The following paragraph is from the Chief End for Which God Created the World 8 (Marriage). It is meant to give context.
We need to look at the big picture for a moment before we have a short look at some of the particulars. If we desire marriage for selfish and self-centered considerations, then we do not desire the glory of God and the true good of the other. Most marriage counseling appears to be done on a needs basis, that is, that one spouse is to meet the needs of the other. Other forms of counseling are more behavior oriented and verses are prescribed as behavior modifiers in much the same way as medical doctors prescribe medication. The one says meeting the needs of the other glorifies God and the second says that certain behavior glorifies God. But does it really do that? Do certain behaviors in and of themselves glorify God according to His terminal purpose for humanity and all of creation?
The fall and the following curse are vital to understanding Ephesians 5 and the chief end of God for marriage. Let us look at the curse that God placed on Eve after the fall. “To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). While women identify with the pain of childbirth, the rest of the curse is not seen as much. The first part of the woman’s curse (which Adam has a big part of the pain in) is that she will desire her husband. But that is a rather hidden part of the curse. To get a better handle on understanding this, listen to what God told Cain in Genesis 4:7: “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Using the same language, we can see that desire is to master and rule something. Sin desired Cain in the sense that it wanted to rule him and run the way he lived. Part of the curse is that the woman desires her husband and wants to rule over him.
The other side of the curse is that the man would respond to the woman’s desire to rule him by ruling over her. The same word is also used in Genesis 4:7 for what Cain was to do with sin. He was to master it and to rule over it. In other words, he was to harshly rule over sin and not let it have a foot in the door or a say in any matter. So the husband responds to the wife’s desire to rule over him with an iron fisted way of running things His way. What we see in this, therefore, is that both the man and the woman each desire to be his or her own god which is the lie of the evil one. It is this desire that we see in each human that is nothing but pride and selfishness and the desire to rule over the other. That is the desire to be god. The woman believed that she could be like God and in so doing desires to rule over the husband and to get her own way in everything. The husband responds with mastering or ruling over the woman in order to get his way. It becomes a battle of the gods in two people fighting for control.
Ephesians 5 sets out the reversal of the fall in Christ. It takes Christ to reverse that fall. Submission and love are pictures of how God works His character in people as well as shines His glory through them. The fall shows how selfishness and pride instead of love came to rule in the marriage. The fall shows how selfishness and pride instead of love and submission came to rule in the marriage. Christ shows how the fall is reversed by working in His people love and submission in the marriage. In other words, men do not love and women do not lovingly submit because of selfishness and pride. It takes the life of Christ in the man by the power of the Spirit to love the wife. It takes the life of Christ in the woman by the power of the Spirit to submit and love the husband. In other words, it takes the very outshining of the glory of God who is Christ to work these things in the hearts of men and women so that marriage would be what it was meant to be. Marriage was meant to be one means by which the glory of God would be in people and shine through them. It does not do that when pride and self are at work.
What should be seen in marriage is not Christian duty and Christian principles as such, but the very glory of God shining through people in marriage. Marriage was created not so much as a means to raise kids or to make people happy as such, but as a way that the glory of a triune God would shine through and be manifested. Men are to love and women are to submit as ways that God’s glory shines through them. That is, after all, why He created them.
God Loves... Himself 
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