Date Formula as a Reference

Hello!

I am trying to automatically relate records in a child table to a parent table based on the month that they are marked as "Complete".

I have the date that they are marked complete in a field.

My parent table has a record for each month, with a month field being marked as the first day for that month.

I am trying to create an automatic relationship between these two tables. The relationship that is created for me is the child table referencing the month date in the parent table.
I have found that it is possible to relate children to a parent using a formula. I have done it using a text formula reference field to relate the child to the parent automatically.

The issue I am running in to is that if I change the Date (reference) field, to a Date (formula) (reference) field, the formula won't let me return a date, and requires me to return a text. I feel like this is a bug, and it is rather annoying.

Is there any other way to do this? I would prefer to avoid automations, knowing that I was able to accomplish essentially the same task using just text. The main blocker here is the date formula field requiring me to return text, which isn't the proper type and makes the relationship fail.

Thanks for any help!

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Sterling Long!
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