It’s Puzzling – A Puzzle Date Night

According to John Gottman (a scientist, who has studied couples and marriage relationships for over 40 years), there are a number of key things that couples with happy and healthy marriages have in common, 7 of them to be precise.

The first three of these characteristics all revolve around the importance of having fun together, knowing each other intimately and building a great friendship.

The stats show that couples with happy marriages that last the distance understand the importance of setting aside time in their busy lives to hang out, have fun and reconnect on a frequent basis.

A great way to do this is with regular date nights. They don’t have to be expensive and you don’t have to always leave the house, but making the effort to block out the time will absolutely reap positive rewards.

My husband is someone who loves strategy, solving problems and using his brain. So recently we decided that instead of spending the night playing board games, as we often do when we are focusing on meeting his needs, we thought we would try something different and do a puzzle together.

After work, we went shopping to choose our first puzzle (only $19), and because Mike doesn’t do anything by halves we started with the 1000 piece option! I got to choose the picture we were going to create as puzzling is less up my alley and “pretty” visuals are very important to me. We also added in a yummy treat, so I had something else to look forward to, and got the ingredients for Banana Splits.

In the lead up to the event I had visions of us having lots of great conversations during the hours it would take us to complete the puzzle together. Unfortunately for me, that was not the case. We started with gusto and intently focused on splitting the pieces up into colours and edges. Then the hours ticked by as we worked on our different sections. There was certainly some conversation around what we were doing but the deep and meaningful discussions I was hoping for didn’t eventuate.

I don’t say that to put you off doing a puzzle together or trying something else on a date night that one of you isn’t so keen on. But I don’t see the point in not being real about what married life actually looks like. The reality is that sometimes well-planned date nights can end up feeling like a bit of a letdown, and that's ok.

However, this experience was certainly not a waste of time for us and was actually a great learning curve.

I learned more about how my husband processes and recognised the value in working on and completing a project together, as well as experiencing the sense of achievement, and to some degree, the connection this can bring.

While Mike discovered his love for puzzles and also the need to work on bringing me into his world more, rather than being so intently focused on a task.

We have taken our learnings from that night and have gone on to enjoyably do other puzzles together. The activity taught us more about how each person ticks and added to, what Gottman calls, our Love Map.

Do you have any fun and cheap date night ideas?  We would love to hear them!   Send us an email or leave a comment below.