Tips for living: Spending time together — without kids

Our grown sons like to remind us how we mistreated them on many Friday nights when they were growing up.

My wife and I would heat up individual pot pies — often bought on sale for a quarter — and feed our sons early in the evening. Then we would banish them to their rooms with books or TV and start our date night at home.

The preferred menu was grilled steak (economy cut, of course) and onion rings. Sometimes the dinner was by candlelight and sometimes not. But it was a chance for us to talk, listen to music or watch a movie while enjoying a dinner without kids.

We loved them, really we did. But we needed that break — a chance to pay attention to each other without the \"Mom, he hit me\" or \"Dad, he took my football.\"

They talk now about the smell of steak wafting upstairs into their rooms. And they talk about imagining the taste of onion rings that their parents wouldn't share.

But now that they're married with children, they understand why they need to have time with each other without the kids — even if it means paying for a baby sitter. They might even forgive us for giving them pot pies. Actually, they don't, but so far I've managed to live with the guilt.

Here are a few ideas for inexpensive ways to spend time with your spouse:

 

Take a walk together in the neighborhood.

 

Go to a nursery, and pick out plants you like. You don't have to buy them right then.

 

Go buy an ice cream cone or milkshake, and talk about anything. Even nonfat frozen yogurt will work.

 

Try fantasy shopping together. Imagine you have $100 to spend on each other, and then tell what you would have bought. Telling about it is almost as good as actually doing it.

 

Go to the library, and pick out a DVD.

 

Do a temple session, and take enough time to walk around the grounds.

 

Go for a ride, and see a place you've always wanted to visit.

These are inexpensive — but not cheap — ways to spend time together with no children included. You need that. After all, you're investing in your relationship.

e-mail: rwalsh@desnews.com