Regarding marriage and relationships

I saw a reddit thread many years ago before I met my wife asking for advice from long-time couples.

I was single at the time, and was pretty comfortable with that, not that I wasn't interested in being in a relationship, but it wasn't a priority for me and I never had much luck picking up girls.

Most of it was the usual stuff about communication, and sharing housework, respect, and all of that.

But the one that stood out to me was

"Don't forget to date your wife"

A good many years later, I managed to stumble my way bass-ackwards into dating my now-wife. A few years later we were married.

And for a lot of couples, dating kind of slows down at that point. One or both of them stop putting in effort, and they just kind of stagnate and drift apart.

That's far from the only reason relationships fail of course, but I think that's a bigger part in a lot of cases than many people think.

So I always keep my ear to the ground for cool events, restaurants, shows, places to go, things to do, etc. and make sure that there's always something coming up on the horizon for us to look forward to. Sometimes it's a simple dinner at a restaurant we've been to countless times, sometimes it's a big elaborate day out where we get dressed up, find our way to a couple different nice bars and restaurants, walk around a museum, see a show or to an orchestra performance, etc.

I try to have at least one thing planned a month, not always successfully, but more often than not, and we sometimes squeeze in another little spontaneous date night or two here and there. Most of the time we're out doing something fun as a couple at least once a week.