Do you ever feel superior to your husband? Do you think everything would be fine if only he did what you said? Do you criticise him when he misloads the dishwasher? Do you imitate the way he clears his throat to make your friends laugh? Do you have a hard time remembering why you married him? Do you ever look at him when he's fast asleep and snoring, and wish he were someone else? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Laura Doyle, America's new self-help queen, has some very bad news for you. It's not your husband's fault that he falls so short of your expectations. The person you should be blaming is yourself.
Do you want to know why? If the answer is no, you'd better flee the country, because when her book comes out in Britain in a few weeks' time, it's set to get the full tabloid puff, and there will be no escaping it. So you might as well know now what you've been doing wrong all this time. The biggest mistake you ever made was throwing away your bunny suit. Let's face it, there isn't a man on earth who isn't desperate for a good, old-fashioned, full-service wife. But please, don't panic! Not that long ago, Laura's husband was just as unhappy as your husband is right now. Maybe he was even worse, because she used to do such awful things like yell at him when he didn't pick up his beer cans and roll her eyes when they were on the freeway and he missed their exit. But then she got what was coming to her because he started watching television to avoid talking to her. She went into a terrible panic, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Because it made her use her eyes. It made her look around her neighbourhood and see that the happiest marriages in her particular corner of Orange County, California, were the ones in which the women willingly bowed down to their men. So she decided to try it out on Mr. Couch Potato, to see if that perked him up at all. The results were spectacular, so then she closed her eyes and handed over the household finances, saying she trusted his judgement utterly. She started keeping her mouth shut, except to tell him everything he thought and did was wonderful, even when it wasn't. He perked up even more, and then she started closing her eyes when he was driving, and hey presto, he started driving better, or at least more manfully.
She still had to struggle to keep her less kind thoughts to herself, though. She had to keep telling herself: 'Don't try to control him'. That was a mouthful, if you had to say it over and over. So she decided to reduce it to a one-word mantra: surrender.
The mantra worked wonders in all the compartments of her life, but never so wonderfully as it did in the bedroom. By now her friends were noticing that she and John were acting like a couple of newlyweds, and they wanted to know what her secret was. So she started running a surrendered wives group in her sitting-room, and when the group got too crowded, she started running seminars. When these started multiplying faster than amoebae, she decided the time had come to spread the word nationally. As usual, her hunch was right.
After publishing The Surrendered Wife herself a year ago, Simon & Schuster picked it up and this month it did a first print run in the United States of 100,000. The American networks have also shown intense interest, and thanks to their generous coverage, women all over the nation are now setting up surrendered wife support groups. Other women are getting together to tear their hair out. They're concerned for all the obvious reasons. But why non-surrendered women see her as a serious threat is another question. Her message is not new - in many ways it's an update of the Seventies bestseller, Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman, which taught us that the 'total woman caters to her husband's special quirks, whether it be in salad, sex, or sports'. It's been echoed more recently in Ellen Fein's The Rules, Wendy Shalit's A Return to Modesty, and Danielle Crittenden's What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us. And what Laura Doyle says is not nearly as extreme or obnoxious as her namesake, the family values radio personality Dr Laura Schlesinger whose syndicated daily talk show has 18 million listeners. So you have to wonder why non-surrendered women are paying so much attention to her.
It could be her weird mix of self-help styles that non-fans find so exasperating. She doesn't tell women to give up work. Why bother, if you can make the double standard work in your favour? All you have to do is change your attitude, plus a few annoying habits. You have to let go before you can undergo spiritual rebirth. What she's done in essence is to take the total woman and sent her off to a 12-step recovery programme.
This, in fact, is where her ideas about surrender come from. The first steps in Alcoholics Anonymous are one: that I admit that I am powerless over alcohol - that my life has become unmanageable. Two: that I come to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, and make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him and come to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Three: make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him . What Doyle has done is replace the word marriage for alcohol and 'understand' her Higher Power to be her husband. She then suggests that a wife who surrenders her will and her life to a husband is not just going to help his ego and rejuvenate their marriage, but also help her become a power in her own right. Laura did just this, and it worked.
But she's still only 32, so maybe she shouldn't count her chickens quite yet, her feminist critics suggest unkindly. Boy, does she get angry, though, if you say this to her face. Feminism may have done a lot for the workplace, but what, she splutters, has it done to help women find fulfilment at home?
'It seems to me that these people have simply empowered women to get divorced, become single mothers, get married again, and leave the next man, too, because he's no good. We're empowered to sue for lots of child maintenance, and then live struggling and lonely for the rest of our lives. Just great!'
It's not just 'the feminists' who are refusing her message, though. The therapeutic establishment is pretty appalled, too. One of her fiercest critics is John Gottman, considered by many to be the world's leading expert on marriage. All his own research points to the importance of balanced, sharing caring, open and honest communication. So it is not surprising that he finds the surrendered wife concept 'personally offensive and scientifically unfounded'. He may be doing her a favour. It is partly thanks to denunciations like this that The Surrendered Wife, or TSW , as it's known among the faithful, has become the book everyone's talking about. It's sure to be the same in Britain, where there are already a number of TSW groups in electronic communication with Laura. A storm of denunciations at publication time is sure to help her extend her message to many more. But the most important bits of it are bound to get lost among the Chinese whispers. So please, listen carefully, or you'll get the whole thing back to front as so many others have done already. A surrendered wife as Laura defines it 'is not about returning to the Fifties or rebelling against feminism'. It isn't 'about dumbing down or being rigid. It's certainly not about subservience.' It's about following some 'basic principles' that will restore intimacy to your marriage, and with it, peace and joy and inner growth. The main principle is to relinquish 'inappropriate control' of your husband. But you are also supposed to respect his thinking, express gratitude for all he gives you, tell him what you want but never, ever, ever tell him what to do. You must hand the family finances over to him, even if he is bad with money. And you've got to let him have his way with you, even if you don't want it , at least once a week. Do all this, and you will have more time and energy to practise 'self-care' and focus on your own fulfilments, she assures us. In other words, you can surrender at home and still kick ass at work. 'Whether your desire is to have a more harmonious family, run a top corporation, or both, you'll feel increasing pride as you realise your goals faster than ever before.'
If her overview seems woolly, her style is anything but. She has to be the bossiest surrendered wife that ever was. She'll state a home truth: 'In marriage, as in nature, water seeks its own level: we marry men who match us. Just as you never see lakes with an uneven surface, you never see couples who aren't perfectly balanced'. Then she'll hit the space bar, and say: 'Really.'
Hitting the space bar again, she goes on to tell you to take that man with whom you are perfectly balanced, and put him on a pedestal. Indulge him. Make him feel powerful by making yourself look small. Get on your hands and knees and honour his choice of socks and stocks. Respect what he does even if what he does makes you want to scream. 'Respect means that when he takes the wrong freeway exit you don't correct him by telling him where to turn. It means that if he keeps going in the wrong direction you will go past the state line and still not correct what he's doing. No matter what you husband does, you will not try to teach, improve or correct him.' If that sounds ludicrous to you, she urges you to sit back for a moment and think what happens when you don't keep your mouth shut. 'Disrespecting your husband's choices on a regular basis is like pricking him repeatedly with little pins. Imagine living with a porcupine and you've got the idea of what it's like for him.'
Changing yourself into a more amenable animal is not easy, she admits. 'In some cases, not responding may require putting large quantities of duct tape over your mouth. Do whatever it takes.' Whatever he says to you, your response should be: 'Whatever you say.' You have to mean it, too. You have to go along with any plan he makes unless you are very sure it would endanger your health. Utter compliance may feel strange at first, she warns. But: 'Your husband will adore you for it.' Especially you know where. 'Most men aren't interested in having sex with their mothers and that is who we remind them of when we are forever controlling them and telling them what to do. A surrendered wife always says 'yes' and is always available for sex.'
'The first rule for a great sex life is to be respectful and wear something sheer and lacy.' The benefits last far beyond climax. Once you let him exercise his manhood, he'll open up and let down his guard and then you'll have intimacy. 'He may speak about the values he hopes to impart to the children, what he's imagining the two of your will do when you're old, or tell you about how he lost a dog he loved as a kid. Intimacy is made up of lots of little tender conversations - sometimes silly, sometimes solemn - that he wouldn't have with anyone else in the world.' And all you have to do to achieve this heavenly state is to give up your rights.
But what if you decide you need them again a year or two down the line? Say you wake up one morning and find out that this wonderful man to whom you've decided to enslave yourself is not so wonderful after all? There is a disturbing testimonial from a woman who used the Surrendered Wife method only to find that it almost landed her in bankruptcy court when her husband ran off with all her money. Another says she's giving up on the surrender idea because her husband is a repulsive slob who plops on to the couch when he gets home from work.
None of this fazes the already converted. They carry on regardless, gushing about surrender and exchanging tips about the appropriate response to a man who says: 'Shut the fuck up.' (Most agree that the standard line - 'whatever you think' - may not be appropriate.) They give kind but slightly patronising advice to the men who come on-line to complain about the way their wives talk to them. Every once in a while, a wife will step out of role to lash out at one of the unsurrendered interlopers. One tells a sceptical unmarried mother: 'It's hardly surprising that you are single, as what man would want to marry such an obnoxious, man-hating creature as you?'
The most intriguing thing is how raunchy the surrendered wives are. Oh how my mother and her friends would blush to hear the advice they give poor Kim, who has surrendered but still isn't getting as much sex as she craves. The 'keys to a happy marriage' are as follows, says Karen. 'Don't criticise him, let him make the wrong turn, give him lots of oral sex and be sure to swallow.' This is followed by a flurry of postings offering further refinements.
What, I wonder, would wives of another age have to say to Jessica who has been trying to surrender to her husband but failing miserably. Even though she now has an 11-month-old with another on the way, she doesn't think of her pregnant body as ugly, 'but pretty and cute'. But her husband finds it 'repulsive, which I think is funny because he has a big jelly belly, a hairy back and other things women would say are a big turn-off'. But still, she wants to make the marriage work. 'I complimented him on his body. I kissed him passionately, I touched his chest, shoulders, etc, all day, hoping it would pay off at some point. My husband disputed all of my compliments. He told me he felt pressured. Like an idiot, I apologised and he started to yell at me for apologising.' Later on, he told her that he hadn't wanted to have to say it, but that he wasn't sexually attracted to her anymore. And how unfair was that? The consensus in the electronic community of surrendered wives is that she should 'reconsider her relationship'. Which is short for: get rid of the guy. This, surprise, surprise, is the central plank of the surrendering philosophy. Surrender is a privilege you should only extend to 'good guys'. Never surrender to a man who is physically abusive to you, or your children, or has an 'active' addiction, or who is chronically unfaithful. It's not worth it, says Laura. Really. You can never achieve intimacy with types like that.
The biggest shock for me was finding out how exacting these surrendered wives were when discussing who was good husband material, and how little it took for them to say: 'Forget this guy. He's history.' A lot of the wives had careers they were proud of. A few admitted they earned more than their husbands. One said that was why it was such a relief to hand the money management over. After a long day barking orders at work, it's such a relief, she says, to come home at the end of the day, and kick off your shoes and your work personality, and 'be a woman'. This is what Laura Doyle is telling them: you can have everything you want, so long as you play by one set of rules at work and a very different set at home. That, of course, is what most people do anyway. Even people like myself who would rather die than admit it. Which is why, I suspect, we wish Laura would show us the same courtesy she shows her husband, and keep her stupid, half-baked, insulting grains of truth to herself.
