When it comes to spending time with your sweetheart, the “what” usually comes secondary. Just being together, focusing your attention on each other for a few uninterrupted hours makes you feel closer and strengthens your bond.
So if that’s the premise, your options are virtually limitless. Still, it’s nice to have a couple ideas to spark your next date night out, and with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, here are a few ideas to get the wheels turning.
1. Visit a Salt Cave
These are typically inside holistic health centers, and they’re becoming more and more popular these days.
Salt caves — often called salt rooms or salt grottoes — offer a relaxing, restorative experience. They turn the lights low, play ambient music or nature scenes, while you breathe air infused with salt particles.
Salt therapy comes in two types. Active or halotherapy, uses a machine to crush salt into tiny particles and pump them into the air. Passive or speleotherapy uses no equipment and the particles enter the air passively. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved salt therapy, but hanging out for a while in a salt cave is extremely restful — like a couples massage at a spa — and may provide healing benefits.
Don’t be embarrassed if you accidentally nod off! Someone will gently wake you when the session ends.
2. See a Local Stage Performance
Community theater is usually surprisingly fun and often inexpensive, at least less expensive than a big Broadway show. Buying a pair of tickets supports your community’s art scene, and gives you and your sweetie a unique experience and also bragging rights when you want to show your friends just how cultured you are.
3. Sample Wine at Home
The prep work for this is so easy! Just grab a few bottles of wine — no more than three — on your next shopping trip and some finger food. Fancy cheese is the go-to for these things, but really most salty or savory choices work. Just pick something that makes you and your partner curious.
Pour up some small glasses and explore together. Make note of what you taste in each sip and talk about it.
Sampling wine helps you learn new things about what your partner likes and dislikes and also lets you try something new!
This date night idea is perfect for tacking on at the end (or beginning) of a night out or other at-home activity.
4. Paint and Sip
Riding the wine train a little longer, paint-and-sip venues were popping up everywhere before the pandemic started. The premise is simple. Bring a bottle of wine (maybe something leftover from your wine sampling) and take a beginner art class with all the materials included.
Painting lets us get vulnerable in front of the people we love and it can be an amazing bonding experience, even if your finished product doesn’t look like what you’d call “good art.”
5. Volunteer Together
Volunteering requires a bit more planning than some of the others, especially if you or your sweetheart rely on a mobility device.
But if you find something that works, like running the counter at your local soup kitchen, reading to kids at the local library or elementary school, it can be so rewarding! The website volunteermatch.org helps you find opportunities in your area.
6. Visit a Museum or Botanical Garden
Admittedly the most typical date night destination on this list, museums and botanic gardens make great spots for people who use mobility scooters or power wheelchairs.
Even if you’ve been there before, there’s a good chance you’ll see, hear or smell something you never did before.
7. Try Horseback Riding
Check to make sure the riding center in your area can accommodate you or your partner who uses a mobility device. Many of them can! Horseback riding is a magical, memorable experience to share with someone you love.
Horses have been linked to amazing therapy types for people with physical and psychological disabilities. Even if riding’s not your thing, it’s fun and healing to spend time around these powerful and insightful creatures.