I enjoyed Kairos' analogy of male marital headship to military command.
"Every military officer is trained from the first never to give an order that won’t be obeyed, and this is the kind of obedience a husband must start from. A good officer rarely needs to give direct orders as such. He and his troops are in accord, and when they are not, the troops trust the officer because he has earned the trust—in some sense, the troops and the officer “love and honor” one another. A good officer listens to his troops, and learns when they need to be led and when they need to be pushed. He finds compensations for his own limitations within the body he leads, so that the sum of strengths is truly greater than the individual parts. On the other hand, tyrannical officers cause mutinies, and tyrannical husbands do too.

If we are to continue the military metaphor, we should think of a wife as not so much “the troops” as an officer of the same grade, only with slightly less seniority. A senior colonel may tyrannize a junior lieutenant with little fear . That same colonel would be wise to treat a junior colonel with more respect and deference—even when giving orders—for the junior colonel may be a general in charge of the senior one at a moment’s notice.

Thus, for a husband, “orders,” if given at all, are given with due respect and deference, with a realization that it is greatly to be regretted that the decision had to be arrived at in such a manner, and in the firm hope that mutual understanding will be soon enough restored that such unfortunate circumstances will not arise again. For a wife, the realization ought to be that she has tremendous power to influence decisions in advance, that her duty to obey is tempered by her duty to solve problems without pressing the issue of who is subordinate to whom. After any such occurrence, both parties must make whole the rift, that personal rivalry not affect the good of the whole."