Growing up requires discipline. Now seriously: How much discipline does it take to do laundry or load a dishwasher...yet he has claimed that he can't get it together enough to do simple household tasks. And you have suggested that my advice is masochistic.
The point is, the man needs to discipline himself if he wants to mature. The quickest way to do it is to do the things he doesn't know how to do, or doesn't want to do, or is constantly forgetting to do.
You would have him disregard this advice. To what end? Resentment? Contention? Hostility? Divorce?
If he matures he has a shot at keeping his marriage together. If he doesn't, he thinks it'll all go down the drain. All of this "tell her where to get off" business will do no good, because he isn't speaking from a position of strength. He needs some bargaining chips, and his job won't cut it here. He's supposed to work. If he leads an exemplary life, however, or if he merely begins to approach the habits of an exemplar, his wife will be forced to consider his maturing process, and she'll have relatively little about which to complain, and she'll realize that she is the one who isn't measuring up.
And all he has done is set an example. Yet you'd have him hold to standards he doesn't possess, stick to guns he doesn't own, remain an emotional adolescent.
Is this projection on your part?
Since when is meeting your wife's demands the definition of growing up?
If this guy is lacking maturity, it's in that he hasn't yet learned women are not "right" by definition, and he'll never learn that by listening to women or men who are "whipped" by them.