In How to Exasperate Your Wife by Doug Wilson, you’ll find nine secrets to help you peeve, rankle, and rile your wife like never before.
What’s that?
You’re already good at annoying your wife? You’d like some biblical principles for building a happy marriage and family life? Well, this book has you covered there too.
With chapters on honor, wisdom, romance, and more, How to Exasperate Your Wife will give you the nuts-and-bolts advice you need to lead your family well.
Marriage is not a vending machine, and love is not two quarters to put into it. It’s a manner of life, not an exchange of commodities.
So, what does it look like when a man loves a woman? Pastor Douglas Wilson answers that question and more in, How to Exasperate Your Wife and Other Short Essays for Men.
Scripture calls a man to love his wife “as Christ loved the church.” Most people take that to mean that since Christ loved the church a lot, men should love their wives a lot. But what does the story of Christ tell us about how you should love your wife?
Wisdom is a woman:
Understand your wife as you pursue Wisdom, who is a woman (Proverbs).
The Crown of her Husband:
Scripture says your wife is your crown and glory.
The Wife as Ruler:
Wives are praised as despots of the home (Timothy).
An Honored Guest:
When does God tell men to get out of their wives’ way.
Romance and the Story:
You’re not called to love your wife “a lot”. Scripture calls a man to love his wife "as Christ loved the church", which looks like a story of glad sacrifice.
When a Man Loves a Woman:
A better way to earn respect instead of pitifully demanding it.
How do you take responsibility for your home without being a big jerk? What do the Ten Commandments say about marriage? Can a man be both strong and tender? How?
The Ten Commandments in Marriage:
What the ten commandments really look like in the context of marriage.
Try a Little Tenderness:
How to be hard for your wife and not towards your wife, avoiding the tyranny of being soft and abdicating leadership.
Two by Six: How husbands are like houses with 2x6s.
Warrior Wuss: What happens when we let women fight our battles for us.
A Home in the Right Key: Getting rid of double standards in the home where your sin is treated harshly but her sins get grace, and vice versa.
How to Exasperate Your Wife: Using your voice, her neglect of career opportunities, $50/month allowances, meal critiques, homeschool decisions, her bodyweight, TV schedules, and grins that guarantee you a sexual el dorado 100% of the time.
Issues about sex, like grapes, come in bunches. How are you killing lust, and not merely "struggling" against it? What other sins are feeding it, like discontent and overreactions to your wife's overreactions? And what does God's plan for sex in the resurrection do to our marriages today?
Seven Effective Strategies for Dealing with Lust:
Strategies to stop feeding the discontent that will later feed adultery.
Of His Flesh and of His Bones:
What it really means that you are both one flesh, so you should love her as yourself.
Sexual Glory: How wives are a glory and a covering to their husbands.
Sexual Grumbling:
Quit the complaints of the adulterer, the fool, and the coward that are ruining the intoxicating sex Solomon says wise men have (Prov. 5:19).
Nuisance Lust:
The right way to lighten up about lust before it gets really bad.
Sex in Heaven?
How there can be no sex in heaven and yet our sex gets an upgrade.
More on Sex in Heaven: In case this preview left you sexually frustrated, here are more reasons on how God will not raise us from the dead, male and female, in order to rip us off.
Scripture calls a man to love his wife “as Christ loved the church.” Most people take that to mean that since Christ loved the church a lot, men should love their wives a lot. But what does the story of Christ tell us about how you should love your wife?
Wisdom is a woman:
Understand your wife as you pursue Wisdom, who is a woman (Proverbs).
The Crown of her Husband:
Scripture says your wife is your crown and glory.
The Wife as Ruler:
Wives are praised as despots of the home (Timothy).
An Honored Guest:
When does God tell men to get out of their wives’ way.
Romance and the Story:
You’re not called to love your wife “a lot”. Scripture calls a man to love his wife "as Christ loved the church", which looks like a story of glad sacrifice.
When a Man Loves a Woman:
A better way to earn respect instead of pitifully demanding it.
How do you take responsibility for your home without being a big jerk? What do the Ten Commandments say about marriage? Can a man be both strong and tender? How?
The Ten Commandments in Marriage:
What the ten commandments really look like in the context of marriage.
Try a Little Tenderness:
How to be hard for your wife and not towards your wife, avoiding the tyranny of being soft and abdicating leadership.
Two by Six: How husbands are like houses with 2x6s.
Warrior Wuss: What happens when we let women fight our battles for us.
A Home in the Right Key: Getting rid of double standards in the home where your sin is treated harshly but her sins get grace, and vice versa.
How to Exasperate Your Wife: Using your voice, her neglect of career opportunities, $50/month allowances, meal critiques, homeschool decisions, her bodyweight, TV schedules, and grins that guarantee you a sexual el dorado 100% of the time.
Issues about sex, like grapes, come in bunches. How are you killing lust, and not merely "struggling" against it? What other sins are feeding it, like discontent and overreactions to your wife's overreactions? And what does God's plan for sex in the resurrection do to our marriages today?
Seven Effective Strategies for Dealing with Lust:
Strategies to stop feeding the discontent that will later feed adultery.
Of His Flesh and of His Bones:
What it really means that you are both one flesh, so you should love her as yourself.
Sexual Glory: How wives are a glory and a covering to their husbands.
Sexual Grumbling:
Quit the complaints of the adulterer, the fool, and the coward that are ruining the intoxicating sex Solomon says wise men have (Prov. 5:19).
Nuisance Lust:
The right way to lighten up about lust before it gets really bad.
Sex in Heaven?
How there can be no sex in heaven and yet our sex gets an upgrade.
More on Sex in Heaven: In case this preview left you sexually frustrated, here are more reasons on how God will not raise us from the dead, male and female, in order to rip us off.
Both realistic and insightful, How to Exasperate Your Wife and Other Short Essays for Men points husbands (and wives) towards a passionate married love that is particular, sacrificial, sacramental, and muy caliente.
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This is wonderfully enjoyable to read, easy to digest, but savory enough to chew long on.
I didn't want to finish it. I need to live out these truths.
A short, great book for men who have a twisted view of headship, which means most of us.
Exegetical excellence and metaphorical flavor combine to make the kind of observations and suggestions only obtained through hours of time with miserable marriages.
All of his marriage and family content is excellent, clear, and unapologetic. His wisdom is Scripture-soaked and comes from a context of years of counseling.
Great stuff here. Short, pithy, provocative, and to the point. Some of Pastor Wilson’s best insights to husbands in one spot.
Full of biblical horse-sense, the kind of wisdom that comes from experience, and real helpful advice.
I went in expecting a lot of rehash but this was full of fresh insights and new angles. A tremendous amount of wisdom to wither masculinist and effeminate killers of husbandry.
