A Review of “Date Your Wife” by Justin Buzzard

It’s amazing how quickly a husband and wife can lose touch with each other. This week my wife and I will celebrate our 9^th wedding anniversary. I love her dearly, but even in our short nine years there have been seasons where we have been more like roommates than spouses. Life gets busy, routines force us into ruts, and before you know it you’ve lost touch with the one you love. The bad part is that it happens so subtly most of us don’t even know it. That’s partly why Justin Buzzard has written this helpful resource for men Date Your Wife. This short book is a great resource for recovering relational intimacy in your marriage.

Buzzard believes the starting place for recovering or strengthening our relational intimacy is with husbands. “This book is fueled by this conviction: if you want to change a marriage, change the man” (39). Buzzard is a complimentarian, which means he asserts male headship in the home. He is right, then, to urge men to take responsibility for their marriages, and the loss of intimacy that can happen in it. I was sometimes put off by his particular expression of that complimentarianism; it was a bit more extreme than my particular view on the subject is.

For example, he often overstates the responsibility of men, saying things like: men are the best things that ever happened to their marriages (64). This seems like a very strange thing to say at best, and a really condescending one at worst. He also asserts that a changed man is what “alters the course of everything” (41). The hyperbole is at times so thick that it’s hard to appreciate his urging men to be responsible for their role in their marriages. He also misunderstands the characteristic features of manhood, at times utilizing the same cultural norms that others have. So he asserts that men need a mission, as if that is some unique feature to them. He writes:

Boys are born with a mission: to work and keep, to cultivate and guard. God put Adam on the earth, and God pushes boys out of wombs to be cultivators and guardians. (61)

This conviction drives him to conclude that men need to view their marriages as a mission. It’s an interesting perspective, I am not sure how healthy it is – I can’t imagine wives being flattered by such a notion. I am also concerned that such a view actually diminishes the important role and contributions of wives in marriages. God did put Adam in the garden to cultivate and guard it, but God knew that Adam was insufficient to do that job alone. Adam needed help; he was not competent for the task alone. A view of marriage that puts the whole burden of the marriage on a man’s shoulders is setting men up for frustration and disappointment, and encouraging him to devalue his wife. That view is frustrating to me. As a pastor of counseling I see many strong Evangelical men and women whose marriages are falling apart precisely because they have such narrow views of marriage and gender roles. Rethinking the ideas of complinetarianism according to Scripture will, I believe, go a long way.

It occurs to me that such criticism may actually overshadow the value of this book. I don’t want that. Date Your Wife, I have said, is a great resource for renewing relational intimacy in your marriage. The book has two great strengths to it: (1) it is gospel-grounded, and (2) it is practically-oriented. Buzzard gives us great help in strengthening our marriages with these two characteristics of his work, in fact they are somewhat unique in that regard.

Strong Christian men are used to reading about, studying, and hearing sermons on marriage. They are even used to hearing about their responsibilities and their failures as husbands. It is partly because of the ubiquitous reminder of the failures of husbands, and the seriousness of their roles in marriage, that so many men are uninterested in studying the subject any further. They feel, quite frankly, beat down and discouraged. Tullian Tchividjian acknowledges this in his forward to the book, he writes:

I know, I know. Why do we need another book on marriage? Why do we need another guy telling us already-struggling husbands what we’re not doing well? Telling me to do more and to try harder only makes me want to do and try less. Been there, done that. Give me a break!

Ah, But this is the genius of Justin’s book – he understands and clearly articulates the radical difference between a religious approach to marriage and a gospel approach to marriage. (9)

Buzzard understands something that men need to hear, and upon hearing will find great strength and freedom to love their wives well: Jesus makes men new (64).

The gospel, applied to our marriages, gives men the proper picture of and full ability to love. “Men,” he writes, “you will not pursue your wife well until you know the God who pursues you.” He adds:

Men, no matter the state of our marriages, I want us loving our wives with this heaven-sent passion. But we can’t do it until we believe, until we see, that Jesus has first loved us like this. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). He loved us. He lost us. He got us back. He gave himself up for us so that we could give ourselves up for our wives. (79)

The gospel helps us understand what it means to love our wives properly. But it also empowers us to love them properly.

The value of this book is more clearly seen in its urging men towards the responsibility without guilt. Yes husbands have failed, but the gospel teaches us that we are not identified by our failures and that we can change. “Before God gave Adam a job to do or a mission to accomplish,”  writes Buzzard, “he gave Adam an identity to embrace” (72). Adam was a child of God, and so are all we who are believers in the gospel. The measure of man is not his perfect record at home, it is Christ’s perfect record on his behalf. The gospel, when applied to our marriages, allows us the freedom to keep working hard without falling into the trap of idolatry. Idolatry, writes Buzzard, “is building your identity on yourself instead of on God and his grace” (74). In marriage this turns into religion-fueled efforts to renew relational intimacy. Date Your Wife is about giving men “a whole new way” to relate to their wives, one fueled by the power of the gospel.

This book isn’t just about a man’s responsibility. It’s about how his identity is grounded in the gospel, and how his abilities are empowered by the God of the gospel. Buzzard writes:

You crush a man if you only talk to him about responsibility. You empower a man if you talk to him about responsibility – about living life in response to the power and ability of God. (66)

In this regard Date Your Wife is one of the more rare books on marriage I have read. It is fueled by a belief in the practicality and power of the gospel for all areas of life. It has an aversion to guilting men into their roles. For those reasons I want to overlook the extreme complinterianism.

I am also pleased with just how practical this book is. It can be so frustrating for men to repeatedly be told they are not doing their jobs, be reminded of the same Biblical demands placed upon them as leaders in the home, and yet have no tangible examples to help them discern how to do that. Buzzard wants to give us theological grounding and practical tools to date our wives. The fact that the book focuses particularly on this idea of “dating” is itself very practical. It gives men a real picture of what it looks like to develop and strengthen relational intimacy. Most men can remember what dating was like. Dating is something we’ve already done, “something we’ve already built into the foundation of our marriages” (22). Buzzard compares it to riding a bike:

Even if you haven’t been on a bike in years, you still know how to ride one. It’s the same with dating your wife. My aim is to get men back on the bike…(22)

With that in mind he gives us two road maps to riding well. In chapters ten and eleven he outlines a big picture and a more day-to-day map for dating. The idea behind the chapters is to develop a plan of action for dating. He outlines practical ways you can serve your wife, spend time together, and plan for the future. Those two chapters alone are worth the price of the book. They will prove very useful in my own life and in counseling others. Appendix 1 also lists 100 ideas to help get you started in thinking about your own wife and ways to date her. In that regard, the book is very practical.

I have my complaints with some of the interpretation behind Buzzard’s view of complinterianism, but overall this book is a great resource. For discerning readers they will find not only practical help in loving their wives, but the gospel-freedom that enables them to do it well.