Love

I would like to share the importance of what my girlfriend and I have deemed “Date Day”. We have been together for almost two years now. At first, date day was something we laughed about and jokingly said, hey, let’s have a date day. We heard other couples that had been together for a while talk about it and how important it is for the relationship. It seemed funny at the time for me to have a day set aside for us to have a “date”. We were happily together, spending most of our free time with each other. Isn’t every day “date day” I thought. However, as our relationship and love and life has progressed, I am really seeing the value in having one day a week, set aside for us to actually go on an old fashioned date. I thought this was for married couples, with kids, who were super busy and needed to set aside time to spend with each other because their lives were too hectic and they never got to spend any time alone together.I heard a statistic once that said the average couple with kids spends something like 2 minutes a week together. So I get it, those people need to have a date, but we don’t. We are both yoga teachers and have lots of free time, no kids, etc. So why do we have to have a special day, set aside for just us?

Well, let me tell you something. We do! Everyone does. I believe now that every couple should have one of these days or evenings with each other. It gives you a chance to reconnect with each other. Which is important, because after a while, when you are living life and have friends, work obligations, and other things that happen in life…you realize all of a sudden… Hey, we haven’t really done anything special together in a while, just us. So, what happens, is other things take priority and you slowly drift apart. It might not happen for a while, you might not even notice it. But, when you take the time to get together, just you and your partner, you realize what you have been missing…Each other.

It happens to the best of us. Chelsea and I have a great relationship, I know. I have had almost every type of girlfriend and she just about every type of boyfriend. So I know a good relationship when I see it. We have a good one that’s for sure. Communication has been the key. When we take the time to get together, just us, we are able to work through any type of misunderstanding or feeling of neglect or whatever it is that couples typically go through. No one is perfect and no relationship is either. So we all need to do the little things in order to keep the happiness, joy, passion, etc in a relationship that we can.

I have come to learn that little things lead to big things in life and in relationships. You know the phrase ,” nip it in the bud” ? Well it applies to relationships and communication. When you can communicate freely with your partner and nip a situation in the bud, before it gets out of hand, it will save you a lot of time and heartache later on. Date Day is a good time to hash out some of the issues that will no doubt arise in any relationship. It gives you a good time to get together and spend time doing the things that you both love. Reminding each other what it is that you love about the other person.

We always end up making great plans for our future. Sometimes the plans are for far off in the future, like having kids, where we want to live, what we want to be doing in ten years, etc. Sometimes it’s about the next few days or weeks. It gives us a chance to evaluate our lives and see what is working and what isn’t. That way necessary changes can be made that will help us create more joy, harmony, fulfillment and Love in our lives. Isn’t that what life is all about anyway?  I believe it is.

This weeks date day turned out to be pretty good one. It had to be though. After last weeks disaster, this week needed to be spectacular and I was feeling the pressure.  Wednesday has become our current Date Day, because we both have the afternoon and night off.

Last week on our Date Day we went to Trader Joe’s. Here is a tip… Do not run errands on your special day together. It is not very romantic. We had gotten lazy and didn’t really plan anything. Sometimes that is good and we go with the flow and it all works out, but usually we have some sort of outline of what we will do. We will usually then deviate from the plan somewhat and it’s fun. Some sort of plan is necessary though, because it gets you going in the right direction. When there is no plan at all and you start going to do the normal day to day stuff , then you have the conversation… aren’t we pathetic? maybe we should move…how come there is nothing to do and we can’t think of anything to do?  It was bad.

So this week the pressure was on and I needed to come through with a real “date”

Fortunately, I had a few things fall into place that made our date day this week amazing. First of all, this friend of ours Flynn, who has been coming to my yoga class for the last few months, told me that he works for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show and he said to me on Sunday after Chelsea’s class at the Green Yogi… If you guys ever want to come up to the show, let me know and I will take care of you. Well, he did indeed. But that didn’t happen until the night. Our date day begins at 2PM after we have both taught our noon yoga classes. I got home first and made us some lunch and packed up all we needed, except her clothes, for the days adventure. She had no idea what we were doing. It was all a surprise from me. Our first stop was the Self Realization Center.

I had looked it up the night before after one of my students said it was the most beautiful place she had seen in her life and she has traveled all over the world.  So that sounded good enough to me. Then after my class, Mary Strong, owner of the yoga studio was telling a woman who had just come out of my class about it. I overheard them and said, Chelsea and I are going there today for Date Day! I love coincidences like that. It was a beautiful drive up the coast from Manhattan Beach to the Pacific Palisades and when we got there, Chelsea was in Heaven.

There are beautiful flowers and plants everywhere. Turtles and Koi swimming happily.

Even a memorial to Mr. Be the Change himself… Mahatma Gandhi

The self realization center is only open until 4:30, so we had to go after a couple of hours wandering through the beautiful gardens and around the lake. We could have gone home after this and it would have been a successful date day, but I had more surprises in store…

We got back on Sunset Blvd, we are only a couple of blocks from the ocean at this point and had not that far to go in terms of miles, but we hit the afternoon rush hour traffic. However, since we were both in great moods we enjoyed the time together in the car.

Chelsea couldn’t believe that you could actually get a map to the star’s homes. 

After driving her through the heart of West Hollywood and seeing all the sights along the way, we arrived at our next destination.

We were on “the list” thanks to our friend and went in to the Green Room to enjoy free drinks and food while watching the show and hanging out with each other and our friend. He has been the bartender for the show for the last 5 years and introduced us to a few of his co workers and friends. One of them came back just before the musical performance and said to Chelsea and I, “come with me” He took us all the way past the security to the side of the stage so we would have the best view of the show without having to deal with the crowd. It was awesome.

Hundreds of screaming fans fighting for the sweaty t-shirt of some new singer I had never heard of made me realize I was either old or out of touch or both. Something I always feared would happen, but now that it actually has, I don’t mind at all. I guess thats how that goes.

The musical guest, Trey Songz, was actually really entertaining live. He had an awesome band backing him up, which always helps. So we enjoyed our backstage status for his three songs and then it was time to head back home, but not before we made one more stop.

We went with double scoops. A perfect way to end date day. Our cups filled up with of Love.