TLDR ; Everyone holds responsibilities and privileges. Traditionally a husband had high responsibilities and high privileges. Now society is eroding a husband's privileges without changing his responsibilities, leading to an imbalance.

---

Every authority structure has responsibilities and privileges. In authority structures that people would call just, one's responsibilities and privileges rise and fall together. For example, a CEO has a lot of responsibility (answer to shareholders, the well-being of many people depend on the success of the company he/she is running), but with those responsibilities come a host of privileges (can hire/promote/fire, higher pay, status from being CEO). Whenever those are imbalanced, something is wrong. Example of people with low responsibilities but high privilege are incompetent executives, the deadbeat dad, the adult son in his mom's basement playing games and masturbating every day. Examples of people with high responsibilities but low privileges are overworked employees, single moms, and, in the worst case, slaves. Here's a handle 2x2 matrix summarizing the classifications:

​

||Low responsibilities|High responsibilities| |:-|:-|:-| |Low privileges|Babies|Overworked employees, single moms, slaves| |High privileges|Incompetent executives, deadbeat dad, adult son that's living in parent's basement|CEOs, Senators, leaders|

I find that in the West today, married men fall in to the top right box: a high responsibilities but low privileges. Historically, married men had both a lot of responsibilities and privileges:

  • Responsibilities: Provide, protect, sacrifice.
  • Privileges: Better sex, respect and encouragement from wife, being the head of the household (which comes with decision-making authority)

Today, those responsibilities haven't changed, but the husband's privileges have eroded:

  • Better sex - In 1 Cor 7, Paul lays out a balance between the husband's body and the wife's body. But today's society skews a wife's body over the husband's body. We see this most prevalent in the #MeToo movement, where consent and regret are blurred. There are numerous cases where a woman's regret of a sexual encounter will cause her to press rape charges. Even if those charges are unfounded, it still does huge reputational damage to the man. As for men, they get raped but people find it hard to believe. This trend worries me because I suspect it will affect married couple's sexual dynamics by placing much more authority in the wife's hand regarding sex than what Paul commands.
  • Respect and encouragement from wife -  Scripture tells us that disrespect and discouragement from the wife is like a leaking roof, and it is better to stand in the corner of your roof than to endure such verbal torture. But today's women don't look to encourage their men. Instead, they see men as overly-privileged due to beliefs in things such as the gender pay gap and patriarchal oppression. This can lead women to instead completely discredit men and their perspectives "man-splaining". Any achievement a man makes can be seen as exploiting the patriarchal system, while any failure a man makes causes him to be less of a man, cause the wife the lose respect, and, in the worst cases, lead to divorce. 
  • Being the head of the household - This one needs little explanation. The prevalence of "happy wife, happy life" and "she wears the pants in the relationship" clearly demonstrate who society deems should be the head of the household: the wife. 

In addition, there is added risk today, which comes in the form of divorce: loss of a husband's children and his wealth. MGTOWs go in depth about the imbalance in divorce courts so I won't go into that here.

​

I realize I demonstrate in these examples the dynamics between men and women at large, instead of using only examples between a husband and wife. I still think the examples are valuable though because the way that men and women treat each other in the broader society probably both informs husband's of current dynamics and is a leading indicator of what further erosion awaits husbands in the future.