“Babe, what’s so funny?” he asked.

I sat chuckling in the passenger seat of our van while my husband drove us to dinner for a date night.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, “Just this super funny blog post about mommy wars.” I kept thumbing through my phone, scrolling from one article to the next. I could hear my husband talking in the background, only really picking up half of what he was saying. I would offer the occasional “yeah” and “oh, really” while I kept reading.

“I’m sorry honey, what was that you were saying?” I asked.

“Oh nothing, never mind.”

We pulled into our favorite sushi place and found our seats. While we were waiting for our waitress to bring our drinks out, I sat across from my husband who was reading something on his phone. “What’s that you’re reading?” I asked, wondering why he wasn’t interested in diving into much needed kidless conversation on our date night.

“Oh, it’s just a forum about the same type of engine that I’m working on,” he said, not even looking up to answer my question. I found myself slightly annoyed, but pressed him again. “So did you get all of your phone calls made for work this afternoon?” I asked. This time I was met with silence, and he was met with a swift kick to his shin under the table.

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry babe, what was that you were saying?”

Wait a minute… wasn’t this conversation familiar? It was like deja-vu. And I didn’t like the way it made me feel.

It was then that I realized the way I was feeling at our dinner table was probably the exact same way my husband felt when we were driving in the van– ignored and unimportant.

I want you to do me a favor. I want you to try to remember your last date night with your husband. Do you remember where you went? What you did? What you wore?

Do you remember what you talked about?

These days it’s almost impossible to go anywhere with out our phones. It’s even harder to go anywhere with out being distracted by them. But ladies, we need to start a new trend– our phones need to be OFF LIMITS for date nights. By all means, keep it close by in your purse in case the babysitter calls with a question or be able to whip it out to prove your husband wrong in a debate about a random fact (is that just me? OK good). But our phones need to stay off the dinner table and out of our hands.

At the end of your date night, the quality of your conversation should always trump the attentiveness to your phone. Always.

So what happened on our next date night? I looked at my husband while we walked out the door and said, “Hey, let’s really try and not look at our phones tonight, OK?” His face lit up, “Yeah, that’s a great idea!”

And do you know what happened?

We held hands in the van on our way to dinner.

We looked each other in the eyes during our conversation.

And because of that I fell in love with those baby blue eyes all over again.

There were a few moments of awkward silence….followed by really thoughtful and intentional questions.

We held hands instead of our phones while we walked down the street eating ice cream.

We talked about things we were both struggling with that the other didn’t know about.

We flirted way more than normal.

Which lead to a super eventful evening back at home (if you know what I mean).

So ladies, take my advice. The next time you and your man go out on a date, put down your dang phone. Because nothing you would ever read or watch is more important than him.