Needs
It’s no secret that the past few years have been rather rough on Heather and me. Relationships are difficult. Marriages are more so. Lack of time for each other lead to a severe strain in the bond between us. We needed to do something to make time for ourselves and our marriage.
It turns out, we’re both big on lists. She has one. I have one. Mine is bigger.
Our answer was to make the time we needed, doing our best to shun everything else during the time we’re together. So we planned “Alphabet Dating”. The concept is very simple: We plan 26 dates, one for each letter of the alphabet. The activities of each date are (sometimes loosely) based on the letter that sponsors that evening’s letter. The act of planning keeps our need in the forefront of our relationship. This is quite helpful. It’s entirely too easy to be distracted by other things that “need” to be done, like mowing the lawn.
Our version of “Alphabet Dating” doesn’t have a large number of rules. Start with date ‘A’, end with date ‘Z’ and date for all the letters in between. Dinner and a movie do not count, unless it is only a small part of the overall plan. The reasoning for this is that there is no real line of communication open during a movie—even one as funny as The Hangover. The point of making time for one another is to build and maintain an open connection. It’s a 2-way handshake. ACK
A Quick Pictorial Summary
Currently, & Looking Ahead
Yesterday we had a short, but very fun, “E” date. It seemed short, anyway. I suppose we were out for about three hours or so. I would have loved to have gone a couple hours more. The theme was “Exploring”. We walked up and down the Monon Trail of Carmel, trying our hands at geocaching. I think we had a good enough time to choose our own adventure again for the “H” date.
We found two caches and walked a fair bit, though I forgot my pedometer and couldn’t track the exact steps. Both caches found were traditional in the sense that you use a GPS device to go directly to the coordinates given. Next time, Heather would like to search for some that are puzzle solving in nature. We really think our kids would also love this as a hobby and plan on taking them out, hopefully sometime soon. Some would say that we are dorky that way. Some would be right.
The next couple of weeks will see both our “F” and “G” dates. We’ve got a romantic evening planned at The Melting Pot for our “F” date, which will have to include a fedora, followed by a trip to Chicago to see Jonathan Coulton in concert for our “G” date.
We’re moving right along now and we’re having quite a bit of fun just doing things together. As long as we keep the pace up, I dare say this little project is working as we hoped. We’re in a better place, we’re loving it, and loving each other.
