33 Ideas for Dating Your Wife

Invest in Your Marriage through Dating

Men, you need to come up with your own ideas for how to date your wife. You know your wife better than anyone else. Only you know how to best cultivate and guard the woman God has given you. But sometimes it helps to build off other people’s ideas in order to form your own. Here are some ideas to jump-start your own thinking. My prayer is that the power of the gospel would drive how you date your wife and implement these ideas.

Date Your Wife

Justin Buzzard

Date Your Wife is an intensely practical guide for husbands looking to strengthen, save, or spice up their marriage and pursue their wives from a place of security in the gospel.

Make a list of ten things your wife loves to do. Each new time you take your wife on a date, do one of those ten things as your date.
Take up a new hobby with your wife; do something new that you’re both excited about.
Do something with your wife that both of you are scared to do.
Set a weekly date night. Each week rotate going out and staying in for your date night.
Assign a day of “bed rest” to your wife. Make her take a day to rest, relax, and not accomplish anything productive.
Exercise with your wife. Sweat together.
Do the classic date: dinner and a show. Take your wife to dinner and to a movie she wants to watch.
Dance with your wife. Use your living room, your backyard, or go to a club.
Search online for free date ideas: concerts in the park, jazz nights at local clubs, etc.
Enter a contest or competition with your wife: a running race, a pie-baking competition, a dance contest, etc. Do something with your wife where you compete against others.
Mark your wife’s birthday, your wedding anniversary, and Mother’s Day on your calendar every year and plan to make those days special.
Talk to your wife about her friendships. Ask her how things are going with her girlfriends. Pray for her friendships.
Make dinner for your wife.
Write a love note to your wife. Tell her all over again what she means to you.
Spend an evening stargazing with your wife and talking about dreams you have for the future.
Spend an evening reminiscing with your wife about all you’ve been through together and all God has done and redeemed in your life together.
Serve your wife breakfast in bed.
Devote the next month to studying a book of the Bible with your wife. Take twenty minutes several nights a week to read, discuss, and pray through a shorter book such as Ephesians or Philippians.
Visit your roots. Visit where your wife grew up and where you grew up. Learn more about each other’s backgrounds.
Watch your wife closely this week and compile a list of admirable attributes that your wife exhibits. At the end of the week share the list with your wife, telling her how much you appreciate who she is and who she’s becoming.
Hold your wife’s hand often, in public and in private.
Pick a TV show you and your wife both like and watch it together every week.
Read through your old junior high and high school yearbooks together.
Cancel work for the day and do something special with your wife.
Take dancing lessons with your wife.
Have a photographer take new pictures of you and your wife. Put these pictures up in your home.
Notice when your wife is particularly tired, drained, or stressed out. On such days step in and take one or two responsibilities off your wife’s plate.
Vacation with your wife without your kids, without your work, and without your cell phone and computer.
Revisit the scene of your wedding, thank God for your marriage, and pray through your wedding vows. Then go drink some champagne or eat cake.
Get in better shape; take better care of yourself and how you look for the sake of your wife—lose some weight, get a haircut, throw out those old clothes you’ve been wearing since college, buy some clothes that you actually look good in, shave, etc.
Ask your wife these questions on a regular basis: How are you—how do you feel? What’s going on with you and Jesus lately? How can I better love you and our family? How can I pray for you? Are there any adjustments we need to make?
Ask your wife to regularly ask you the same type of questions listed above.
Devote one hour each night for alone time with your wife. Talk about how your days went. Joke around with each other. Cultivate your friendship. Talk honestly about what’s going on in your lives. Help each other. Encourage each other. Pray together.

This article is adapted from Date Your Wife by Justin Buzzard.

Justin Buzzard (MDiv, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the founder and lead pastor of Garden City Church in Silicon Valley. Justin writes regularly at JustinBuzzard.net, speaks widely at conferences nationwide, and is part of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network. He is the author of many books, including Why Cities Matter. He lives in Silicon Valley with his wife, Taylor, and their three sons.