Augustine believed that Christ says to women, “In so far as your husband behaves badly, don’t regard him as your head, but me.”

Let the husband imitate the wife in behaving well. That is Augustine giving husbands an instruction. Augustine is strongly urging husbands to imitate their wives’ righteous conduct.

Badly-behaved husbands seldom heed this instruction. Penalising badly-behaved husbands is something that is seldom done by the world, or by churches. Right up to the present, many husbands continue to get away with the kind of wrong-doing they were doing in Augustine’s time.

What follows are excerpts from a sermon by Augustine on the Ten Commandments, taken from St Augustine—A Male Chauvinist?, by Fr. Edmund Hill, OP. (bold emphasis added by me)

Don’t commit adultery behind your wives’ backs, because you don’t want your wives committing adultery behind your backs… You have no case at all when you try to excuse yourselves by saying, ‘I don’t go with someone else’s wife, do I? I go with my own maid’. Do you want your wife to say to you, ‘I don’t go with someone else’s husband, do I? I go with my own house-boy’? God forbid she should say that. It’s better for her to grieve for you than to imitate you. She, after all, is a chaste and holy woman and really a Christian, who grieves for her fornicating husband, and grieves not out of jealousy but out of charity; the reason she does not want you to behave like that is not just that she herself doesn’t behave like that, but that it does you no good. If the reason she doesn’t is simply in order that you shouldn’t, then if you do, she will. But if she owes to God, if she owes to Christ the faithfulness you demand of her, and gives it to you because he commands it, then even if her husband fornicates, she offers her chastity to God. For Christ speaks inwardly in her heart, and consoles his daughter with words like this: ‘Are you distressed about your husband’s wrongful behaviour, what he has done to you? Grieve, but don’t imitate him and behave badly yourself, but let him imitate you in behaving well. In so far as he behaves badly, don’t regard him as your head, but me.’  (Sermon 9, 11)

You are told, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ (Ex 20:14); that is, do not go to any other woman except your wife. But what you [husbands] do is demand this duty from your wife, while declining to pay this duty to your wife. And while you ought to lead your wife in virtue — chastity is a virtue, you know — you collapse under one assault of lust. You want your wife to conquer; you yourself lie there, conquered. And while you are the head of your wife, she goes ahead of you to God, she whose head you are. Do you want your household to hang head downwards? ‘The husband is the head of the wife’ (Eph 5:23); but where the wife leads a better life than the husband, the household hangs head downwards. (Sermon 9, 3)

Complaints in this matter are a daily occurrence, even though the women themselves don’t yet dare to complain about their husbands. A habit that has caught on everywhere like this is taken for a law, so that even wives, perhaps, are now convinced that husbands are allowed to do this, whereas wives are not. They are used to hearing about wives being taken to court, found perhaps with house-boys. But a man taken to court because he was found with his maid, they have never heard of that happening — though it’s a sin. It is not divine truth that makes the man seem more innocent in what is equally sinful, but human wrong-headedness. (Sermon 9,4)

St Augustine — A Male Chauvinist? [Internet Archive link] in case the original gets scrubbed.

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Further reading

Society has been hoodwinked by men who abuse their female intimate partners

“How He Wins: Abusive Intimate Partners Going Free” — a video by Barbara Roberts summarising this book by Don Hennessy.