Date Night Inventory

Marriage Check-Up

Have you ever thought about building in regular check-ups to evaluate the health and needs of your marriage? We actively provide maintenance for our cars, our teeth and our physical bodies – but are we as faithful to invest the energy and work needed to protect our marriages, fix existing problems and prevent the ones building up right now?

If you’ve been married for more than a month, you know that work is needed to have a vibrant, flourishing marriage.  The question that we must answer is whether we’ll work to prevent problems and protect the relationship or if we’ll wait and work to pick up pieces after the damage has been done. 

Blank Date Night Inventory: Word | PDF

Sample Date Night Inventory: PDF

Why We Use the Date Night Inventory

After about a year of marriage, we realized that we weren’t headed on the vibrant and flourishing track. I (Katie) was always finding new concerns and conflicts and Graham was working hard to not let things surface.  The result was a concerning amount of fighting, frustration and futility.  We were not encouraging and building one another up, but slowly tearing each other down.

Through a suggestion from my sister and lots of tweaking over many months, we created what we call our Date-Night Inventory.  We went on dates each week, but we committed to having a more intentional conversation once each month on these dates to really discuss how things were going, how we could align and improve the sticking points and really build the marriage we desired and one that could bring glory to God.  

More than 10 years later, we’ve conducted somewhere around 100 date night inventories.  These conversations were hard at first, but over time we saw growth, increased intimacy and far less conflict.  We assess independently in advance several pre-set questions and then share our written answers with each other.  We evaluate our own progress and needs for growth, recognize effort/accomplishments in our spouse, make one suggestion to consider, consider our tracking as a couple and then share upcoming needs we foresee for the next month.  We then finish the evening by celebrating our favorite memories from the past month.

How to use the Date Night Inventory

While we certainly encourage you to make this your own and fit it to your marriage needs, we do have some tips and suggestions from our own years of using them.

  • Write your answers in advance
    • This helps us really identify the root issues of our emotional responses
    • This keeps external processors from saying something they don’t mean that could be quite hurtful
    • It keeps a cool record of progress that can be celebrated years later (keep them!)
  • Start positive and End Positive
    • We start by complimenting 3 things in each other before making any suggestions
    • We finish by reliving our favorite memories from the month
    • This helps you to remember that you are a united team and increases gratefulness!
  • Keep the environment fun and positive
    • We chose to do these on a date night because we could pull away from the stresses.
    • Having these conversations when it is NOT the heat of the moment helps both of us be in a mode to solve the issue together rather than get into an attack/defend cycle.

We hope this tool can be used to breathe more life into your marriage and family life!

Blank Date Night Inventory: Word | PDF

Sample Date Night Inventory: PDF