My hubby and I have coined the phrase, micro date, which means: to go out socially as a couple within a small amount of time. When you have young children, “dates” are few and far between. Once the kids got older it was more doable, but then we had to work around the kid’s social functions. The way we figured out how to incorporate a date into our weekend or weeknight, was to have a quick, micro date here and there. These dates usually only last from 1-2 hours at the most and are generally centered around a restaurant happy hour where food and drinks are discounted and served quickly. Just like in a marriage, with micro dating you have to be spontaneous and flexible. Some micro dates are best planned at the last minute and can even be turned into a double micro date with some friends.

Here is an example of one of our micro dates: One night we had #1 son spending the night at a friend’s house, #2 son visiting a friend for the evening and #3 son going to a birthday party. We dropped #1 off at his sleep-over then dropped #2 off at his friends and made plans to pick him up in two hours. We then proceeded to take #3 to his birthday party. After we dropped him off, we decided we had 1 hour to micro date before we had to start the picking up process of two of our sons. We hit the closest happy hour, had some drinks and food, facebooked, twittered and had a great time. Any little bit of time you can take to reconnect with your spouse is quality time. Remember, it’s not quantity but quality.