Patrick Amie - The dudes guide to marriage: ten skills every man needs to love his wife well

PRAISE FOR THE DUDES GUIDE TO MARRIAGE

My friend Darrin Patrick has written an excellent book to help men develop the skills needed to love and serve their wives well. It is full of wisdom, honesty, and is extremely practical. The Dude's Guide to Marriage provides for us a beautiful real-life picture of what a marriage centered on the gospel looks like amid the daily grind of life.

MATT CHANDLER, LEAD PASTOR OF THE VILLAGE CHURCH, PRESIDENT OF ACTS 29 CHURCH PLANTING NETWORK, AND AUTHOR OF THE MINGLING OF SOULS

In this book, Darrin and Amie Patrick give us down-to-earth, practical words of wisdom to young men about relating to their wives well. This book is solidly biblical, gospel rich, and helpfully practical. The Patricks dont deal in airy abstractions but give concrete guidance for men about what it takes to succeed as husbands. The Dudes Guide to Marriage is brimming with valuable insight gained from years of experience. It would be a great book to give to a couple in premarital counseling or to share with a long-time married couple, still learning, as we all are, how to grow together in Christ. I highly recommend it.

RUSSELL MOORE, PRESIDENT OF SOUTHERN BAPTIST ETHICS AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY COMMISSION

My wife, Pam, and I have benefitted from Darrin and Amie Patricks personal wisdom and example the past few years. Now its captured in a book. Theirs is the most helpful kind: the gritty, earthy wisdom learned in the hard school of real experience. Their transparency is refreshing and their good-humored, blunt counsel is gold. Dude, if youre going to read one book on marriage, read this one.

JON BLOOM, COFOUNDER AND CHAIR OF DESIRING GOD AND AUTHOR OF NOT BY SIGHT AND THINGS NOT SEEN

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the secret to a great marriage isnt finding the right person. Its found in becoming the right person. Unfortunately, most of us guys enter marriage ill-equipped to be the kind of husband that great marriages are made of. The Dudes Guide to Marriage can change that. With refreshing candor and real-world wisdom, Darrin and Amie Patrick reveal the attitudes and skills that will make any husband, a better husbandand any marriage, a better marriage. I encourage you to read it. Carefully. Youll be glad you did. So will your wife.

LARRY OSBORNE, AUTHOR AND PASTOR OF NORTH COAST CHURCH, VISTA, CALIFORNIA

2015 by Darrin and Amie Patrick

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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

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Any Internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Thomas Nelson, nor does Thomas Nelson vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Author photos courtesy of Lisa Hessel Photography.

Interior designed by James A. Phinney.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0550-9 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Patrick, Darrin, 1970

The dude's guide to marriage : ten skills every man needs to love his wife well / Darrin and Amie Patrick.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0549-3

1. Marriage--Religious aspects--Christianity. 2. Husbands. 3. Wives. I. Title.

BV835.P378 2015

248.8'425--dc23

2015010664

15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To our childrenGlory, Grace, Drew, and Delainey: We are so grateful for you and love being your parents.

CONTENTS

I HAVE TO SAY, I LOVE THIS BOOK. THIS IS WHY I HAVE written this foreword. Yes, Darrin is a friend in ministry and I have recommended other things that he has written, but that is not why I decided to write this foreword. I was willing to take my time to do this because I so appreciate both the subject and the content of what you are beginning to read. Let me explain.

If youre committed to a ministry life, you will be exposed to things that make your heart grieve. This has happened to me over and over again in one particular area. I will be somewhere doing a marriage weekend and during one of the breaks a wife will come to me and say, This is such helpful material, I wish I wouldve been able to get my husband to come with me. It crushes me every time I hear it. How can a marriage be healthy when the husband is so detached and inactive that he is unwilling to give up one weekend of his life to focus on it? Could it be that there really are men out there who would rather spend a weekend with their golf clubs, fly rods, shotguns, or tennis racquets than they would at a marriage conference with their wives? What must his wife think when he says no? What must she be thinking as she takes in the content of the weekend? And what must she be thinking as she hits the driveway loaded with new hope and enthusiasm for her marriage that she knows her husband doesnt share?

Heres why this is profoundly more important than missing one marriage conference. I am deeply persuaded that the number-one reason that marriages fail is not adultery or abuse, but neglect. Long before adultery takes place, shattering trust, and long before abuse makes the marriage a dangerous place, neglect has already sucked the life out of the marriage, and in so doing, set it up for difficulty and dysfunction of some kind. You see, you simply cannot have a sinner living with a sinner without focusing and working on your marriage all the time, any more than you can plant a garden and expect it to produce beautiful and healthy flowers without being committed to watering and weeding it.

Now, what I am going to write next is painful to write, but I must. It is my experience in almost forty years of pastoral ministry that dudes tend to be way more neglectful of their marriages than their wives are. There are hundreds of thousands of men every day who when they punch out from work essentially punch out from life. This means when they get home what they secretly want is to be left alone. They arent arriving at home willingly and lovingly engaged in the daily maintenance work that it takes to make marriage all that God designed it to be.

So, thats why I love this book and think that it is so important for you and me to read, consider, and live. In this book, my friends Darrin and Amie not only have written a very provocative call to men to give themselves to their wives and their marriages, but they have also beautifully and practically detailed what that looks like.

Sin makes all of us selfish. It gives all of us antisocial instincts that are destructive to marriage. So God, in his amazing grace, not only forgives us but welcomes us to a brand-new way of living toward him and with one another. This new way of other-centered love is not natural for us. Selfishness is natural, entitlement is natural, demandingness is natural, disinterest in others is natural, irritation and impatience are natural, but it is simply not natural for us to willingly and patiently serve and love our wives as Jesus loves us. Men, for that to ever be natural, we need help.