Jesse Skeets shares about planning secret dates to surprise his wife.
Years ago, I asked my wife to take me on a date, as I was feeling a bit of a lack of romance. She kept the date a secret and took me an expensive dinner in Healdsburg on a Wednesday night. If she had ASKED me, do you want to drive 1.5 hours on a work night and go have a $300 dollar dinner, I would have immediately shot the idea down, but because I did not know what we were doing I was able to live in the moment and enjoy the experience.
This experience birthed the “Mystery Date.” Over the last three years, we have taken turns alternating each month and have only missed two months. We have one rule: It must be something out of the ordinary. This one simple rule provides the flexibility to have the date be simple, cheap, expensive, short, long, anything you may like.
It can be that park you’ve driven by many times and said “Someday, I will check it out”. Mystery dates don’t have to be just the two of you! It can include other people, friends, family, anything out of the ordinary. The mystery dates have ranged drastically; from gyroplane rides, attending amateur wrestling with 15 of our friends, an early morning turkey trot ( A very unpopular one), botanical gardens and mud baths. On one occasion, I placed a hood on my wife’s head while I drove her in circles to confuse her from the fact that we were just going down the block to a live model drawing session.
Since its inception, mystery dates have spread to other friends and even internationally to coworkers overseas. It’s nice to find the time to plan something for a partner just once every other month. They become an exercise in trust as your partner wheels you away every other month to some unknown location, while you are dressed in fishnet and rainbow pants. With a Perspective, I’m Jesse Skeets.
Jesse Skeets loves to play abstract jazz on the piano. He lives in Petaluma with his wife and son.