Dinner and a movie. Movie and dinner. Maybe dinner, then going home because the movie starts to feel like a lot.
If that’s become your date-night rotation, research suggests doing something new together could help pull you out of it. Psychologist Arthur Aron found that couples who took on novel and exciting activities together reported greater relationship satisfaction than couples who spent that time doing familiar, comfortable things.
Part of the explanation involves something called misattribution of arousal. The excitement you feel while trying something new can get associated with the person beside you. A 2013 study in Couple and Family Psychology also found that couples who spent 90 minutes a week doing something new and exciting reported greater relationship excitement afterward.
Fortunately, this doesn’t require skydiving or becoming people who own matching kayaks. Here are eight date ideas that get you out of the usual dinner reservation.
1. Become Tourists in Your Own Neighborhood
Pick an area nearby that you’ve somehow never bothered exploring and spend a few hours wandering around. Try the coffee shop you always drive past. Find a dive bar. Walk into the antique store with the creepy porcelain dolls in the window.
You get somewhere new without dealing with an airport, and you’ll probably end up talking about the fun you had for a while.
2. The Bookstore Date
Give yourselves $15 or $20 and split up. Each person has to find a book for the other, then meet back up over coffee and explain the choice.
There’s some risk here. Apparently your partner sees you as either Joan Didion or the proud future owner of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Home Plumbing. Either way, it’s innocent fun.
3. Eat Something Neither of You Has Tried
Most couples eventually develop a restaurant rotation they could recite under anesthesia. Break it.
Find Georgian, Ethiopian, Uyghur, Peruvian, Sri Lankan, or anything else neither of you knows much about. Order a few things you haven’t had before and figure it out together. Being slightly clueless at the same time is surprisingly fun.
4. Book a Live Show That Day
Find a comedy show, a theater performance, a local band, a weird little pop-up above a bar. Buy tickets that morning and just go.
The short notice keeps you from spending three weeks discussing logistics until neither of you wants to leave the house. Have a drink beforehand. Wear something nice. See what happens.
5. Give Yourselves a Flea Market Challenge
Go to a flea market, or farmers market with a small budget and buy something for each other.
The only rule: no practical purchases. No one wants to receive artisanal dish soap as a romantic gesture unless they specifically requested artisanal dish soap.
6. Go Somewhere With a View
Find a rooftop bar, hiking trail, observation deck, fire tower, or any place where you can see your town from somewhere other than street level.
Bring coffee or a drink and stay awhile. Sometimes getting out of your normal surroundings is all you need to have a conversation you weren’t going to have while half-watching Netflix.
7. Ask Each Other Better Questions
Grab a bottle of wine and start with the easy stuff. Mountains or beach? Sweet or savory? Go out or stay home?
Then get nosier. What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail? What have you wanted to ask me but haven’t? What do you want more of lately? No phones. Just one-on-one time with genuine interest.
8. Be Bad at Something Together
Take a pottery class. Try archery. Sign up for beginner salsa. Throw axes. Attempt handmade pasta and discover that flour can reach areas of a kitchen you previously thought were protected by physics.
Aron’s research found value in activities that were exciting and challenging, rather than simply pleasant. Being terrible at something together brings novelty, a little adrenaline, and a decent chance to laugh at each other.
That already sounds better than asking, for the 400th time, “Where do you want to eat?”
The post 8 Creative Date Night Ideas to Break Out of Your Relationship Rut appeared first on VICE.
