Backwards Dating

However, for all my husbands' great qualities, creativity, especially when it comes to date night ideas, is a struggle. Mike would be very happy with some nice food and a board game or two every time. I, on the other hand, am a big fan of variety. And while I would love him to regularly plan something special and unique, I have come to realise this is an unfair expectation and not a necessary requirement for a romantic and enjoyable evening. Therefore, we have agreed to plan most date nights together. In the week leading up to the planned night, we set some time aside to hash out and decide how the night will look. By doing this we find our night can be free from unmet expectations and negative feelings. We try to keep the price as low as possible, but sometimes spending a bit more money on doing something extra special is worth it, like this month's fun date night idea.

Recently we decided to mix up our standard date night out with a "Backwards Date" and, to make it even more interesting we figured, why not try three different locations. This night was probably one of my favorite dates out so far. We love to people watch, and to make up stories about the different groups we see, so having three different environments over the course of the evening made for plenty of conversation topics.

Having made sure we didn't eat too much during the day, our first stop was a little ice cream parlor where we shared a cup of gelato. This provided a good test of our compromising skills as we could only pick 2 flavors.

Next stop was dinner at a yummy little Thai restaurant around the corner, cheap and cheerful plus super quick to be served. We managed to score ourselves a window seat with a view of the restaurant, so plenty of people in sight.