I am not an adventurous person. I am not athletic, I am not a physical risk taker, and I will ride anything at an amusement park that is firmly planted on the ground (which results in about three rides). Yet despite these facts about myself, I am proud to tell you that I have rollerbladed. Once.

For our third date back in 1991, John Winslow asked me if I wanted to go rollerblading. The moment he asked me, a million thoughts launched in my head at once. I hate rollerblading. I would never do that. I don’t even own rollerblades. What if I fall and break my arm? What would I wear and still look cute rollerblading?

Yet as the parade of questions whizzed through my brain, before I could even rationally consider the answers, I immediately blurted out to John “Yes! I would love to!”

Today, as I reflect on that scene from 25 years ago, the question that pops into my mind is “why?” Why was I so quick to say yes to something I really didn’t want to do with a guy I just had begun dating three weeks prior?

Well, there are many reasons why I said yes, but here was my main motivation: discovery. You see, in the early days of dating John, I was looking for any and every opportunity to get to know him… or said more eloquently, to discover who he was as a person.

In the early days of dating your spouse, you set out with one mission: to discover if this could be the person you could say for a lifetime “gets me.”

What’s funny is if John asked me to do something physically adventurous that I did not want to do today – say like hang-gliding or bungee jumping – I would emphatically say “no!” Why? Because I already know him: I get him and he gets me… or at least, so I think. And that’s the fallacy: the longer I am married to John, the more I think I know everything about him, and the less open I am to putting myself in new situations to learn something new about him or our relationship.

In our book Getting Me, we propose that there is a new way of dating your spouse: intentional date night. We have designed an approach to dating your spouse that has one objective in mind: to discover something new about each other. And this approach is reduced to a strategy with five easy steps. Whether you have been married for three years or for 23, we contend that there is always something new for you to learn about your spouse because as individuals, we are constantly growing and changing.

What keeps your marriage connected is the ability to stay in the mode of discovery.

Intentional Date Night is formulaic: our work suggests what you should do pre, during and post your date. In the fast-paced, time-crunched era we live in, what most couples do - if they even are fortunate enough to schedule a date night - is use the time away from the daily routine for problem resolution. Challenges with kids, finances, or work dominate the few hours they have together. These discussion topics are complete barriers in discovering something new about your spouse.

Many of our readers will tell me “We had an intentional date night last week!” and when I reply, “Great! Tell me the new thing you learned about your spouse!”, they often look at me blankly. Intentional date night is so much more than just a date to dinner and movies. It is an approach that gives you a step-by-step way of arranging time with your spouse to discover something new that intentionally drives connection.

And the great news? The approach does not require you to rollerblade, rock climb, or ride a roller coaster.