Ben Wilson, LPC

Whole books have been written on the passage below. I won't say too much about it, but I think it wise for men to read it out loud. Meditate on the words. We are called to do much and to love much as men.   

We are designed to speak and move towards our wives and this is to be done in other-centeredness. 

²¹Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. ²²Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.  ²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰for we are members of his body. ³¹"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." ³²This is a profound mystery… Ephesians 5:21-32

Notice how little the woman is instructed versus the man.

This means that a man has a great responsibility that falls on him.  This goes all the way back to Genesis.  If men live as they are supposed to it will be easy for the woman to rest in their strength and submission will bring great freedom to both spouses.  

Ann tells me that if I am living this passage out, loving her in this way, then trusting herself to God and to me is as easy as eating hot sugar cookies with a cold glass of milk. 

If I am presenting her to myself without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish her soul is profoundly impacted. If she is being the opposite of loving and I can be lovingly present with her then her soul will find rest in me, eventually. 

There is no way as a man I can do this in my own power.  I can only do it collapsed into Christ.  I'm helpless to do it on my own.