By Flic Taylor

I know you’re curious and thinking: “What would this woman ask a relationship coach”? Well, let me share the magic words that Dating and Relationship Expert, Susan Winter, offered me recently. Susan is a bestselling author, Magnifi expert, speaker, coach, writer and (wait for it) seen on Oprah! Yes, you read that right! So I was on a mission to see what Susan could suggest to me. Spoiler alert: Her words of wisdom did not include: “Get your husband to juice the fruit in the morning.”

My question for Susan, was “How do you get back into the swing of going for date nights and making time for your spouse and relationship”? I was tempted to add in “…when you find it easier to watch Peaky Blinders on Netflix and drool over Cillian Murphy’s Irish accent instead”. Don’t worry. I thought that would verge on oversharing, so I left that bit out!

Susan shared a simple, but in my mind, groundbreaking tip. She recommended that I should…

“Just start off by planning and doing something small — go for a coffee date. The main point is that you go on a date and have time for each other”.

Of course, Susan went on to suggest that I can aim to build upon the coffee date when time and pocket money allow. But just because my January funds don’t permit me to go to that fancy new restaurant that has opened up in town doesn’t mean I have to give up on sharing some quality time with my husband, away from the kids. I’ll take a large Cappucino and almond croissant, thank you very much!

I appreciate, as a reader, you may think this was an obvious one, but if you’re like me and feel the pressure to do something pretty big, particularly if you go to the effort of booking a babysitter and paying them to walk on the living room rug full of Lego, then starting small on date night never even comes into my mind!