Click here to read How to Handle a Difficult Wife: Part One.

Click here to read How to Handle a Difficult Wife: Part Two.

I once heard a preacher say that whatever God repeats is something he wants us to pay real attention to. This is a very common teaching technique.

Every teacher knows that much of what they say will not be retained by the person they are speaking to, so something which makes sense to do in every sermon, or every Bible study, or every teaching opportunity, is to make sure most of what you say reinforces the message you want to stick in people’s minds. So, when the Bible repeats something, you know that it wants us to pay attention.

We see this in the book of Proverbs, and especially on the topic of the dangerous, or contentious woman. If you read Proverbs 1-9 you will see that there is losts of advice for a young man to protect himself from the bad woman. For example, in Proverbs 7 we read,

“My son, keep my words,
And treasure my commands within you.
Keep my commands and live,
And my law as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your nearest kin,
That they may keep you from the immoral woman,
From the seductress who flatters with her words.”

It is important to teach our young men how to be respectful to young women, how to treat younger women as sisters, as Paul the Apostle says, and to guard their sexual desires until marriage. This is vital. But it needs to be noted that the Bible spends more time warning young men about the dangerous harlot than many modern Christians probably realise.

Today, we are trained to think of men as the sexually obsessed, and the woman as the sexual object. We have been taught this by movies and other media. But the reality is far more complicated. There are many women who take delight in weaponising their sexuality to corrupt or even destroy men.

It is true that a lot of women in the porn industry are there because they have been sexually groomed from a young age or even trafficked. This is a reality. But OnlyFans shows what happens when you create an almost free market and tell people to gather a fanbase with whatever assets they have. What happens is that women will turn that site into a porn star’s dream, direct access to their simps whom they can exploit at will.

In fact, part of how OnlyFans markets itself is as a Feminist-driven organization:

“As it’s grown, OnlyFans has sought to use explicit content – its seemingly bottomless source of revenue – as a springboard to greater scale, positioning itself as a tech pioneer with a place among social media giants such as Instagram and X. Key to that effort is making porn more socially acceptable and distancing the company from the abuses often associated with the industry.

The public face of OnlyFans is CEO Keily Blair, an Irish lawyer and self-described feminist and “safety nerd” promoted to the top job in 2023. In public appearances, Blair, 42, presents the platform as lucrative and empowering, particularly for women, and often mentions her two daughters. “I want them to have a good online life,” she told delegates at a UK child-protection conference in 2023. “I want the same for your kids.”

There is often discussion in conservative and Christian circles that one of the reasons that porn is so evil is because it exploits women, and we have to acknowledge that this does happen. But less often is the other prominent side of the problem with porn talked about: that a lot of women use it to exploit men, particularly younger men.

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This discussion is changing; the language of simps is used to describe these men now, because many young men are becoming increasingly aware of how they are exploited by porn. Many now know that they are being exploited for their money, their time, their energy, and their devotion. They are waking up to this reality.

When we read Proverbs 7, we should immediately think of this kind of woman, a woman who knows how to exploit the simple-minded.

“For at the window of my house
I looked through my lattice,
And saw among the simple,
I perceived among the youths,
A young man devoid of understanding,
Passing along the street near her corner;
And he took the path to her house
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night.
And there a woman met him,
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.
She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home” (Prov. 7:6-11).

Society is replete with these kinds of dangerous women, and many young men are sent into their embrace like lambs to the slaughter. In fact, in verses 21-22 of Proverbs 7, Solomon uses almost this exact imagery to describe the effect of these women on young men.

But we should not only think of the adulterous woman when we read this passage, or the porn star, even though this certainly should be our primary application. We should also think of the “loud and rebellious” woman who uses her sexuality to trap a man in marriage and then rule over him.

There is a stereotype of marriage, and just relationships in general, that a woman will use her sexuality to trap a man in a committed relationship and once she has achieved her goal, then she will drip-feed sexual attention as a means of control.

This stereotype exists precisely because it does happen often. But we should not see this as a stereotype of marriage as a whole, even though that is how people do see it; we should, rather, see it as a stereotype of marriage with the difficult woman. The difficult woman uses her sexuality to entrap a man and then to rule over him.

There are many men who live in this sort of arrangement, and they are relatively OK with it. In fact, not only are they ok with it, from their perspective it “just is what it is.” In their view, this is what marriage is. After all, the common stereotype has told them that. As the joke often goes in sitcoms, “When was the last time you had sex?” “Are you kidding, I am married!” is the reply.

If you watch shows like Everybody Loves Raymond from the late 90s, you will see how the media presented marriage as a relationship where a man longingly desires sexual attention, and it is drip-fed to him by his wife when he has done the right thing and earned it. Shows like this should be seen less as a description of reality and more as an attempt to shape reality. But whichever way you perceive it, there is this understanding in culture that marriage is, in general, a sexual wasteland.

Why?

Because of this idea that a woman will use sexuality to entrap a man into a relationship. And the truth is that the difficult woman will do this. Many men have experienced this.

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This is why this discussion of Proverbs 7 is so important for this third article in our series about How to Handle a Difficult Wife. Solomon is warning men to watch out for that woman. To watch out for the kind of woman who will use their sexuality to entrap you. To watch out for the adulterous woman who says,

“Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day” (Prov. 7:18-20).

To watch out for the woman who will sell you her body online and trap you into a simping relationship. To watch out for the woman who will honeytrap you into a relationship.

There is a reason why the Bible commands that young men and women avoid sex before marriage. This is to protect them both from the dangers of promiscuity. The problem is that our modern culture is set up to encourage most young people, even Christians, into exploring before cleaving. This sets up many young women to be used by men of a reasonably high status for their temporary enjoyment, and it sets up many young men to find themselves being trapped by the very kind of woman that Solomon warns about. The Bible’s advice is not prudish, but it is prudent.

What is the difference, you ask?

Well, ‘prudish’ is a slang term for someone who is “easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity…or…excessively concerned with sexual propriety…” But can you call a book wherein God commands a prophet to walk around naked, another prophet to marry a prostitute, and which uses the words “whore”, “harlot”, or “prostitute”, in hundreds of references “easily shocked by matters relating to sex”? Of course not.

God is all-seeing, which means he has seen it all, and his word speaks about these things without embarrassment so that we can be led in the right direction and away from certain danger, which is what prudence refers to. A prudent person is someone who shows care and thoughtfulness for the future.

If you allow yourself to become trained to be a simp, to be ensnared by the porn star, then you are training yourself to be exposed by the harlot to this kind of weakness with women. So, to prevent this, you need to be “master of your own domain.” Rather than simp after the “loud and rebellious” woman, you need to shun her from your life.

You should aim to be married at a young age, so you can build as much of your life with your wife together as possible. But it is better to take your time to master your own domain, so that when you are searching for a woman, you are clear-headed, and not in as much danger of being the lifelong simp that so many men become.

Porn should not just be avoided because it is immoral. Though that should be reason enough. It should also be avoided because it weakens your ability to be the clear-headed, respectable man that a woman will want to submit herself to for life, and live under your frame. A man who can control himself and not be walked all over.

Why do you think that the self-proclaimed feminist CEO of OnlyFans describes the site as “lucrative and empowering” particularly for women? Because it trains young men to become lifelong simps. It trains them to think that living under the thumb of a contentious woman is what marriage is.

Why do you think the Rolling Stones is concerned that men shunning porn is a right-wing phenomenon?

Because avoiding the trappings of porn and masturbation helps men break out from under the spell of what could turn them into lifelong simps. A man who diminishes himself in this way is much more likely to fall into a relationship with a woman who uses sex to draw him in and then use it to dominate him for life.

When feminists and progressives basically confirm what Solomon says, but from the opposite direction, you should really listen to him.

But many people reading this will be thinking, “How does this help me with my difficult wife? I am already living in this kind of situation.” You are right; my article here is more preventative than directed at transforming an already broken marriage. The correlation between a woman who constantly berates her husband and one who has turned down the sexual tap over time is very high. So, what is your recourse?

Well, remember, look at what Solomon repeats and therein you will find wisdom. In Proverbs 21:9, Solomon says this, “Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.”

Just in case the message has not landed, he says again in Proverbs 21:19, “Better to dwell in the wilderness, Than with a contentious and angry woman.”

And for those who are particularly hard of hearing, he again says in Proverbs 25:24, “It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.”

Three times Solomon writes the same thing. He slightly changes the illustration, but he repeats the same principle three times. If your marriage has descended from a relationship of mutual love and regular affection initiated and reciprocated on both sides, into a situation where the wife is constantly at you and has nothing but contempt for you, then you need to be willing to live anywhere but with her.

In fact, many men find that when they make this decision, that is often when things start to turn around. Hence, being willing to shun the contentious woman and live somewhere else, ironically, is one of the more effective ways of reigning in the contentious woman.

Of course, this is not guaranteed to be successful and is often not. Solomon speaks more in principles than in promises. Some marriages are just too far gone, even he recognizes this, “A continual dripping on a very rainy day And a contentious woman are alike; Whoever restrains her restrains the wind, And grasps oil with his right hand” (Prov. 27:15). Sometimes you have failed to assert yourself for too long, or worse, you have made so many mistakes in your marriage that she cannot bring herself back into fellowship with you because all love and marital duty has been drained and the affection that was once there is long gone.

But even if it does not work, Solomon’s words are wise. Some people will say you have to stay and serve her, and live like roommates for life, even though what made your relationship a marriage is functionally dead. And yet Solomon says the opposite. Why?

Because the Bible has an insight into human nature that often those of us who follow its ways do not; until we have seen it applied properly, at least. I think behind many, not all, but many contentious and unruly women is fear. Sometimes it is not this; it is just a bad woman.

But remember, I said in my first piece in this series that any woman can become the bad or difficult wife if her husband sows enough negativity. Some women react to this by becoming the difficult wife. It is not what they want to be, it is not what they intended to be, and driving the man away is not their end goal. Sometimes seeing the consequences of her speaking to her husband this way, as he plans to live in his tent somewhere else, will bring her to repentance.

So, sometimes, to save your marriage, you have to be willing to shun it. It sounds counterintuitive. But I think this is at least part of what Solomon’s advice points to, and I have seen this applied in this way, and I have seen it turn things around.

As I said, this is not a guarantee. But then in this fallen world you can do everything right and still things can go wrong. Such is living on this side of paradise…

Till next time, God bless you.

“After I began to get dressed, I’d realized that I’d done it. I’d just had sex like a man. I left feeling powerful, potent, and incredibly alive. I felt like I owned this city—nothing and no one could get in my way.”
— Carrie Bradshaw (Season 1, Episode 3: “Bay of Married Pigs” Sex and the City)

The television show Sex in the City popularises the cultural idea that sex is detached from commitment. Ideas have consequences, and this view has had significant legal and relational consequences.

Sex and the City was a television series that ran through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Across 94 episodes, it followed the lives of career-minded women in New York as they pursued career and sexual freedom. Sex and the City was a biographical retelling of Candace Bushnell’s relationship journey (disguised so her parents would not realise that it was her personal story).

The series promoted an idea that sex was a transactional encounter between consenting adults. In decades to come, it formed the mindset behind apps such as Tinder, where sexual intimacy could be pursued with minimal expectation of permanence.

Sex, detached from covenant, consequence and commitment.

Over the last couple of weeks, the concept of transactional sex without consequences has been played out in every tabloid newspaper across Australia. Five footballers now referred to as the ‘Pullman Five’ invited ‘Exotic Dancers’ into their hotel room. Allegations of sexual assault have stemmed from that night, and the Pullman Five have been stood down for the remainder of the season. Pictures of the distraught fiancés and girlfriends of the Pullman Five soon followed.

In 2025 Lachie Neale admitted that he had an affair with his wife’s best friend. This week his shattered wife gave a tell-all podcast. Her now estranged best friend then gave her own response on a separate podcast show, thereby escalating the sad affair.

How much pain and grief have stemmed from liaisons of these young men who seemingly had it all. Private pain has had a public fallout, and the sexual consequences of five men have had consequences far beyond the short private moment of the liaison.

There is a dreadful fallout to the notion that sexual freedom is cost-free. Sex is not free.

I have seen that fallout closely in legal practice. Over the past nine years, I have represented abused girls, accused men and institutions affected by sexual offending, false allegations and relational breakdown.

One does not easily forget walking down to the cells to meet a young man whose sexual liaison has landed him in a police station. The terror in his eyes asks the same question each time: how did it come to this?

One does not forget sitting with a young woman who has been violated and is then required to recount her trauma to another person in a moment by moment analysis.

One does not forget the relief when an accused person proves before a jury that he did not commit an offence and was the subject of a false complaint.

One does not forget the stress and anxiety an institution suffers when a non-consensual sexual incident occurs on its premises.

One does not forget a sobbing wife standing in the lobby of your office having discovered that her husband had left her.

There is horrific fallout when sex is non-consensual, as there should be. But what has also staggered me is the significant fallout that can occur when consensual sex takes place outside its proper bounds, the commitment of a marriage relationship. Family law regularly encounters the wreckage of affairs, new relationships and broken trust. Parties spend enormous sums contesting property settlements or parenting arrangements driven often by the grief, humiliation and betrayal of a sexual affair.

There are relationships in which abuse makes separation necessary, and nothing in this essay should be read as minimising that reality.

The point of this article is narrower: our culture is often surprised by the depth of the fallout that follows sexual conduct, but it ought not be. Sex and commitment reveal that there is a moral reality in this world to which all are beholden.

Consider this thought experiment. If a man approaches a woman and puts his finger in her ear, he will be regarded as a creep or an idiot, a delinquent, but the incident will soon pass. But if a man approaches a woman and engages in a sexual act towards her, the consequences will almost inevitably be severe. If the act is non-consensual, criminal consequences will follow with certain jail time. If it is consensual, the consequences will still be profound: a marriage may end, relationships with children will be impacted, and families will be estranged and parties out of pocket tens of thousands of dollars.

Having sex like a man, i.e. having multiple relationships, simply does not work and culture knows this.

How much pain will society have to take before we realise that the message of Sex in the City was flawed?

The law has developed elaborate frameworks for dealing with the fallout of broken relationships. In Australia, the Family Law Act requires property settlements to be just and equitable, a principle confirmed by the High Court in Stanford v Stanford. In parenting matters, section 60CA of the Family Law Act provides that the best interests of the child are the paramount consideration. In England, a similar concern for fairness can be seen in White v White, where the Court discussed the “yardstick of equality” in financial division.

These doctrines are not merely technical rules. They are a cultural admission that intimate choices of two parties create obligations the law must later attempt to order, and it is complicated to unwrap this.

The very complexity of these legal principles challenges the notion that love is simply free. If sex were merely physical, recreational or transactional, the law would not need to devote so much energy to untangling its consequences as it presently does.

Family law, criminal law and institutional liability all testify, in different ways, that sex is never only private.

Private acts have public consequences.

Sex has consequences because it is the most intimate of acts. Sex is imbued with moral meaning.

The grief on the face of the betrayed spouse tells us as much.

The guilt on the face of the unfaithful partner tells us as much

Sex is shaped by love and grounded in the commitment two people give to one another. It is therefore a moral act. Sex, therefore, carries a sense of permanence. Spouses and partners become the moral centre of public stories when sexual betrayal is exposed. As a society, we instinctively recognise that sexual betrayal is not morally neutral. We are not usually drawn to the cheater; we are drawn to the wronged party.

Christianity does not treat the body as disposable or the sexual act as morally weightless. It sees the human person as embodied, relational and accountable before God. That account may sound strange in a culture that prizes autonomy, but it explains why sexual decisions so often outlast the moment in which they are made.

I have spent too many hours in a professional context dealing with the fallout of misplaced sexual liaisons, and so I keep returning to the question: why? This article is borne of the fact that too many people in my nine years of practice have spent too much money because of one act that simply didn’t need to occur.

Sex is not unique to human beings, but the moral and relational consequences of illicit sex are uniquely human. Sexual misconduct can produce scandal, betrayal, litigation, estrangement and lasting grief.

The law can manage consequences, but it cannot finally explain why those consequences cut so deeply. A Christian understanding of the human person can. We live not in a moral vacuum, but in a moral universe in which sex touches the body, the conscience, the family, the community and, ultimately, the soul. That is why sexual betrayal wounds, why sexual abuse devastates, and why even consensual sex outside commitment can leave damage far beyond what the language of private choice is able to describe.

The cultural promise was that sex could be liberated from consequence. The legal record suggests otherwise. The Christian claim goes further: sex has consequences because sex has meaning, and its meaning is bound up with love, covenant and the eternal dignity of the human person.

That is why Sex in The City remains such a powerful cultural image. It promises freedom without permanence, intimacy without covenant and pleasure without moral cost.

Sex in its proper place tells a truer story. Sex belongs within a moral order that law can only partly perceive.

Sex reveals there is a moral order.

Embrace the moral order; stay committed to your partner. Grow old together. Stay married. You will save money on lawyers.