Date nights: Relationship savior in Corona times?!
The current Corona situation is getting to many people’s heads. Especially for couples with children, who are increasingly mixing everyday life, work and raising children due to the home office, this is a difficult situation that endangers relationships. Relationship experts therefore advise date nights – appointments for two – as a way out of this misery.
Against Corona relationship frustration: Date nights, dates for two
Corona and its associated limitations have a negative impact on society as a whole. Impairments as far as the eye can see. Couples, especially parents with children, are not exempt. In some cases, they are even harder hit than other groups.
The reason: all activities are currently forced to take place within their own four walls. Work in the home office, while the children are being taught from home due to the school closures. A situation that may be bearable for a few weeks without any problems, but over several months – that’s how long it has lasted in the meantime – it then represents quite a burden for parents.
So it’s no wonder that a lot of things fall by the wayside due to this situation. One aspect that couples are particularly short on at the moment is their shared love life – togetherness, intimacy, sex. Stress and the lack of temporal and spatial freedom are not a suitable breeding ground for interpersonal relationships and sensuality.
Nevertheless, even in the Corona era, there are ways to find your way back to what makes you a couple. Sex coach Susanne Wendel, who has published books such as “gesundgevögelt in 12 Wochen” and “Heute komme ich zuerst” and is herself a mother of two children, explains: “If couples only experience themselves in their relationship as parents, office mates, cleaning crews and smartphone zombies, the mutual attraction dies and the partner becomes a projection screen for their own frustration.
According to the relationship expert, those who only have the feeling of functioning no longer have any resources left for affection. It is important to take time for each other as a couple. Her advice: date nights, appointments for two – once a week or at least once a month.
Switch off from everyday life and just enjoy the moment
What’s important on a date night: all outside influences, TV, computers and smartphones, are ignored. And the children spend the time with grandparents, friends or – if that’s not possible and you can’t find anyone to look after them during – at least in their room.
Since the purpose of a date night is to get a little closer again as lovers and to experience shared moments of intimacy, you should definitely dress smartly for the occasion. Meaning: baggy clothes stay in the closet. Instead, men should wear a suit and women a dress.
In addition, it is advisable to prepare the room in which the date is to take place a little. After all, you want to be comfortable and feel like you’re on a real date, such as in a restaurant or at the movies.
Once the preparations are made and both partners are dressed, the date night can also begin. But be careful: you should agree in advance on topics of conversation that are better avoided on this occasion, including Corona, children or the job. “Admittedly, it can be that then little remains and one sits at first helplessly next to each other on the bed,” reports Susanne Wendel from her own experience. But after all, the point of a date night is explicitly to be occupied only with each other and to fade out everything else.
Gentle touches, a sensual massage or sex can also be part of a date night. Because this can increase the affection for each other again, as various psychological studies show. And at the end of the day, couples also manage to get through the difficult time of the lockdown happily in this way.
