The Couples Who Dance
In The Grocery Aisle

Craig emailed me because his wife had bought him the program as a gift and Part 2 would not open for him. Before he got to that, he wrote this:

"You and your team do a great job taking the mystery out of dancing and keeping the instruction at a level everyone can understand, execute, and enjoy. We actually found ourselves doing the infinity loop to some random music while waiting in the customer service line at Home Depot. Before the Show Her Off instruction, that would NEVER have happened."

They had been through one section. One. And the first place they did it outside their house was a return line at a hardware store.

That isn't the picture in your head when you think about doing this at home. The picture is the living room with the blinds shut, and that picture is correct. Starting where nobody can see you is the whole reason it's possible to start at all, which I've written about in the case for keeping romance inside your own house. It's also what Date Nights Dancing is built around: easy swing dance moves taught at home, the two of you working on the same moves from the first video. No dance experience required.

But the couples who write to me years later, still doing it, don't sound like living-room couples. They name places.

The Dancing Doesn't Stay In The Living Room

When I run ads, people answer them in the comments, and most of the time they're talking to each other rather than to me. The same thing keeps coming up. One of those replies:

"Yes my man dances with me at our fav place we have always gone to hang out or even date night at our local Walmart"

Another one, written to a partner:

..."I've never been much if a dancer but I've always loved dancing with you! Whether it be on a beach, in a bar, in the aisles of the grocery store... It doesn't matter"...

And one more, same shape:

"I love dancing with you anywhere and everywhere"...

Nobody in those replies describes it as a risk they took, or as a brave moment, or as a thing they had to work up to. The tone is closer to bragging. Walmart is on the list next to the beach, and it's on the list because it's theirs.

She May Already Be Waiting On You To Try It In Public

Under one of my ads, a reply came in that wasn't addressed to me at all. It was one question:

"You don't like twirling me in the parking lot at the grocery store?"

The thing you brace for is her embarrassment. It's a reasonable fear, and it's enough on its own to stop a man at the front door. But the person you're protecting from the awkwardness might be the one asking for it.

The Grocery Run Is What Reminds You To Dance Again

In Contagious, Jonah Berger explains that interesting things get talked about right away and then stop, while things attached to a frequent cue keep coming back. His examples are a candy bar that got paired with coffee over and over until coffee itself brought the candy bar to mind, and a restaurant that ran six weeks of messages tying itself to the word dinner and lifted word of mouth by 20% among people who had only thought of it at lunch. Berger is writing about products and advertising, not marriages, so take the mechanism and leave the market research.

A standing date night at home is an appointment, and appointments get moved. The Thursday grocery run is not an appointment. It happens whether or not either of you is in the mood, and neither of you has to remember to schedule it.

So the first time you do something in aisle seven, you've tied that aisle to the dancing. Next time you're standing in it, you'll think of the dancing. That's a reminder you get for free, every time you go back.

Breaking The Script Is What Makes An Errand Memorable

In The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath explain that memorable moments usually break a script, meaning they violate what everyone expects from a familiar experience. They make the point that familiarity and memorability work against each other: nobody cherishes the memory of their last meal at McDonald's, and the reason is that it went exactly the way it was supposed to.

A Tuesday grocery run has a script. Park, cart, list, checkout, trunk. Six seconds of dancing between the car and the door breaks it. You'll both remember that one.

That's a strange amount of return on six seconds.

Try These Three In Public, Easiest First

You don't have to start at Home Depot. Craig didn't plan that one. They had it down at home first, and the return line came later. If you want to go on purpose, go in this order.

1. The Ten Seconds Between The Car And The Cart

A parking lot is the easiest place in the world for this. Everybody in it is walking toward something, nobody is watching anybody, and plenty of them are on the phone. Take her hand on the walk in, turn her once under your arm, keep walking. You don't have to say anything about it.

2. The Aisle Where The Music Is Already On

There's usually music playing overhead in a grocery store, and every so often it's something you both know. That's your cue. Say "come here a second," set down whatever you're holding, do one move next to the cart, then pick the shopping back up. Ten seconds and you're both reading labels again.

You get more chances at this in summer, because more of what the two of you are already doing happens outside, where music is going anyway. I've put the outdoor versions together in summer date ideas for couples.

3. The Line That Isn't Moving

The checkout, the pharmacy counter, the customer service desk at a hardware store. You're both stuck standing there with nothing to do, which is the only reason this works: you're filling a gap that was already there. This is the one Craig and his wife fell into without meaning to.

Take The Parking Lot One This Week

Pick the parking lot. Pick the errand you were already going to run. If you want more at-home starting points before you go public, they're collected in the ideas hub.

If the third one on that list made your stomach drop a little, that's fair, and you don't ever have to do the third one. Doing something in front of strangers when you're not sure you're any good at it is its own hurdle, and it's a real one. If that's the part that's stopping you, the general version of the problem is worth reading about too: trying new things together when you're not confident yet.

You already cleared the harder bar, though. The audience you were worried about was never the guy buying deck screws. It was her, and you already decided to try this in front of her. That took more than this will.

None of the public version works without the private version first, and that's the job the Date Nights Dancing program is doing. Get one move down cold in the living room with the blinds shut. Then take that one move out into the world exactly once, and see what she does with it.