Why We Gave Up Date Night.

Yep.  This is Date Night.  Valentine’s Day from several years ago. White Castle table service.  If you haven’t been, its amazing – our kind of Valentine’s Day.  The problem is, this is all we did.  On any night.  Date Night.  Regular night.  Didn’t matter.   We’d eat.  Then we’d sit. Watch a movie.  Eat some more.  Sleep.  Wonder what I’m going to eat today?  Sit.  Watch TV.  Date Night for Mike and I became a ritual of sedentary bliss and loathing all at the same time.

Even when it wasn’t Valentine’s Day, we’d attempt to do Date Night.  Go out to do something special, but it was really more of the same.  Eating and sitting.  Watching something on a screen of choice.  An uninspired effort of quality time.  Both of us just really unhappy with who we were.

When I started my last attempt to lose weight, I had hoped Mike would come along for the ride.  Its always great when you don’t have pizza and breadsticks and other lovely temptations in front of you. But I tried to never push him because I always knew that I wasn’t perfect.  Odds were that I would fall of the horse (as I did every other time, so why wouldn’t it happen again) and then feel bad if he was doing really good.  So I usually kept my health attempts (or lack thereof) to myself. 

We’d have heart to heart talks from time to time about our weight, but we always ended up portraying ourselves as victims, stressed out professionals with bad genes whose vice just happens to be food.  Oh well.  Whatcha hungry for, honey? Pizza or Mexican?

But then our boys went off to college and jobs.  I’m not sure about Mike, but I realized I had officially run out of excuses.  I had no one left to blame my lack of effort on.  It really was up to me now.

Ummm, Jen…what does any of this have to do with Date Night?

Well, ok, I’m steering off course just a bit.  Here’s my point. Date Night sucked for us.  We were  bad at it.  We needed a real connection and I’ve learned, connecting with your spouse is about finding something you enjoy doing together.

I wouldn’t have guessed this in millions of years, but for us, its stinkin’ CrossFit. 

Because of CrossFit, we straight up gave up Date Night. 

Do you know how hard it is for couples to find things they equally enjoy?  So hard!  One person always likes something better than the other.  Always. You try to like it, but that’s all you’re doing is trying.  That’s not fun.

We also might have given up Date Night, because – do you know how tiring CrossFit is?  We are super tired.  Too tired to Date Night.  Ha ha.

Anyway, my advice is not to necessarily start CrossFit.  However, I will say it has been amazing for me, particularly someone who hates working out!?  Who knew?

But please – search long and hard for something that YOU and your significant other truly both enjoy.  It might take you years to find it, like Mike and I.  I can’t tell you how fulfilling it is that Mike and I both commit 4-5 days a week to training.  We push each other, we mock/taunt each other and have fun.  We ride in the car together.  We talk about our lifts, our progress and things we couldn’t do a year ago.  This allows us to summit mountains, scale rock formations and push ourselves further than we ever thought possible.

Tomorrow night, we enter our second CrossFit Open!  We’re stronger than last year and excited to do the same workout with thousands of other people all over the world. 

We’re not only a husband and wife team, but friends, teammates and a part of something bigger.  And we do it together.  We enjoy it together.  Every day we train its something new.  We’re stronger both together and as individuals.  We’re healthier. We spend more time together.  We found something we love to do together several days a week.  And its good for us.

Who needs Date Night?