The Scriptures are clear, if taken in context. Ephesians 5 leaves little room for doubt:
22 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
"be subject in everything" as the Church is to Christ. That leaves absolutely NO room for eyerolling, belittling, degrading, domineering, nagging, inflicting of personal misery, or other forms of contemptuous conduct. Modern American popular culture, for the most part, completely inverts this ... encouraging women to trample the men in their lives.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Love your wife as Christ loves the Church? Really? He gave Himself up to the most appalling death for the Church. What more is their to say? The love of a husband for his wife, of a father for his children, is necessarily self-sacrificial. Again, modern American popular culture inverts this, encouraging men to be self-centered, materialistic, and infantile.
In the modern popular culture model, husband and wife are at odds with each other, tearing each other down in pursuit of a vain, misbegotten and mistaken notion of self interest. In the Biblical model, husband and wife are united in purpose, the one supporting and the other leading as they carry out God's mission for them.
29 For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church; 33 however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Most men are perfectly ok with the “sacrificial” death of themselves to save their wife. However, the majority of us are not called to do that. We are called to give ourselves up in little ways - not eat that fourth slice of pizza; not drink to excess, and if you can’t do that, don’t drink; not smoke; etc. That’s the stuff that harder to deal with.
And if ones wife has decided for the ‘no-sex’ thing, and the respect has dropped to near zero, the impact to a man’s soul is crushing. The devil rejoices in that marriage.
/speaking from experience