The first year, when everything still feels new
- The matchmaker’s version. Invite the friend who introduced you, or the first friend either of you texted after the first date, out for one drink. Ask them to tell the story of how you two met, start to finish, without help. Then each of you tells your own version. Three stories, three sets of wrong details. Write the friend’s version on a napkin and keep it.
- The first-year confession. Each of you names one thing you pretended to love during the first year for the other’s sake: the 6 a.m. hikes, the band, the extremely spicy noodle place. No hurt feelings allowed, that’s the deal. Then spend the rest of the evening on the thing each of you actually loves and kept quiet about, one hour each.
- Twelve months, twelve photos. Separately, each of you scrolls the camera roll and picks one photo for every month of the first year. No peeking. Then sit side by side and go month by month, defending each pick in one sentence. Wherever you both chose the same photo, print it at a drugstore kiosk that night. Those prints are your year.
- First impressions, graded. On an index card, each of you writes what you thought in the first ten minutes of meeting: the outfit, the voice, the one thing that seemed a little off. Swap cards and grade every line: true, half true, completely wrong. Keep both cards in a wallet or a phone case. They get funnier every year.
- A year of paper. Paper is the traditional first-anniversary material, so make it literal. Collect every scrap of paper the year left behind: movie tickets, a parking stub, a receipt from the first trip, a sticky note from the fridge. Lay them out on the floor in order, each pick one, write three lines on its back, and read them aloud tonight. Then everything goes in a shoebox.
Anna: I confessed I’d never liked camping. Sam confessed he’d only gone camping because he thought I liked it. Year two, we booked a hotel.
Years two to four, when you know each other’s routines
- Your regulars. You have a place where the staff knows your order: the coffee counter, the taco truck, the bar with Tuesday trivia. Go there on your anniversary, order the usual, and leave a small thank-you: a card signed by both of you, a box of pastries for the staff, a bigger tip than usual. Ask whoever’s working to take your picture.
- The other person’s commute. Both of you take the day off, then each rides the other’s route to work at their usual time: the same bus, the same coffee stop, the same door. Send a photo from three points on the way and one of their office entrance. Then meet for a late breakfast and vote on whose commute is worse. You’ll understand their bad Mondays a lot better.
- The same photo, years later. Find an old photo of the two of you from the first year, one with a clear place and a clear pose. Go back and recreate it: the same angle, the same spot, the same shirt if it still fits. Print the two side by side in one frame. Every anniversary after this one, add another.
- A plant with a date on the pot. Buy something that lives for decades: a lemon tree, an olive, a fig, a jade plant. Repot it together and write today’s date on the pot with a paint marker. Every anniversary, measure it with a tape and write the new height under the date. Ten years from now, the pot is a record.
- An hour of theirs. Each of you gets one hour of the day that belongs to your hobby, and the other joins as a total beginner: the climbing gym, the bass guitar, the fantasy league draft, the chess app. No commentary, no grading, no “I’d do it differently.” Then switch. A lot of couples go years without watching each other be good at something.
If you’d like plans that aren’t tied to a date on the calendar, the date ideas deck has thirty more to swipe through.
Five years in, time to look back on purpose
- Interviews on camera. Prop a phone on a stack of books and take turns as interviewer: ten questions each, fifteen to twenty minutes per person. Ask about the hardest month, the best surprise, where you’ll live in five years. Save the files in a folder named “Year 10” and don’t open it until then.
- The long weekend you kept postponing. Take it now, with one theme and one rule. The theme can be anything small: every used bookstore in one college town, the oldest diner in each town along one highway, the waterfalls of one county. The rule: one plan per day, nothing before eleven. The slow pace is the point.
- Five years, five questions. Each of you writes down five things you realize you can’t answer about the other: their first concert, what they wanted to be at twelve, the name of their childhood best friend. Ask them over a drink and write the answers in your notes app. For more, there’s a full list of questions to ask your partner.
- The witnesses’ dinner. Invite three people who’ve seen all five years: a sibling, a best friend, the neighbor from your first place. Book a table at a restaurant or borrow a friend’s backyard. One rule: each guest gives one toast about the two of you, with one specific story, two minutes max. You don’t speak until the end. Record it on your phone.
- A map of five years. Choose five places in your city, one for each year: the corner where you got caught in the rain, the bench from the bad week, the bar from year three. You pick years one, three and five; your partner picks two and four. Keep each spot secret until you get there, and tell one memory on each.
Sam: Anna’s brother gave the toast about the time I locked us out on the balcony in January. Five minutes, not two. Nobody stopped him.
Ten years and more
- A kilometer for every year. Map a walking loop through your neighborhood or a park with one kilometer for each year together: ten years, a 10K. At every kilometer, stop and name one year: one thing that happened, one thing you’d forgotten. Bring water and a snack, and pick a café at the halfway point. If that’s too far for one day, walk half and name two years at each stop.
- Vows, out loud, again. Find a quiet place: an empty pew, an overlook, the car parked by the water. Read your vows to each other again, slowly. If you never had vows, write them now, for the first time: five lines each, written separately, read together. Fold them up and keep them in the drawer with your passports.
- A day with no kids and no plan. Book the sitter three weeks out, from nine in the morning until nine at night. The only rule: for the first hour you do nothing. No errands, no plans, no talking about the kids. After that, decide one hour at a time. Without kids, the same day works with phones off and nothing on the calendar.
- The class you put off for your careers. Pick the thing you both said you’d do “once things calm down”: swing, ballroom, country two-step. Sign up for a beginner series of four to six lessons and make the first one land on your anniversary. Step on each other’s feet. Go to every lesson after.
- A letter from year twenty. Each of you writes a letter as if it’s your twentieth anniversary, describing that year: where you live, what changed, what stubbornly didn’t. Read them aloud tonight, then keep both in the same envelope with the year written on the front.
When you stay in and keep the kitchen closed
- A children’s book about the two of you. Staple together one page for every year you’ve been together. Each page gets one drawing and one sentence, done with markers or crayons, and badly on purpose. Read it aloud on the couch like a bedtime story, with voices. It goes on the shelf next to the real books.
- A podcast for two. Prop a phone on a mug and record fifteen minutes with segments: “the best day of the year,” “the worst advice we got,” “a listener question” texted in by a friend that afternoon. Introduce yourselves like hosts. Save the file and play it back on your next anniversary.
- The court of small disputes. Pick three cases from the year: who lost the good scissors, whether the gray couch is actually beige, who mispronounced the restaurant name for six months. Each side gets two minutes to argue. The jury is the cat or a friend on video. The verdict goes on a sticky note on the fridge.
- The page that shaped you. Run a bath or pull two armchairs face to face. Each of you brings the book with the one page that shaped you at fifteen or twenty, and reads that single page aloud, then says when you first read it. At the end, swap books and keep each other’s for the year.
- This year’s material, by hand. Each anniversary has a traditional material: cotton for two, leather for three, wood for five, tin for ten. Make one object from yours together: block-print a cotton tote with a design carved from a potato, stitch a leather keychain from a kit, sand and oil a small wooden shelf, punch a pattern into a tin can lantern with a nail. If it’s the lantern, light it when you’re done.
If your anniversary lands in the cold months, the winter date ideas are built around dark evenings, and the Valentine’s Day date ideas work on any ordinary night too.
Anna: Our court case was “who ate the last frozen dumpling.” The cat ruled for Sam. I’m appealing.
When you’re apart on the day
- The same walk at the same time. Agree on an hour, adjusted for time zones, and walk thirty minutes through your own cities on the same plan: start at a coffee window, find water, end at the highest point you can reach. Send a voice note at every turn instead of calling. Listen to all of them again before bed.
- A package that lands on the day. Send one object, not a box of things: the hoodie they always steal, a print of your best photo, the snack you can only get in your town. Add a note written by hand. Track it so it arrives on the date, and open it on video while the sender watches.
- The same order in two cities. Pick a chain that exists in both towns, or the same kind of place: the oldest diner, the busiest taco spot. Go at the same moment, order the same thing, and send a photo of the table before you eat. It isn’t the same table, but it’s the same meal at the same minute, and that’s the closest a long-distance dinner gets.
- The next visit, booked on the day. Leave your next trip to each other unbooked until the anniversary. That evening, get on a call, open the fares in two tabs, pick the dates, and press buy while the other watches. Set the confirmation as your lock screen. The day still ends with a goodbye, but now there’s a date after it.
- A call with no topic. Set both phones on stands, video on, and keep the call open for an hour while each of you does your own thing: folding laundry, reading, answering email. Talk if you want to. Mostly, don’t. It won’t feel like one room, but it’s closer to an ordinary evening than a scheduled chat. At the end, raise whatever you’re drinking and make one toast.
If you want something to play over video, the long-distance relationship games are made for that. For more date lists by season and situation, browse our articles.
Sam: Anna was in Denver, I was in Austin. We’d agreed on the pizza chain and forgot to agree on the order, and we both got the same thing anyway. That’s ten years for you.