>>>I kind of think we're talking in circles now. Ultimately, the agreement must be resolved by you. As you said in another post, if your Elders disagreed with you, you'd ask her forgiveness, but if they agreed with you, you would follow Matthew 18, which to me means you'd bring the force of the church to bear on her, and if she still disagrees, then what? She is left as a heathen?
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>>Yes - if after the church discipline process is completed and she has still not repented then she would be treated as an unbeliever.
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>>>The bottom line here, at least for me, Howard, is that she is not finally responsible to make her own decisions. She is a human being. To me that means she has a right and a responsibility to decide her own life for herself.
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>>Yes - she has a right and responsibility to decide her own life for herself. She understands what the marraige relationship is supposed to be BEFORE she enters into it. She made a decision at that time to submit to her LOVING husband's leadership. She then has a responsibility to live that out as best she can.
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>Ok, then just for the sake of argument, suppose the husband later turns out to not be so 'loving', and of course, we've seen this time and time again. Is she still bound to be submissive?

It depends...

This is where belonging to a good church comes in...In my church, for example, I am held accountable by my Elders to be loving towards my wife. If she or anyone else ever reports something to the contrary, I will be contacted by an Elder and will be given Biblical counsel. If I an unrepentant, I will be subject to church discipline and at some point treated as an unbeliever.

If I do repent, then she is still bound and the marraige relationship moves forward as it should - with a loving husband.

The Bible only allows for divorce on the grounds of adultery or abandonment of an unbelieving spouse (I think that's the second one - not 100% sure the spouse has to be unbelieving.) Once I go through the entire church discipline process and am determined to be an unbeliever, I think she would be free to divorce me and remove herself from my leadership.