The first year of marriage is the cheapest year you'll ever have to build a habit in, because there's nothing to undo yet.
You're a few months married. Somebody at work has told you the first year is the hard one, somebody else has told you to enjoy it while it lasts, and neither of them handed you anything to do on a Thursday night.
Somebody left this under one of my ads:
I recently married my soulmate. Her and I have always liked to dance but didn’t really know how. We have enjoyed date night one. We have laughed until we couldn’t catch breath.
They were leaving for their honeymoon that day, and they already had an evening they could repeat in their own living room. That's the part that survives the trip.
Most of what gets written for husbands is repair work: how to come back from a roommate marriage, how to start talking again, how to restart something that stopped four years ago. None of that is yours yet. You get one year where the calendar has room in it, where nothing has to be renegotiated, and where neither of you has to explain why you're suddenly doing something new.
In The Power of Moments, Chip Heath and Dan Heath explain that transitions, milestones, and pits are the three occasions that call for punctuation, and that they arrive whether or not you mark them. They also point out that nobody owns those occasions by default, which is exactly why they get skipped. A first year of marriage is one long transition with no plan attached to it.
Year one is wet cement. A habit you press in now holds, and pressing it in costs you one decision.
The couple above had something to do on date night one. Date Nights Dancing is my program: easy swing dance taught at home, fifteen minutes at a time, the two of you learning the same moves together from the first video on. No studio. No dance experience required.
When someone buys the program as a gift, they write a message that goes with it, and I get to read them. Two of them came from parents.
One was signed by a mom and a dad:
we hope this will provide some fun and laughter to the newlyweds! Love, Mom and Dad
Another came from a mother:
To my favorite newlyweds, I love that you dance every month on your anniversary. May this bring you lots of laughs and keep you dancing! We love you!!!!
Those newlyweds count their anniversary by the month, and they do the same thing every time one comes around. Nobody writes that sentence about a blender.
Both messages came attached to Date Nights Dancing, which is how I have them. They didn't send another object for the apartment. They sent an evening the two of them have to show up for.
None of these take a weekend to arrange, and all three are easier now than they will be in year six.
In Eight Dates, John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman explain that play doesn't wait politely until the work is done. If you tell yourself you'll get to it once things settle, you won't, so it goes on the weekly list alongside everything else.
Pick the night this week, then pick the same night every week after that. Recurring event, both phones. The night is the habit; what happens inside it can change every time, and four date night frameworks are worth borrowing if you want a way to name what you're doing.
Work travel and other people's weddings will both take that night in year one. Decide now what happens when they do. Moving Thursday to Sunday is keeping it. Dropping it is not.
If you got married on the fourteenth, the fourteenth is yours twelve times a year, and this is the only year you'll get all twelve of them as newlyweds.
Keep the monthly one small enough to hold up in a bad week:
Whatever you pick, pick it once and let it repeat. Doing it every month is what turns it into something the two of you own, and there are more anniversary traditions to choose from if none of those three fit you.
In The Power of Moments, Chip Heath and Dan Heath explain that relationships get stronger when each person comes across as responsive: understanding, validation, caring. They also make the point that the turn-taking behind that never starts on its own. One of you has to go first, and then the other one answers, and after a few months neither of you will remember who opened it.
Two questions, over coffee or in the car:
What was the best part of this month for you?
What do you want more of next month?
If you want a version with something to look at, list what the two of you did together in the last month and mark each one new or repeat. In Eight Dates, the Gottmans report that novel activities predicted higher relationship happiness, because the fun of a new experience rubs off onto how you feel about the person you did it with. The list shows you how much of last month was new, without either of you having to argue about it.
Because fine is the condition that makes it cheap. Nothing has to be negotiated, nobody has to be talked into anything, and there's no history to work around. The same three habits in year six cost you a conversation about why you're suddenly doing this.
I won't tell you that a standing date night keeps a marriage good. By itself it does nothing. What it does is take one decision off the table fifty-two times a year, so the two of you spend Thursday choosing from a list of date night ideas instead of deciding whether to bother.
Three things: the night, the monthly date, the two questions. Set the weekly night first, because it's the one that makes the other two easy to remember.
The person who left that comment had done part of one date night before leaving for the honeymoon. That's how small a start it takes. Date Nights Dancing gives you something to do inside the night you just put on the calendar, and by your first anniversary you have a year of it behind you.
You're a few months into a marriage and you're already reading about how to keep it good. Whatever else turns out to be true about your first year, she married a man who does that.
The Thursday reminder over 100,000 couples love: ideas and conversation starters that deepen love, laughter, and intimacy.
