“I’ve been married to my husband for 62 years,” reads the first line of text over a video from @alicewilliams.artist. It opens on an older couple walking arm in arm toward a warmly lit stone building at dusk, and the next line sets the rule of the house: “and we still go on dates at least once a week.” The caption is just as plain: “Join us on our date night!”
The 43 second video walks through the evening in order, with the on screen text narrating each step. The woman stands at a bathroom mirror in a light blue striped shirt, fixing her hair and touching up her face. “I get ready,” the text says, “while [my husband] probably takes a nap,” and the next shot shows him asleep in an armchair by a window with his mouth open. “And then I sneak off to the garden” plays over a dusk view of tall cypress trees and a lawn, with a small figure far in the distance.
From there the pickup is the joke and the sweetest part. Her husband walks out to a small black car and gets in, and the text says he “picks me up in the driveway,” over a view through the windshield of her waiting down the lane. A hand holds up a phone showing a video call, and the text reads “we facetimed our daughter.” Over a shot of the parked car, with its license plate decorated with hearts, the text says they are on the way “to our favorite restaurant.” Then comes “we’ve been going to this restaurant for the past 15 years” as the couple walk in arm in arm under strings of fairy lights, and a later line calls it “our date night spot.”
At the table, the husband sits beaming in a checked shirt, and the text notes that “my husband needed to brush his hair.” The wife smiles into the camera over a steak and a cocktail with a straw, and the text says “sorry everybody.” “And we always know what we’re gonna order before we get there,” the text says over the plate of steak, so the ordering takes no time at all. A later shot shows a green salad topped with baked cheese. Then comes the bill. “And then my husband pays the bill,” the text reads, and the next line adds, “with the money I made,” delivered as a gag over a shot of him standing at the counter. “I love that,” the text says as he walks out into the night.
The night ends in the street. “And then we stop for a little dance,” the text says, over the couple holding each other on a dark tree lined street with a parked vehicle behind them. The last card, “and head back to our beautiful home,” plays over a shot from inside the dark car on the drive back.
What the video documents is a routine: a restaurant they have gone to for 15 years, an order decided in advance, and a dance at the end of the night.
Research on couples backs up the instinct to protect that weekly slot. A report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, written by W. Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew using surveys from late 2010 and early 2011, found that couples who spend one on one time together every week are “markedly more likely” to have high quality relationships and lower divorce rates. The report singled out novel activities that are fun or active, such as hiking, dancing, travel and card games. The couple here has a fixed restaurant, but the dance on the way home is the kind of activity that report names.
The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on social connection makes a similar point in plainer terms. Among the everyday steps it lists for strengthening relationships is to “make time to share a meal.” The advisory also lists “listen without the distraction of your phone.”
A reader who wants to borrow the routine can take three things from the video. Pick a standing evening and a standing place so the plan does not need renegotiating each week. Make the ordering automatic, as this couple does: the text says they always know what they will order before they get there. And end with something physical and unplanned, like the dance they stop for on the way home.
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