Episode #619
What did you do last week for your date night? Or did you skip date night…again?
Often, men skip date night and don’t make it a priority because they’re actually TERRIFIED. We’ll tell you why in this episode and how to overcome it.
One quick tip is to do what YOU enjoy the most on your dates because it creates mystery in the relationship and includes your partner in your adventure.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of date night from your wife’s perspective and what to do to bring the spark back into your relationship.
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Transcription
Doug: What’s happening, gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the TPM show. Tim, how are you doing, brother?
Tim: Doing well.I always love being here with you, talking to the men, the listeners. It’s amazing.
Doug: Yeah, I’m excited to see you, man. I was thinking about this the other day, it’s one month from today, or a couple days from when we’re recording this. So, when the guys are listening to this it will be about a month or so. You and I and almost 50 guys will be in Cuba. It’ll be the Cuban assault, descending upon Cuba.
Tim: Yeah, sounds wild. It’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun. Amazing memories are always made.
Doug: So, for guys that don’t know, if you’re not listening to this, or maybe you’re in the AM, what we do is the Brotherhood and the IC guys, we do two major events per year. I say major, because there’s a lot of smaller ones coming up and we’re adding more to the plate all the time, but guys go on two things. And the Brotherhood, we say, is epic men with epic adventure and epic growth. Those are the three hallmarks of what the Brotherhood’s about. Now the guys in the IC, they stay on for a few other days to do something we call the boardroom and some deep dives. And we have a lot of fun. So, don’t tell anybody. But we have a great time. Cuba is our next one. Before that we’ve done Tulum, Costa Rica, Morocco, really all over the world. And it’s a great group of guys. and the movement just continues to grow, and we keep having fun. I’m excited to see you, Tim. I haven’t seen you- how long has it been? October, since Iceland, since I’ve actually been able to give you a big bear hug. So, I’m excited to see you brother.
Tim: Yeah, me too, brother.
Doug: Well, Tim, today what I want to talk about is, again, continuing this theme that in January just naturally presents itself to us. What are we going to do with 2023? Here we are coming off the back of divorce day, right? Divorce day is- Divorce month, technically, they call it, but really specifically the beginning of January is when most conversations about divorce are initiated, or most divorces are filed. And as you know, if you’ve been listening to the show, or you can Google it, over 70% of divorces are initiated by the woman or the wife. And that number goes to 90% if your wife’s got a college degree or higher. Again, over 90% of divorces are initiated by a woman if she’s got a college degree or higher. So we look at this and we think about 2023.
There are a lot of guys listening to this that are like, man, this is the year I’m going to bring the spark back in my marriage. This is the year that my wife and I are going to start having a connection. She’s going to look at me with love and respect, see the man that I am. Intimacy is going to be through the roof. You know, that head-banging type of intimacy. Now, it’s not just about sex. Sex is just an indicator. It’s how us as men receive connection. Right? So it’s just one part. But what you guys want is that love and respect back from your wife. And if 2023 is something that you’re going to be doing, here’s a question I will ask you: what did you do last week for your date night? Answer this to yourself, guys. And what did you do the week before for date night?
Now, for most of you, I know the answer is going to be nothing. Nothing. And I get it, man. I’ve been there, so I totally get it. We throw kids in the mix, work. all the things that are going on in our lives – it’s easy to skip out on date night. However, if you want 2023 to be the year that things change for you, the year that you are bringing that spark back, date night is one of the ingredients. Think of it as baking a cake. You need to have the proper ingredients. If you don’t have flour of some sort, you’re not making a cake. Date night is the flour, in this case, for that cake.
Now, there’s a lot of other ingredients that we teach in the AM, which is a proven methodology to help men go from a relationship that is on the brink of divorce, or seemingly so, to one that is filled with passion. And date night is one of them. So Tim, what is your experience talking to the guys that are coming in nowadays on their experience with date night?
Tim: What date night? And it’s nothing against them. I think for most of the guys that come into the AM right now, they are terrified of date night, they’re terrified of the idea of date night for various reasons. One, they are afraid of the rejection, the wife saying no. Two, they’re afraid of putting it out there because for a lot of guys, they don’t feel like the relationship is in a place where date night is even on the table. Whether it’s, separation, sleeping in different rooms, whatever it may be. And obviously, a lot of guys don’t even have any ideas of what to do for date night, because they’re not doing anything for themselves.
Now, this is why we give the men the triad of connection. The Live as a King system starts to address the fact that they are trained to pour from a cup that’s always been emptied, very difficult to give- people get the rest of you instead of the best of you. Very tough to do. Very tough to plan date night from that place. Typically, you’ll be sparse on ideas, and you won’t really execute them with the playfulness and the confidence that you otherwise could when your cup is overflowing. And obviously, we give them the Clean Slate method as well. Because in order for date night to come back on the table and be an option, quite rightly, the woman has to be able to have an element of trust and surrender in the process. And if there’s been a history of broken promises, and there’s past hurts and past resentments that keep getting brought up, then quite rightly, the guys don’t want to do it that night. Because why would they want to go to a restaurant and sit there, or whatever it may be, and just have all of the past hurts get thrown in the face? So they avoid it.
That’s why we give them the Clean Slate method because within a few weeks, they’re able to address those and turn that ship around. And obviously validation as well, the hidden motives technique, because that then helps to maintain those little moments of connection throughout the week so that it just keeps the fire burning, so then date night becomes just the next obvious step versus there being no flame whatsoever, and then all of a sudden date night – it’s like, Whoa, where did this come from? You’ve not spoken to me for four days, we’ve not been connected for five days, and I don’t trust you. You said you’re gonna take out the trash on Wednesday, you never did. You said you’re gonna finish work at 8 and you never did, whatever it may be.
So, yeah, didn’t night, for a lot of guys, in the beginning, is kind of off the table. But luckily, for the guys that do the work – and that’s, quite frankly, most of them – date night quickly becomes something that’s on the table again. And the great thing is, because of how the guys choose to live, there’s a lot of mystery that is injected rather into the relationship because of certain things they do in the Live as a King system, which therefore, rather opens up the possibility of intrigue, and that can be filled with date night.
Doug: So true. So true. And I know the topics coming in the back of Iceland, in fact, before that was Costa Rica. Some of the guys even in the movement that are so aware of date night were like, I’m running out of ideas. And so they’ve co-opted a lot of those ideas, which is great. And guys, if you’re interested, we put together a 29-page ebook. It’s a PDF that’s broken down into five sections on how to plan the perfect date night, along with date night ideas. There are over 50 date night ideas in there, tips for planning your date night, 20 icebreaker topics that you can use along with 20 sample icebreaker questions. So we’re eliminating completely the excuse of not knowing what to do on date night, not knowing where to go, what to talk about. All of those things, we are going to eliminate that excuse to make date night easy and fun for you.
So if you’re interested in that, stick to the end of this podcast, and I’ll tell you exactly where you can pick that up for free. In the meanwhile, what I want to talk about is the importance of date night from a woman’s perspective, from your wife’s perspective. Now, we’ve talked about this a lot in the podcast. I have the belief, Tim, that women have three things that they really want. They want to be seen, heard and desired, Seen, heard and desired. Now, my wife happens to coach women, so I get both sides of this. I get to hear her insights from the women and their complaints. And one of the things consistently is that the woman feels like it’s her job – she feels like a mom. She’s picking up after you. She’s cleaning, she’s cooking. She’s doing all that crap. And she starts to feel like your mom, which makes her not feel sexy. Who wants- I mean, no guys listening to this podcast anyway, would want to have sex with their mom. Right? That’s just a weird thing. Y
ou know, I’m sure somebody out there has got some kind of kink in there, but that’s not what we’re about. And you don’t want to make your lover your mother. We did a whole podcast on that fact. If you go to thepowerfulman.com/podcast, there’s over 600 podcasts, one that we did – I think we’ve done a couple on this subject, but one specifically was, don’t make your lover your mother. Well, date night helps erase that. Your wife starts to feel desired again, seen and desired. It’s incredible, right? You missed the ‘heard’ part. That’s okay. You have two of the three right there on date night. It allows her to put on a pretty dress, allows her to feel beautiful. As my wife says, ‘it allows me to feel sexy for my man’. I love that. She’s doing it for me. Of course, she wants other people looking at her and seeing her. I get it. But she says, most women want to feel sexy for their man. They want to have their man feel proud that they’re on their side. They want to look good. They want their man’s attention. They want their man to feel proud to be out with them. Like, look at my prize, this is my woman, right? They want that. Date night affords them that ability, to go from feeling like they’re your mother to actually being there, actually being in that situation.
Now, it also creates an element of intrigue. Mystery, if you do it right. Variety. I can tell you exactly what my wife is going to do. When my alarm goes off, I know exactly what happens. My wife rolls over in bed, she takes some medication that she has, she rolls back to bed, goes back to sleep, lays there. About 20 minutes later, she gets out. She goes over, gets a cup of coffee, goes down, sits down and writes her journal- I can map out what my wife is going to do. Guess what? She can do the same for me. We have date night every week. That’s different. Part of being in a long-term relationship is there is some consistency, right? There’s some reliability, but you just fall into patterns. That’s okay. As long as you’re mixing it up as well. And that’s where date night comes in.
One day a week on the calendar, goes in the brush your teeth category, something you do every time – hopefully guys – every time, you do it. Maybe you miss a week or two. That’s okay. But consistently, you’re doing it. And you’re adding intrigue. You’re adding mystery. You’re courting your woman. Because if you’re not dating your wife, some other guy is. Now, he may be dating her on Instagram, Facebook, that’s how these emotional affairs start turning up. There’s mystery. There’s intrigue. This other guy’s paying attention to her. This is where we get to be that man. Now, I know some guys are gonna say, Doug, I shouldn’t have to work that hard. Yeah, maybe, but you did when you started dating your wife before you got married. You put in thought, you put in some time to think about it, for the most part. Maybe it came naturally. Maybe you met your wife through church, or a barbecue where all you guys were all just hanging out. Great. But you created some intrigue there. You created some mystery. She was trying to get to know you.
She already knows it. She knows that you fart when you pee. She knows all these things about you that you do. Where’s the mystery? And talking about work in the office is not the mystery, boys. That’s not the mystery she’s looking for. Knowing about your deals and all the things you did at work – she doesn’t care. She cares, but she wants to know you care. And that’s where date night comes in, guys. So it’s super important. I totally get that knowing what to do can be really hard. Whether you’re in the big city, a small town, wherever you are, knowing what to talk about and break the ice, especially if things have been stale for so long. We’ve taken all that mystery out for you.
Tim: If I were you guys, I would definitely grab that. The thing is, once you start going through this ebook, providing you do it consistently. It’s kind of like going to the gym. You’re going to work the muscle. Maybe you’ll be a little bit sore in the beginning, but that soreness is going to be definitely minimized with this. But then, you know, as you get into it, a month goes by, a couple of months, you will open the floodgates and the ideas will just come thick and fast. So much so, chances are, you won’t be able to keep up with them.
When we spoke about environment on the last podcast and the importance of it, being the greatest predictor of success. It reminds me of one of the men in the movement who kept to a photo album last year of 52 date nights. There was a thread that was going on in the community, and all the guys were sharing what they’re doing on date nights, and the ideas that would flow in were just incredible. And it doesn’t have to be anything grandiose, as you’ll find out in this ebook. Some of them can be bigger than others, bigger gestures. But equally, it can be simple things as well that can really add the spice and add the variety. And this can be as much for you as it can be for your wife as well. It isn’t just about creating something that’s all for her. You can look forward to this as well. This can serve you as well. I think people have a misconception. Oh, this is all about her. I’m going to design something that just she loves to do. No, no, no. Well, this will be revealed in the eBook. So Doug is going to share with the men how they can get their hands on this.
Doug: Not yet. I’m gonna make these guys wait a little bit longer because I like that, I like to tease. Some of the things I want you guys to consider when you’re thinking about the date night- You know, if things are really tough in your marriage right now, a lot of you guys are in this needy energy. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that you figured out that, A, your wife’s having an affair, B, your wife’s having an emotional affair. C, your wife is just disconnected and seems like she doesn’t give two craps about you. It just feels that way. And I get it, guys. Okay. Well, instead of trying to make it all about her and looking like this adoring puppy, the good guy, the Mr. Nice Guy, so to speak, what you want to do is find things that you enjoy, right? That’s one of the keys to this date night, finding things that light you up, and could light her up. Invite her into your world, your frame, do things that you love.
Here’s a perfect analogy. And I’ve done this before, right? So I like to host people at my house, like barbecues and things like that. But I used to get so consumed with making sure everybody else was having a good time, I wouldn’t have a good time. I’d be running around grabbing beers for people, cooking, and getting everything ready. I’d be running around frustrated, people trying to talk to me, and I just didn’t have enough time because I have one thing cooking, I got this going on- and people didn’t enjoy themselves, right. Everything had to be perfect in the environment, because I wanted to make everybody else happy. And here’s what I learned. I learned this in my 20s, thank goodness, and still work in progress. What I learned is, I can have those same people over, order a pizza, crack a few beers, throw some lawn chairs out on the ground, or have people sit on the floor, and if I’m having fun, everybody at that party has fun, or at least a greater chance of it. The same thing with date night.
You’re the host in this case. If you’re running around trying to make the perfect date night for your wife, and you’re stressed and anxious about making it right for her, and you’re not having fun, it’s going to suck. Conversely, if you do something simple with your wife that you love, and you’re enjoying yourself, and there’s a potential of her enjoying it- like don’t take her shooting if she hates guns and you just love it, right? Leave your inner redneck in for a minute here, right? Let’s keep it down. So keep it there, but do something she likes. If she likes shooting and you love shooting, take her shooting. Go axe throwing, or whatever it may be. Do something, but do something you enjoy, that you’re gonna have fun with. We all like being around somebody who’s having a good time. We just do. It’s human nature. It’s infectious. And so, make sure that you’re doing that. Make her included. Be conscious about it, so she knows… You don’t say it, but so she knows that you thought about her. But make it something you want to do.
So guys, if you are interested in this ebook, I’m happy to give it to you guys for free. I spent some time on this bad boy. It’s got five sections. I’ll read it to you, I’m looking at it on this screen. Section one is the importance of date nights, we’re going to reiterate that. Section two, over 50 date night ideas. Some of these you can recycle. You can use variations of these. So,you have an unlimited surplus of date night ideas. Then we’re gonna give you tips for planning the perfect date night, it’s going to go into much more detail than Tim and I did here. We’re also going to give you 20 icebreaker topics. These are just topics. And you can break these down into questions. And if some of you guys need a little bit more help, I gave you 20 questions based on those that you can actually ask during date night to break the ice, get the conversation going, and get rid of staleness. So, how do you get it? You go over to thepowerfulman.com/datenight. You get there, you throw your email address, and it allows you to download it. It will actually send it to you. So, you don’t have to do anything. It’s gonna land in your email inbox. Open it up, take a peruse, look it over, pick a date night that sounds great for you, and invite your lady. Invite your lady on your adventure, whatever that might be. And this is going to make it so much easier, guys. I’m so happy that we’re able to get this to you guys. Makes me feel good and warm and fuzzy inside, because I’m excited.
Now, my request to you do is to take action and post a picture. Do a little selfie picture, take a picture of you and your wife, tag me and tag Tim in it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever. I’d love to see you guys having fun. That lights me up. That gets me up in the morning. If you listened to previous podcasts, I got two sick kids, two kids with ear infections, little guys. They can’t blow their nose as well. They’re up screaming- you guys know how the routine is. I’m tired. But I get up for these podcasts because I’m excited for you guys. So, go to thepowerfulman.com/datenight. It is free. The only request I make is, take a picture of yourself on date night, tag Tim, myself, or TPM, and we love to celebrate with you and your beautiful bride, because you guys are having fun. Gentlemen, as we always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action. That means start a date night. And we’ll see you next time on the TPM show.
