DON’T MAKE ME GO ON A DATE NIGHT!

Nothing sucks romance out of the relationship with your other half as quickly as dinner à deux, says Terry Tavner

Terry Tavner on why she prefers spontaneous evenings

The two words that make my flesh crawl when used together are ‘date’ and ‘night’. Surely dating is what you do in the selection process to single out The One; the ‘foreplay’, if you like, to settling down. Dating is so exhausting; who wants to return to it?

But these days, every other couple I know has block-booked one evening a week for the next decade. They’re filling up cinemas, binge-eating pizzas and clogging up wine bars the length and breadth of the country to inject some pizzazz back into their relationships.

The very notion of resurrecting Date Night should come with a government warning. Imagine being out on your unspontaneous, diarised Date Night, only to discover that the person opposite you is no longer The One. You’re staring into their eyes with the realisation that, unless you’re discussing the repointing plans for the house, you have nothing of interest left to say to this person.

One friend of mine, Sophie, was looking forward to dinner with her husband to celebrate 10 years since their first date. An expensive restaurant, a blow-dry and a babysitter were lined up in anticipation of a romantic night. But this one didn’t go to plan: the bickering started early, turned into a full-blown row and the babysitter was surprised when the couple arrived home earlier than expected – and separately.

They managed to laugh it off (eventually) but, as Sophie says now, ‘If the chemistry had been like that on the first date, there wouldn’t have been a second!’

There’s a fundamental flaw in the rules of Date Nights: they were not designed for those who have been married for a long time. They would be far more successful if reserved for the girls! You won’t find uncomfortable silences when two friends are out for the evening. There will be no talk of repointing, and both parties are guaranteed to return home refreshed.

I’m not suggesting you avoid going out with your other half. What I am saying is that when the event is micro-planned to within an inch of its life, and referred to as Date Night, how can it live up to expectations? Spontaneity keeps relationships alive. I’ll never forget one evening when the children were little, we had hardly any money and not a hope of a holiday that year. Suddenly,

I cherish those spontaneous nights that just happen

my husband remembered the Post Office Savings Account that one of the godmothers had opened for our youngest child. We decided we could ‘borrow’ this money, just until we could pay it back. We pondered the ethics of such a decision (were we stealing from our children?), but before that night was out, we had booked a week’s family holiday to Majorca. It was a great idea by my husband, and I don’t think I will ever love somebody that much again (for the record, we did pay the money back).

Such memories are ones I cherish. Easy, familiar, shared experiences where you never run out of things to say are high points of an established relationship because there’s nothing contrived about them; they just happen.

Take my neighbours Will and Claire, who recently went on a holiday to China. They made a date with some old friends of Claire’s who live in the Far East and booked an ‘authentic’ Shanghai restaurant for their first night in town. When the bill arrived, the restaurant wouldn’t accept cards, so Will went to find the nearest ATM. Three holes-in-the-wall later, he hot-footed it back to the hotel to change his money. He’d now been gone for over an hour and was stressed, especially when it took him a further 45 minutes to relocate the restaurant. And when he did, he was met by three happy and drunk people who had doubled the bill in his absence. That’s what Date Nights should be: evenings to remember, with stories to tell.