You thought you had all of the answers.  You married her and things changed…so you think.  What happened.  I know from my perspective, I got lazy.  I had made the catch.  I won the prize.

I know my wife needs to be pursued by me.  She wants me to love her - and I do.  She wants me to go out of my way to show her so she feels special.

Before Stephanie and I started dating we were friends.  I must have had a crush on her.  I didn’t date much in high school - I was pretty shy and pretty much scared of girls.  I guess I was afraid of rejection or failure.  Anyway, I was prompted to ask Stephanie out when some of my football teammates threatened to do it for me.

Well, the first time I got the guts to ask her out went something like this:

Tripp (While walking down the hall after Physics class): Would you like to do something this Friday night?

Stephanie: No.

    LONG PAUSE…can you hear the crickets chirping too?

    Stephanie: I have to work on Friday night.  How about Saturday?

    Tripp: Sounds great, I will pick you up at seven.

What I was really wanting to get at in this post (or series of posts, however it turns out) are the things I did after that.

First things first: Put your best foot forward.   When I was preparing for my first date with Stephanie I did a lot of things that I probably don’t do now when I want to take her out.  The first thing was make a plan.  Now a days, when we are going to do something, we get in the car and I ask her, “what do you feel like?”  I don’t have a plan.  But on the first date, and for a long time after that, I worked hard to come up with a plan that would take us through the night.  My excuse for not having a plan now is, I want to do what she wants to do.  (Maybe what she wants is for me to be thoughtful enough to make plans for us and not to pick a restaurant that she doesn’t like, but to know her well enough to pick a place she likes to eat and pick an activity that she likes to do).

I made sure the car looked good.  Had it washed, cleaned up and shining.  I can’t go making a bad impression and picking up a beautiful girl in a dirty car.

I took a shower and put on a nice looking outfit.  I had to try and impress her.

I showed up early, but not too early, and I brought her some flowers.  Doing this shows her a couple of things.  First, the date means a lot to me and it is important that I am on time so we can maximize our time together.  I brought her flowers to make her feel special.

When we left, I opened the car door for her.  We didn’t have the radio turned on as we drove so we could talk, and so I could pay attention to her and drive.  Once we got to the restaurant, I opened the door for her.   After dinner, I paid and we left and headed for the movie theater.  I guess that wasn’t the greatest place for a first date, but it was alright.  We saw one of the worst movies ever, “The Man Who Knew Too Little.”

After that I took her home at a reasonable hour out of respect for her and her family and walked her to the door.

I had a great feeling after that first date.  Somehow, I knew deep down she was the girl.  I tried to keep up with the level I set for the first date.  I always tried to have a plan.  No matter what we did, it was planned before we did it.  After we got married, I guess life just happened.  We really stopped “dating” and just went with the flow.  Now, having a 7 month old baby makes it even harder because time is much more precious due to our work schedules.

Even though it seems harder to do the things we did in high school and college to put our best foot forward, I think it is necessary so our marital relationships continue to thrive.  I mean, this is the most special human relationship we have in this life.  We need to WORK to make it the best it can be.

Here is the challenge:  Plan your next “first date.”  Work out your schedules and take your wife out.  Just you and her (no kids allowed).  You need that time to talk about grown up things and grow your relationship closer together.  Plan the entire night.  Don’t expect anything (to be read: sex) in return.  Then, spoil her.  I would further challenge you to do this more than one time.  How about once a week or once a month.  You need this time with your wife too.