5 Ways Husbands Can Sanctify Their Wives

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
-- Ephesians 5:25-27

1. Put Her First
Sacrifice is in view here, as is the understanding of "sanctify" in the sense of "setting apart for special use," as in consecration. Husbands honor their wives not among others, but before and above others.

2. "Gospel" Her
Yes, I know it's not a verb, but you get my meaning here. The passage says Jesus sanctifies the church by "washing" her with the water of the word. The understanding of "sanctify" as "cleanse" is in view here, and a husband who wants to sanctify his wife will share with her the word of God, speak to her the word of God, remind her who she is in Christ, forgive her sins, give her the opportunity to forgive his in word-driven repentance, and in general make sure she is gently, lovingly covered in the Scriptures.

3. Protect Her
Husbands will present their wives in some way to the Lord when that roll is called up yonder as an evidence of their own faithfulness to him. Do we want to be proven true children of God, full of faith in Jesus and his gospel? Then we will show the fruit of faithful husbanding, which is a wife "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." No, we cannot sanctify our wives the way the Spirit does, and no, neither our salvation nor our wife's salvation is contingent upon our perfect husbanding (thank God!), but manhood is responsibility-taking, and this means taking the responsibility to shield our wives from sin and its temptations, accusations, attacks, unnecessary burdens, hurtful expectations and assumptions, and the like. This can mean everything from taking on housework so she gets to rest or go out with friends to warding off or rebuking people who take advantage of her. It also means no verbal, emotional, or physical abuse. It means no pornography or sexual exploitation. It means treating her and ensuring treatment of her that is gentle, loving, and edifying.

4. Serve Her
How did Jesus the King position himself over the church as its head? By becoming its servant, sacrificing to the point of death in loving service to her betterment.

5. Lead Her
This encompasses all of the above and more. Male headship requires repetitious repentance, deep humility, desperate God-reliance, and a high, passionate commitment to the grace of God for the glory of God, not the gratification of self for the glory of self. Lead, don't push. Set an example in speech and conduct. Show yourself flawed but trustworthy but God as failproof. Refuse to make excuses or pass the buck. Shoulder the burdens and take responsibility.
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5 Ways Wives Can Encourage Their Husbands

An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
-- Proverbs 31:10-12

1. Praise Him Verbally
Private nagging and public nitpicking are common temptations for wives of husbands who are sinners, by which I mean wives, but a wife ought to know that this is Chinese water torture on his heart. Most men carry around in their souls the question "Do I have what it takes?" The gospel answers this question, "No, but Jesus does, and what's his is yours." This is the only acceptable way to answer in the "negative." When you nitpick and nag, you give mouthpiece to the accuser who wants your husband to know not only does he not have what it takes, he is worthless because of it. So find ways to constructively criticize and help him repent, but more than that, tell him what you like about him, how you find him attractive or admirable, how you respect him or are impressed by him. Outdo him in showing honor (Rom. 12:10).

2. Submit to His Leadership
This is not a call to be a doormat, but in my pastoral experience I encounter many a wife who says she wants her husband to lead her but then makes it clear in some way that this will only occur when she agrees with his decision. There are few things more demoralizing than a demand to lead with no commitment to follow. Instead, if your husband is not leading you into sin, your followship of your husband is a reflection of your trust in God. Peter writes:

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. (1 Peter 3:5-6)

3. Reject Relational Legalism
If your husband always feels as though he is only in your good graces when he has performed to your standards or met your expectations, he will not see you as his lover, friend, or partner, but as his boss. Do you know how deeply you want to feel approved of despite your flaws, sins, and failures, that your husband would know the real you and love that you? He wants the same thing, even if he never expresses it.

4. Take an Interest
It's not always that your husband doesn't like to talk. It's just that perhaps he's learned that your favorite subjects are things he doesn't have much to say about. Communicating with you in ways that edify and engage you is his command to obey with joy; communicating with him in ways that edify and engage him is yours. This might mean asking him questions about sports or hobbies or movies or power tools. Or maybe it doesn't mean talking but sitting on the couch to watch the game with him or invading his "man cave"* with your presence but not your agenda.

5. Make Love to Him
This is not universally true, but it is generally true: The number one way a husband feels encouraged is when his wife has sex with him. I put it last because it's likely the touchiest point (no pun intended), but it is (again, generally speaking) top of the list. If you're thinking, "Well, for some husbands maybe, but not mine," ask him. For most men, sexual intimacy is directly wired to feelings of encouragement, confidence, approval, attractiveness, and self-esteem. The things that you likely need in order to feel open to sexual intimacy are the things he typically feels afterwards -- closeness, respect, approval. I know it's weird that God set it up that way, but I think he did so that we would serve each other graciously with our bodies, learning to put each other first in a neat little "No, after you" kind of dance. In any event, one of the chief ways -- if not the chief way -- you can build up your husband is by bedding down with him.

Carolyn Mahaney's chapter "Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Wife Needs to Know" in the Piper/Taylor book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is excellent on this subject. You can download the entire book for free here.


* Dudes, if you have a man cave the sole function of which is for you to spend regular amounts of time sequestered from your family, you need to repent and reorder your priorities.

What I mean by a marriage that is grace-driven is a marriage in which one or both parties have been captured by the grace of God in the atoning work and resurrection of Jesus Christ and therefore seek to glorify God in Christ in Spiritual power through the daily "drudgery" of their marriage. The chief step to this reality is believing the gospel.

In Ephesians 5:21-25, Paul writes:

. . . submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . .

There is a snapshot of what a grace-driven marriage looks like. Its central theme is the Person of Jesus, and the dynamic of "mutual submission" to each other's needs is chiefly about reverence for him.

The wife shows reverence for Christ in her submission to her husband. Submission to his headship is an act of grace to him, reflective of the grace given to her by God. Wives can demonstrate this grace-driven submission in many ways, but here are three:

1. Respecting him verbally and publicly. Men are terrible mind-readers and context-clue-picker-uppers, not because they're stupid but just because of the way they're wired. They need to hear that they're respected, as well as shown. They need to be verbally encouraged, and even if a wife finds opportunities to publicly praise her husband difficult to come by, she can "settle" for not criticizing him in front of others or bringing disagreements/difficulties between the two of them into public conversations. This shames a husband and is a sabotage act of legalistic leverage, not grace.

2. Repenting of leveraging anything. This includes use of passive aggression, sexual intimacy as reward or withholding of same as punishment, "I told you so" when results meet your expectations but not his, tit for tat on anything. Women have long memories and great is their temptation to use them in winning arguments, wars of wills, etc. Don't do that. These are all reflections of the way Eve exploited Adam's passivity and usurped his headship to exert her own control. She was "quite deceived."

3. Defer on decisions. A wife who says or even merely thinks toward her husband, "I don't care what you say" has gone rogue. She may enjoy for the moment being free of her husband's authority, but she will not enjoy coming out from God's. It is sin to submit to sin, so never acquiesce to a husband's headship when doing so takes you out from under Christ's, but remember: it's not submission if you agree with the decision. In matters that are not sin, but merely disagreement, advise, counsel, pray, encourage. But defer.

By all means, don't do any of these things if you don't want a confident, happy, encouraged husband. Some ladies like the milquetoast types. I hear the pasty British vampire thing is "in" right now.

Husbands, your call to grace in your marriage to your wife is deeper and more demanding. It is nothing less than self-crucifixion in "reverencing" your wife as you would reverence yourself. Her call is to submission; your call is to sacrifice. Here are three practical ways husbands can love their wives as Christ loved the church.

1. Honor her by way of priority. Put her first. Above yourself, above your kids. Make her fulfillment the gauge of your success. Do not coast. There is no autopilot setting for husbanding. If you fail to take the initiative in loving and respecting -- verbally, actively, constantly -- you implicitly take responsibility for your marriage going over the cliff. Treat your wife as precious. She is not your employee. Do not exploit her submission, and do not abdicate your responsibility if she neglects hers. Do not grow weary in an effort to present her pure and spotless before the Lord. Passivity is masculinity at its most fallen.

2. Talk! Christ engaged the Church; he put skin on and communed with her. He dines with her, speaks with her, sings over her, delights in her. Open your mouth and talk to your wife. Ask her how she feels. Ask her what she needs/wants. Ask her what her dreams/struggles/fears/concerns/entertainments are. Be her friend.

3. Worship God. In all things, including the self-emptying in the obedience of the cross, the Son submitted to the Father. If your wife is pulling the spiritual weight in your family, repent and believe in the gospel. Then lead your family. Your authority comes from God's authority, so if you neglect his, you give up the grounds for expectation of submission to yours. Your wife longs in her heart to hear she is desired, approved, and accepted, so "evangelize" her often, and your children as well.

What Christians who claim to love the gospel should want is a marriage that makes as much of Jesus as possible.

My favorite self-diagnosed Asperger's syndrome having, accordion playing, toast loving, Kurd serving, Christian radio elevating, humorist-slash-provocateur with an important rant:

You're an adult. Get over your parents, for crying out loud.

Seriously.

You got married, that means you have a new family, a new primary relationship. "Oh, but he's still my daddy, and -- " Sure he is. But you remember that whole father "giving you away" part? Yeah, that means he gave you away. Like, as in, "away". Like as in, your not his, anymore.

"But he's still my authority, and -- " No, no he's not. No matter what he says.

"But doesn't the Bible say to honor your parents, and -- " Sure does! So do it: Taking on your own life, your own new family, your own marriage project, is not dishonoring mom and dad. It's honoring them. Congrats, parents! Your kid actually grew up.

That was their goal, right? That's honoring. Mom and dad succeeded, and their kid is now an adult, not some sycophantic, overgrown, whiny, baby-bird that can't... quite... fly...

"But my mom loves that I'm still kind of dependent on her, and -- " Of course she does. It's natural. And it's natural, too, for her to want you to gripe about your spouse to her, and confirm her suspicion that you're much, much better than the person you're married to. After all, you're an extension of her. So yes, it's "natural". Just like a lot of dumb, immature things are "natural". But who knows? Maybe she can grow up, too.

Maybe you read that whole thing in the Bible about, "leaving" your parents, and starting over? Maybe you think that's just too radical? Well, there are a lot of radical things in the Bible, and -- let's be honest -- this "leaving" thing was a lot MORE radical back in the day, when the rest of the ancient world was all about sticking with your parents until their dying day. It was just plain shocking, actually.

So yep, it's radical. But there it is.

Also "radical": Not repeating the same mistakes your dad made. Or acting like your mom. Or raising your kids in a new way. Or setting out on a new journey, a better one, that God has planned for you. Freedom is radical. So is maturity.

(Bonus: The Krusty Sage's wife thinks he's hot when he demonstrates he's his own man. She also thinks he's hot because of his awesome white beard and his awesome wooden throne-thing, but the whole "Chart our own course together" is pretty dang romantic, too. And this from a Sage who totally loves and enjoys his own parents.)

Quit letting them tell you where to be for Christmas. Quit being emotionally dependent on them. Don't borrow money from them, if you can avoid it. Quit the, "I can't believe my mom just did/said that!" routine that still gets you fired up. Besides, unless you're stupid, you CAN believe she said "that", because he's been saying "that" for years. Quit being shocked, repeatedly, by the same thing.

Do not let them have power over you. Oh, they still want it, God bless 'em. But too stinking bad.

Start over. Do everyone a favor.

Love your parents, yes; appreciate them, yes; be there for them when you're needed, yes. Perhaps, when they're old and frail, they'll need you. Wonderful. Just do your best so you don't need them, anymore.

Want to "honor your parents"?

Grow. Up.

Whether they like it or not.

Sheesh.

In preparation for an article written to husbands, I did a Bible search for the word “wife”. What I discovered is that each of the first four occurrences of the word is found in a verse that gives us truths about wives that are foundational and timeless. Will you join me in a quick tour of what the first few chapters of the Bible tell us about wives?

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Your primary family unit is you and your husband. You made a promise to be united to your husband. This means that the strongest tie is not by blood, but by covenant. Where there were two people from two different families, now there is just one family and there is one life that you live together.

“The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25).
Before sin, before the fall, before selfishness and pride took over, this is the way God intended it to be. You and your husband should know each other physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Secrets, especially sinful ones, can be dangerous.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden" (Genesis 3:8.
God intends to have a relationship with both you and your husband. He is to be a part of your marriage. And like the third point in a triangle, if you are both moving closer to the Lord, you will be moving closer together. Don’t hide from God. He wants a relationship with you.

“To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life’” (Genesis 3:17).
Men listen to their wives. Really, they do! It took the devil himself to convince Eve to sin. All it took to convince Adam was a word from his wife. You can have a powerful influence on your husband with your words. Just make sure that you use that influence for good, and not for evil. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).

“A wife of noble character is her husband's crown…” (Proverbs 12:4).

Disclaimer: The following letter is for currently married men. It is not intended to beat up on "once-married" men. "Planning to be married one-day" men should read this too though.

Dear Husband,

On your wedding day you said “I promise to love you” or something to that effect. You made that promise to God and you made it to your wife.

It is common in Hollywood and sadly even in life for people to treat love like it is a force of its own. “I just don’t love you anymore” people say, as though they have no control over the matter. But love is not some sort of impersonal force, like wind or fate, over which you have no control. Why would we be commanded to love others if we had no choice in the matter? (See I Cor 13 to learn that love is defined by action and attitude.)

You do have the power to decide whether you love your wife or not. At least you believed you had that power when you promised to love her. Men love power. We love power tools and the more powerful the tool, the more we love it, whether we need it or not. We love powerful engines and the powerful noise they make. We want to be strong. We want to be powerful. We want to have the power over our own destiny, our own time, our own space and we resent it when we don’t.

So why is it that men are so quick to abdicate their power to love their wives? How hypocritical to think you are so manly and powerful that you could fend off a burglar or kill a rattlesnake, but you are impotent against your own feelings. My dad used to ask me this, "Are you a man or a mouse?" Well, man up. Your father taught you that a man’s word was his bond. Keep your promise.

“When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, "My vow was a mistake" (Ecclesiastes 5:4-6).

It doesn’t much matter if you made a mistake or not. It doesn’t much matter if you married the “right” person or not. You are married now and you made a promise. Keep it.

Here’s the good news. Keeping your wedding vows does not merely mean “stay married.” The promise you made was to love your wife. That’s a good thing. God intends for you to you enjoy your marriage. “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love” (Ecclesiastes 9:9). If you read the above paragraphs, you know that not enjoying life with your wife is not intended to be an excuse for an exit from the marriage. Rather it is a challenge issued to you. An opportunity. Are you going to get up and do whatever it takes, as far as it depends on you to enjoy your life with your wife? You have power. What are you going to do with it?

Stay content with your wife. Don’t go looking to be satisfied anywhere else. On specifically this subject the Bible says, “Drink water from your own cistern…may your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth….may you ever be captivated by her love” (Proverbs 5:15, 18, 19). (For those of you who find your eyes, mind, heart or body straying, please go read Proverbs 5. Now. Please. Read it twice. Meditate and linger over each and every verse of the entire chapter. And then pray harder than you've ever prayed before.)

Treasure and cherish your wife. She is a gift from God. “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD” (Proverbs 18:22). Be a good steward of the gift you have been given. You know there's another word for favor...GRACE. Go home tonight, look at your wife, and remind yourself that it is God's grace that she is there at all.

Husbands, Love Your Wives.

. . . provide the millionth reason why my wife is awesome.

Behold:

"Should I pick you up some wings on the way home?"

Thank you, Jesus, for this beautiful woman and her way with words.

Funny, funny.



Was preaching on How to Have Sex to the Glory of God last weekend at Element, and we showed this clip for some laughs.

Desire, that is.

Hoo boy.

Is Being a Stay-at-Home Dad a Sin? (Part 2)

My latest at SearchWarp:

Is Being a Stay-at-Home Dad a Sin? (Part 1)

This coming Wednesday, my better half and I will have been married for twenty years.

I'm so blessed. I'm blessed to have been married to my best friend for two decades, and to enjoy a love that continues to grow and deepen as time passes. I've learned as I've observed over the past twenty years that not everyone gets to enjoy this in their marriage. I'm so thankful to the Lord who brought us together; two people, different in so many ways (if you know us you'll understand that) but so well matched!

On Saturday we held an intimate vow renewal/celebration ceremony with some close friends and family. It couldn't have been any more perfect; the venue was in the beautiful home of our friends Shawn and Kevin, our pastor led the ceremony, and our friends Meredith, Shawn and Kristi provided the music, and what a beautiful job they did. Our boys escorted Jill down the aisle to the song, "Love will be our home", which was the recessional song at our wedding. I stood up front, holding hands with our daughters, to receive Jill. She was crying as she walked the aisle, just like she was at our wedding (and she swears they are tears of joy, really :-).

During the stating of the vows, the only person I could see was Jill. I know, I know, this post is getting dangerously close to shmaltz-overload, but that's how it was. I was lost in her eyes.

The vows, which this time included vows regarding parenthood, had a different "feel" than they did at our wedding. Deeper. More momentous. I think it's because we've been striving to live our wedding vows these two decades. It's one thing to sing "Household of Faith" at your wedding. It's quite another to actually work to build a household of faith over the years. We've been through two decades trying to do that, living in both great joy and, at times, deep pain. We became parents, which is the greatest experience we've ever had. A great blessing from the Lord, punctuated by moments of extreme terror!

I wouldn't trade any of it. We've learned how much we need the Lord. You've never prayed like you'll pray when your children are going through something hard. And you can never pray enough. But to be able to fight the battles of life with a partner and best friend who stands right alongside you, united in purpose with you, is golden. Gold with diamonds. Priceless.

Jill and I both are fallen humans, saved by grace. We're far from perfect. We strive but fall far short of what God means us to be. But we're so blessed by Him. You will hear people talk about what hard work marriage is. And it is, at times, but I can honestly say that being married to Jill hasn't been hard at all. Lord God, thank You, it's been awesome.

We're currently on a three day getaway, just enjoying time together.

Thanks for twenty great years, sweetie. Lord willing, there are many more ahead of us.

"He told me that he wanted a wife who turned heads, and I don't turn heads anymore."

"He thinks I'm fat."

"He's depressed, because he knows I'll never look like the younger girls he works out with."

These are all quotes I or my wife have heard recently from Christian women, talking about their Christian husbands (or ex-husbands, if they've been abandoned).

It's just more evidence of the infantilism and narcissism that exists in our culture. It's a weeping shame that guys in the church share in it.

I have a lot to say about this, but I'd rather just get straight to the point, since an attempt to write many words would probably just explode into a white-hot rant, and no one needs to read that.

Men, this thinking that our wives are here to be trophies for us in our middle age is a lie that stinks to high heaven. The idea that our spouse has to continue to look the way she did when she was twenty one or she's "letting us down" or "not keeping up her end of the marriage" is a lie from the pit of hell.

It's backwards.

Sure, married people should, out of love for each other, do what they can to look nice for their spouse. Losing weight, staying healthy, dolling yourself up, it's all good.

But, in the final analysis, there's really only one kind of beauty that matters. And, frankly, from a Biblical perspective, it isn't the kind of beauty that our wives should have to struggle and strive to maintain for us. It's the kind of beauty that we build into them if we're doing what Christ has called us to do.

Did you catch that?

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

- Ephesians 5:25-28 [emphasis mine]

I just saw this classified ad:

WANTS TO BUY
An AK-47 for wife, in 7.62x39. Must be in excellent working order with no modifications to trigger and in descent appearance. No SKS models. Surprise for wife, please do not discuss it with her.

That's Texas.

Unfortunately, it was a Proverbs 21:9 wife:

When most people want out of a marriage, they separate or file for divorce. But a San Antonio man took a unique approach.

According to police, Danny Joe Herrera confessed to robbing a Northwest Side sporting goods store with a fake gun Thursday evening because he was tired of his wife and wanted to go back to jail.

Happy anniversary, baby.
I love you madly.

All the talk about finding the right mate below got me wondering.

I met my wife on a blind date. We connected right away and, with all our ups and downs, haven't been apart since then. But we're not very much alike. I wanted someone who had totally different strengths and weaknesses than I did, so we could pick each other up, nudge each other, and help each other stretch and grow.

Which makes me chuckle when I see things like eharmony.com, and they show a couples where the key to their relationship is that she's a girl who loves football, just like he does. They fit together so well because they've found someone just like them. Some commonality in marriage is important, of course, but I wonder if these sites encourage the misperception that successful relationships are necessarily built upon such identity of interests and dispositions.

I'm no psychologist, and I don't want to presume to criticize their methods without experiencing what they do or seeing the inner logic of their methods. But I saw an apt parody a while back on Saturday Night Live, mocking the eharmony commercials with a spoof entitled "Meharmony.com." Guaranteeing to find you someone who is your exact genetic match, but of the opposite sex.

So I wonder: How many of you out there who have found someone, found what you thought you were looking for?

Do you think, if both your profiles had been plugged into eharmony.com or some other matchup site, you would ever have come up as prime candiates for lifelong wedded bliss?

Ten years ago today I married the love of my life. What a blessing and a medium of God's grace Becky has been to me.

I can't imagine doing life with anyone else. Becky is so great, so incredible, so beautiful, she's in a class of her own. She always has been, still is, and always will be all that I could ever want or need. Every day I am only awed by her more.

Happy tenth anniversary, baby.

Amy's Calvinist love story.

The Jollyblogger finds another gem, this time from one of my favorite writers, Gary Thomas (by way of Carolyn McCulley).

From Thomas' Crosswalk article "The Sin of Marital Dissatisfaction":

Whenever marital dissatisfaction rears its head in my marriage -- as it does in virtually every marriage -- I simply check my focus. The times that I am happiest and most fulfilled in my marriage are the times when I am intent on drawing meaning and fulfillment from becoming a better husband rather than from demanding a "better" wife. If you're a Christian, the reality is that, biblically speaking, you can't swap your spouse for someone else. But you can change yourself. And that change can bring the fulfillment that you mistakenly believe is found only by changing partners. In one sense, it's comical: Yes, we need a changed partner, but the partner that needs to change is not our spouse, it's us! I don't know why this works. I don't know how you can be unsatisfied maritally, and then offer yourself to God to bring about change in your life and suddenly find yourself more satisfied with the same spouse. I don't why this works, only that it does work. It takes time, and by time I mean maybe years. But if your heart is driven by the desire to draw near to Jesus, you find joy by becoming like Jesus. You'll never find joy by doing something that offends Jesus -- such as instigating a divorce or an affair.

Good and challenging stuff.

Be sure to read the follow-up thoughts from both David and Carolyn.

Btw, ministers, I think Gary Thomas's Sacred Marriage would make great required reading in pre-marital counseling. Might want to check it out.

Another gem overheard at the Boneheads:

Why is it that the woman always gets to decide who gets to sleep where for stupid and arbitrary reasons? When a man says "I told you not to cook vegetarian dinners. You get to sleep on the couch tonight," that's abuse. When the woman does the same thing because the man didn't want to pay $3000 for a new armchair, that's a part of marriage we're supposed to just accept.

It's a good question, but I can tell you why a man would never kick his wife out of the bed, no matter how angry he is with her. It's because, even if they've had a terrible fight and are mad as heck at each other, the whole time they're laying there, the man is thinking there's still the possibility of sex.

;-)