Love

52 Free Date Ideas For Every Week Of The Year

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couple eating Chinese food at home on date night

Keeping relationships alive requires actually spending quality time with each other.

In this day of the information age, it is becoming increasingly difficult to carve out the necessary time to nurture relationships.

With increasingly long work hours, helping kids with their homework, transporting them around to their extracurricular activities, getting dinner, cleaning up, and going through the bedtime routine — what time is left?

In order to make sure you spend time together (just the two of you!) you have to get a little creative.

Pick a night of each week that will be a standing date night with your partner. Then see how many of ideas you can come up with for a good time without spending money.

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To get you started, here are 52 free date ideas for each week of the year, organized by season.

Free winter date ideas

1. Take a drive to look at the Christmas decorations.

2. Play cards — perhaps strip poker.

3. Watch a movie together.

4. Go outside and have a snowball fight.

5. Get some finger paints and create your own body art with each other as your canvas.

6. Go sleigh riding.

7. Go ice skating.

8. Work out or exercise together.

9. Stage your own improvisation show.

10. Sing to each other.

11. Review or create a photo album or scrapbook of your memories together.

12. Play a board game — perhaps chess, Scrabble or Twister.

13. Go to a bookstore, get coffee, and read for hours.

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Free spring date ideas

14. Work on a remodeling project together.

15. Plan and complete a yard work project together.

16. Do the spring cleaning together — room by room.

17. When done, reward yourself by making love in the room you've cleaned.

18. Put on old clothes and mud wrestle after some drenching rain.

19. Give each other a massage.

20. Play catch — football, baseball, softball, or Frisbee.

21. Go to a car dealer and test drive the car of your dreams.

22. Shoot basketball together.

23. Dance together.

24. Take a shower together and wash each other — everywhere.

25. Take a free adult education class together.

26. Go to a mall and have a contest to see which one of you can get the most free samples.

27. Go rollerblading or bike riding.

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Free summer date ideas

28. Build a campfire and roast marshmallows.

29. Go swimming or skinny dipping.

30. Give each other a manicure or pedicure.

31. Go somewhere crowded to people-watch.

32. Go to a free outdoor event, perhaps a concert.

33. Lie on a blanket outside and watch the clouds or stars.

34. Go on a picnic.

35. Watch a fireworks display.

36. Be creative and engage in role play. Be your partner's genie in a bottle and fulfill their every wish and fantasy

37. Sit by the water somewhere.

38. Do a prolonged striptease for each other.

39. Have a water balloon fight.

40. Sit outside and read poetry to each other.

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Free fall date ideas

41. Go for a drive together.

42. Go window shopping.

43. Incorporate food into your lovemaking — chocolate syrup, whipped cream, fondue, strawberries — anything you and your partner enjoy.

44. Call or write to someone you haven't had contact with in a while.

45. Cook something together.

46. Spend an evening just talking with each other. Talk about the things you have done, plans you have for the future, important people in your lives, or current events.

47. Take a bubble bath together.

48. Go to a free movie or museum.

49. Take a drive and find the potential in old houses and their properties.

50. Create an imaginary story together — either orally or in written form.

51. Play in the fallen leaves.

52. Create an exciting scavenger hunt that ends in your bed.

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The idea is to keep your relationship alive by making time together a priority.

It's important that you find things to do as a couple that you can both enjoy. If you have vastly different interests, then you can enter this with the spirit of taking turns and each agrees to happily participate in the activity chosen by the one whose turn it is that week.

As long as you make a habit of making your relationship a priority and allocating time each week for the rejuvenation of the feelings that attracted you in the first place, then you stand a good chance of staying together for the long haul.

Other than natural disasters or threats of death or major crises, do not allow your time together to be invaded by any outside forces.

Make sure to create opportunities for you to do things together without outside influence.

Make this small investment in the longevity of your relationship. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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Alexander Greenberg is a dating coach who helps people to solve common dating problems and frustrations and find dating success.