Have you ever cheated on a partner? Someone you were in a romantic relationship with?

I have.

Or maybe I have? That kinda depends on your definition of cheating.

And you and I likely have different ideas about what is and isn't considered cheating. 

This week on The Date Forever Podcast, we chatted with Shane. He is a coach who specialises in working with clients who are navigating ADHD. Ohh and he is in an ethically non-monogamous relationship. 

Haven’t heard that term before? 

ENM for those in the know, describes the practice of having more than one sexual partner. The “ethical” part differentiates it from cheating. It’s also sometimes called consensual non-monogamy or more plainly, an open relationship.

Shane and his wife Darcy opened up their relationship a few years after they were married. In the episode, he shared some of his story and lessons with us.

There are 2 main...

 A quick story for you today; When I was a kid, I played tennis and recently my husband Nath and I played a few games together.

We oscillated between playing for points and also just having a bit of a hit and a laugh.

When we left the court, I was reflecting on how different our styles and approaches were when we were playing for points v’s playing for fun.

When we were playing for points, I could make Nath work - Sending him running from one side of the court to the other, forcing him onto his bad side and sending balls at him with speed. I was celebrating when I won and Nath wasn’t able to get the ball back over the net, or he did but it landed out of bounds.

 It was almost the exact opposite to when we were playing for fun - That looked more like gentle and considered ball placement, slower with more cheerleading for each other and then disappointment if one of us wasn’t able to return the other's shot. If one of us lost, we both did. We even...

This week someone said something to me that was a blatant excuse for why they had decided they couldn’t do something.

From their point of view, perhaps they felt it was a legitimate reason, but to me it absolutely sounded like an excuse.

It was something that made me roll my eyes. Yep, I was on my judgey high horse, after all I am also an imperfect human. What they said shifted the blame and accountability from them to someone else. It was someone else's fault that they couldn’t do what they wanted.

In this instance they had shifted blame to their kids.

You’ve probably heard or maybe even said something like that before, something that sounded like:

I’m too old….
I’m too young….
I’ll do it when….
I don’t have time….
It’s just the way I am….
Everybody does that….
It’s not hurting anyone….
Nobody believes that….
I would do that if….

Again, I am human, so I know I have.

The...

Have you ever been told this by a parent, boss, coach, peer or friend…?

 
"If you're going to do it, do it right, or don't bother doing it at all"

 Or maybe this version 

 “If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right”

 
I’ve heard this more times than I can count and it’s held me back from doing things or doing them but only after I’ve double, triple and quadruple checked it. 

 
But this week, I had an insight and I’ve decided I think that's truly shit advice.

 
Being perfect is an illusion -- it's not real.

 
I believe Better Relationships = Better World

And part of that, is believing that both of those things can always be better, and therefore never perfect. 

 
This week I was out for a guided run with headphones and a coach in my ears encouraging me through my paces and he said “If you can’t do the run you want,...

This week Nath and I smashed a milestone - we dropped episode 100 of The Date Forever Podcast. 

For this special episode, we went back through the archives and pulled out the 10 biggest relationship lessons from those 100 episodes. 

You can check out the full episode here but I wanted to share the 10 Big Relationship Lessons from 100 episodes of Date Forever with Sammi & Nathan Jaeger right here.

So here we go:

1. It’s important to have shared goals

2. You need 3 different lives - My Life, Their Life, Our Life

3. We need to understand and speak the 5 Love Languages

4. Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship that you have

5. Date Nights and quality time together are oxygen to a relationship

6. Keep your Fuel Tanks topped up

7. Not all relationships are the same

8. Your attitude and mindset matters

9. Turbulence happens, get help from...

Brag alert!

Last night my husband Nath and I were offered a free night at a boujee hotel by someone whose plans had changed. If we didn’t snap it up, that lush bed was going to be paid for but empty.

It was late afternoon and it needed some jiggling of logistics, but we jumped at the spontaneous chance to have a night away. Yesterday was a big day for both of us, so it felt serendipitous. We popped on our fluffy robes, ordered room service, stretched out on a big bed and enjoyed a very lazy evening together.

As you may have heard us talk about on The Date Forever Podcast, we have a framework for how we do date nights. We call it our 2x2x2

Of all places, we first heard about this concept on a random Reddit thread and now we've made it our own.

Twice a month - date night

Nath organises, plans and executes on a date night in the first half of the month and I organise, plan and execute a date night in the second half of the month. We each get a...

Have you started any new hobbies lately? Or have you had an inkling of something you’d like to learn “one day”? It can be so tricky to master new skills as an adult.

I’ve just finished my 5th surfing lesson in as many weeks and although I can get up and surf for at least a few seconds on a good wave…on a beginners foam board, I am a long way off of amateur surf mastery. But I am having so much fun and can see myself getting a little better each week.

To be a really great surfer there are some skills I am going to need to master - balance, a good paddling technique, understanding the ocean, flexibility to get my legs up and underneath me as quickly as possible, strength and a tonne of both mental and physical endurance. 

As much as I’d like to wake up one day and be an awesome surfer without “putting in the work”, I know I need to invest some time, money and energy to develop the skills required so that I can confidently surf Bondi...

Have you ever had one of your strengths fail you?

I am what some people would call highly organised - just don’t look at my many email inboxes. I like a system and get frustrated when balls get dropped, especially if they are little things that could have been prevented with a calendar reminder, direct debit or checklist.

My preference is to be proactive with a lot of the things in my life and organisation comes quite easily to me. It’s not something I have to work too hard at and it’s a strength I’m proud of.

In my marriage this strength found me organising all of our dates and activities until one day I just spat the dummy with Nath and pointed out it had been a very long time since he had organised a date for us.

So just like a lotta things, there are two sides to every coin and my strength of organisation wasn’t leaving Nath much runway to take the reins.

We chatted it through and realised we needed a better system, a structure that would allow us to...

 Two questions for you…..

 When was the last time you felt really loved by your person? 

and

Do you know how to make your person feel really loved?

 This week over in our facebook group - Thriving Couples Collective, we ran a poll to see what the most common primary Love Language is.

If you aren’t familiar with the 5 Love Languages, it’s a concept by Gary Chapman that suggests we each prefer to give and receive love in one of five different ways.

• Acts of Service

• Physical Touch

• Receiving Gifts

• Quality Time

• Words of Affirmation

 
You might instinctively know yours and your partners or you may want to take the quick quiz.

 
The catch here is that just knowing their #1 really isn’t enough. We need to learn to speak our own and our partners' primary love language fluently so that they can truly feel it.

 My #1 is Receiving Gifts and Nath’s is Physical Touch.

 A few years ago, I walked into our apartment...

How was your week? I am back to work as “normal” this week and it’s definitely taken me a moment to get re-orientated. Especially because I’ve returned to a new office in our new apartment. (Yay!)

At the end of last year, Nath and I finally pulled the trigger on moving closer to the beach after literally years of the conversation going back and forth “should we, shouldn’t we” - a result of being unclear on what we wanted.

After both agreeing now was the time, we looked at around 15 apartments and only loved one - the one we got! And in the Sydney real estate market, that is no mean feat.

While on the hunt, some apartments we walked into we instantly knew it wasn’t for us, others it took a little longer and hypothesising “what if this went there, and then that there”

But mostly these conversations were easy because we had discussed at length what we really valued in our home.

We had a long list of shared values - things that were...