I think I have finally come up with the English word which ‘best’ describes the Hebrew of a wife to the husband: Counterpart.
The Webster’s Dictionary defines counterpart as:
1. The correspondent part; the part that answers to another, as the two papers of a contract or indentures; a copy; a duplicate. Also, the part which fits another, as the key of a cipher.
2. In music, the part to be applied to another; as, the base is the counterpart to the treble.
The Hebrew in Genesis 2:18,20 is ezer k’negdo (עזר ×›× ×’×“×•). The NKJ translation for this is “a helper (ezer) comparable to him”. This, of course, is true, but the Hebrew word neged literally means “against; two sides facing each other”, but not necessarily antagonistically. We can think of it as [living] stones facing each other as counterparts to help each other be fitted into place in the spiritual house that God is building up for His family.
As Adam and Eve are also a type of Messiah and His Bride (the body of Christ, just as the woman was taken out of the body of her man, both to be joined again as one flesh), we can see that the Bride is a complementary part of the other that love makes wholesome and good. The wife is to help her husband be all that God has called and chosen him to be. She is to actively help him face to face, heart to heart, sometimes with Holy Spirit stimulation to be a man of God in his ways and manner. In this is mutual submission.
The believers, currently individually and corporately joined in one Spirit and betrothed (engaged) to the Son of God, are to lovingly, honorably, adoringly lift up the name Jesus/Yeshua in prayer and praise for Him to be and to do all that He is and does. He is already perfect, so needs no admonition or correction from any of us!