Obviously, a big part of Cooking and Wine for Lovers is our mantra of Stay Home, Get Dressed Up and spend time together. Some my poo-poo the idea, but it really makes a difference.
In today’s world of craziness, work, kids, friends, and such, we see that couples forget what they did on those first dates to impress the other. Obviously, getting dressed up every day is not very realistic. But, making time to do it often and regularly makes a big difference. Men are no doubt very visual and will always appreciate the sight of the women they love dressed in something sexy and sultry. And while women are not as visual, most we know also appreciate when their man takes time to get clean, shave and put on something appealing to her. We make it a part of our date nights at home and it ALWAYS leads to a very nice place. Good food, a little wine, music and the next morning we always wake up more in love than when we started.
It should also be stated that in addition to clothing, it is our opinion that both members in a relationship should also work to ensure their physical appearance is attractive to the other. It seems that whenever we hear of a couple that’s getting divorced or breaking up, one or both make a new commitment to the gym and looking better. That’s always sad to us as your partner should always be your biggest motivation to look good.
We both go to the gym regularly, watch what we eat as much as possible and take great strides to present an attractive appearance to each other. There is very little chance that we would end up divorced, but if we did, our gym and exercise habits wouldn’t change at all.
Now, we know what many will say, “Wait a Minute! There is a lot more to a relationship than your appearance!” We agree completely and this blog is not to say that appearance is more important than that. Our point is that we see too many couples that get married and “give up” on their appearance. Emotions and love are very important, but once again, going back to those first few dates, your appearance was one of the biggest concerns. We all were very concerned about what this new person would think about how we looked. The point is that after a year, five years, or twenty years, we should still care about what that person thinks about how we look. Certainly, we all will age and that changes things. As couples grow together, they should embrace age changes. But, couples should never give up their goal of looking as good possible for their partner.
Certainly, going out is fun and we do that a lot as well. Most people will make an attempt to look good to go out and that’s great. But, there is no doubt an added incentive to put on your best appearance for whomever you may run into while out. No problem there. But, when you get dressed up for each other and stay home, there is something super romantic and bonding as you each know that the only effort you put in to your appearance was solely for your partner. Do it often and make sure to compliment each other often during the night for their effort. It has truly been one of the best ways we have kept our connection during our 11 years of marriage and 14 years overall together.
DISCLAIMER: Neither Melissa or Kurt are trained therapists or marriage counselors. We are simply sharing our thoughts on what has worked for us over our 11 years of marriage and enabled us to be more in love today than the day we got married. We also learned a lot from previous unsuccessful marriages and are sharing some of those lessons.