This July, theOutDaughteredstars — who share 9-year-old daughterBlaykeand 5-year-oldquintupletsAva, Olivia, Riley, Parker and Hazel — will celebrate their 15-year wedding anniversary. And to this day, the couple still recognizes the value of going on weekly date nights.
“Our house is just an extremely high-stress environment,” Adam, 38, tells PEOPLE. “There’s always something going on. And we learned very early on that you kind of lose sight of each other in the shuffle.”
“You may be getting to Wednesday and feel like you barely so much as said hi to each other, just because you’re trying to sort everything out with the kids and get them up, fed, bathed,” he continues. “We realized you have to schedule time for yourselves. And honestly, it took putting date nights on the schedule. So every week we get out of the house and get away and just focus on us. That’s our time to talk and stuff like that.”
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She adds that “making that time and that effort — and making sure it stays a priority — is what we’ve learned has to happen.”
“And we have adjusted,” she says. “How do we date each other? What do we do to enjoy our company? And what’s the most valued time together? And I think for the past probably three years, we discovered it has to be away from the house.”
The couple’s love story began in 2003, when they met while both working at Target. After two and a half years of dating, Adam proposed on Christmas Eve, and he and Danielle were married six months later. “Man, we were so young!” Danielle wrote ontheir family blogabout when they said “I do.”
Though the two have been parents for nearly a decade, one thing has not changed: their relationship with one another comes first.
“We’ve gotten great advice from mentors,” Adam tells PEOPLE. “Obviously, mine and her relationship is the most important relationship in the house. And so if that’s not doing well, you know, everything in the house suffers. And we can see it whenever we get in an argument, or you just don’t feel connected.”
With “stress and everything going on, the kids see it and the kids feel it,” he adds. “And it seems like the house just kind of starts spiraling out of control. So that’s just the most important relationship in the house — ours. And we focus on that and they’re happier for it.”
“Communication is probably the biggest key, and learning to adjust what’s not working,” she says. “We enjoy doing stuff together and going on dates, but it can get overshadowed really quickly.”
OutDaughteredairs Tuesdays (8 p.m. ET) on TLC and can also be streamed on discovery+.
source: people.com
