What is a “LIfe Dinner” and why am I doing one for Valentine’s Day?

Brad Feld is an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. 

He’s on the road alot, but to create a monthly touchpoint with his wife Amy, he created something called “Life Dinner”  and observed it for 8 years.

What is it:

It’s a standing dinner date on the first night of every month.  If he misses it, because of travel,  it’s his responsibility to schedule a new one shortly after the first.

The dinner has three key parts

A pre-arranged, regular, repeating evening where we both can reflect on and talk about what is going on in our lives.  

They give each other a gift.  

Its a fun night out exploring a new place or going to a regular haunt.  

Sometimes they do it with another couple, but almost always do it alone.

Sometimes one of us is stressed or overwhelmed with what is going on around us – Life Dinner provides a great “within 30 days” opportunity to catch this and work on it as a couple.  Other times we’ve been running hard in our own separate directions and it gives us a chance to firmly reconnect.   

My partner and I are doing our first “Life dinner” this Friday for Valentine’s Day. On a good day, he hates deep questions. When I told him about life dinner, he said,”well what questions do we have to answer?”

Feld doesn’t go into it, so I turned to the very smart questions Jay Shetty asks his wife Radha.

He asks this every month

• What did you do for yourself? 
• What can I help you with? 
• What can I be a part of? 
• What can I support you with?  

He asks these questions every quarter

• Is this relationship going in the direction you want? 
• And if it is what’s going right, what should we do more of?
• If it isn’t, what are we both willing to do about it? 
• So what’s that collective responsibility? 

He asks these questions every year

• What are your goals? 
• What are you trying to achieve this year? 

So those four check ins. You will always be in touch with the heartbeat of your partner and the pulse of where they are.