauce people, and I mentioned a variety of sauces they could find in jars. Pasta sauce, yes, but also a hoisin sauce, a Thai-peanut sauce and a fabulous green chili sauce.

I proposed they make a big pot of rice on Sunday night when they got home from skiing. Then, buy some deli meat and a bag of salad.

Each weekday night, Monday thru Thursday, they threw a couple slices of meat and some rice onto a plate. Then opened one of the jars of sauce and heated dinner in the microwave.

I saw them a month after the jar opening began. “Rebecca,” the woman said to me, “You won’t believe it! We saved $340 this month!”

Her partner chimed in, “And we have found new sauces! We now have a whole cabinet in the kitchen dedicated to sauces. We’re calling it the Flavor Palace.”

They were so thrilled with their experimentations with sauces that they actually had a leisurely morning one Sunday so they could concoct a brunch built of sauces.

See what happened? When they strategically spent some of their time addressing the challenges faced by The Partner, they stopped hangering at each other, which bonded them as teammates. So much so that they were even willing to sacrifice a morning of adventure.

This is the sort of fundamental change that can happen in your relationship when you lean into the needs of The Partner. It just takes a little strategizing.

The heart of your Partner-Relationship is about learning how to face the adulting moments of life together and address the perceived inequities.

Consequently, we need to first notice where those troublesome spots are. All we’re doing, though is identifying the trouble spots, OK. Don’t let your planning energy evolve into conflict.

If it starts to go that way, I suggest employing a sentence like this one:
“Hey Sweetheart, I know this is frustrating. And it feels unfair.” Take a breath here. “We are—right this very moment—making a plan for how to address it together.”

Some people tell me, “It feels like you’re asking me to make a date with my partner so we can fight.” I totally get why it feels this way. Because you’re dedicating a date night to talking about something that typically causes tension and conflict.

But we’re being strategic. Just like in the football game. We’re taking this time-out to protect your chance to score big with the dates to come dedicated to The Friend and The Lover.

It’s important to take this time to plan for the date using one or more of the following phrases:

• What’s the underlying problem that makes us fight?
• What feels unfair to you?
• If we could wave a magic wand and the problem went away, what would have happened?
• You might notice tensions rise as you address these topics.

Stop. Breathe. Hold hands. Or take a walk as you continue to discuss. Movement helps discussions like this.

 

Tenderness and intention are key

Remind yourselves. Say out loud, “I know we’re struggling with this. And this is why we’re tackling it. We are dedicated to identify the underlying problem and address it rather than putting a bandaid on it.”

If you don’t believe me, borrow from my marriage. My husband and I had conflict about so, so much. Chores, and money, and never any time or energy for our sex life. I have fought about it ALL. Loudly! And often.

But we just don’t have this sort of conflict anymore. Not. At. All.

Because we addressed all the underlying issues.

Here’s how to finish this week’s habit for your happily ever after assignment: When you have a list of your troublesome areas, put a date on your calendar to solve them. Get specific.

“Chores” is too big.

“The trash” is just the right size.

So, on Saturday morning, before we go out to ride bikes (or take our kids to the Children’s Museum, or whatever else your Saturday is serving up), we will have a Partner-Date to solve the trash conundrum.

That’s the end. That’s all you need to do for today.

If you fight about the trash between now and Saturday, tell yourself, “We are dedicated to solving this issue on Saturday.”

 

The Partner relaxes when it knows a solution is coming

Conversely, if there isn’t a plan to address what feels unfair to The Partner, well, that Partner can’t stay quiet.

This is why putting your Partner-Date on the calendar is crucial. It says to The Partner, “We see you. We’re going to tend to your needs.”

Tend to The Partner and watch the other two roles in your relationship—The Lover and The Friend—watch them grow and flourish because those basic needs—like food and lights on—are satisfied.

Would you like more resources to help you understand the role of The Partner in your relationship?

• Learn how to batch your date nights and then make sure they get on the calendar.
• Create questions that invite you and your partner to dream together rather than damn each other with an agenda.
• Learn more about the Saboteur in your relationship.
• Listen to my conversation with Allison Evans about how to stay in your own business.