Daria Doering

The Surrendered Wife

By Laura Doyle

 

There are so many marriage books out there with the same claptrap, but this is not one of them.  It tackles the non-politically-correct but widely pervasive issue of women who are controlling.  It takes Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus about ten steps further, applying its “gender differences” theme, and giving concrete recipes to rescue, heal and ignite your marriage.

It’s definitely one of the couple of books I’d credit with “saving my marriage.”  It has a similar message to fundamentalist Christian marriage books, yet is secular, even feminist, and actually makes its case much better.

The book could be subtitled, “How to stop being a controlling shrew.”  Or “How to give up control and gain happiness.”  Or “what feminists need to do when they come home at night” (hint: change hats).

It details the authors journey from being a typically frustrated modern woman, complaining about her marriage and contemplating divorce, to seeing the error of her ways, and achieving great happiness.

The book begins by explaining that many of us, when things didn’t go exactly right in our childhoods, responded by developing a need to be in control.  We became control freaks, which allowed us to feel that we wouldn’t be hurt.

She describes how a therapist assigned her to allow her husband to take her to dinner, and make all the decisions, including where to go and what food to order.  Even in such a non-threatening situation, she was terrified of losing control, kept inserting little “prompts,” and really was unable to allow the process to happen.

She also had hilarious but painfully familiar examples of dialogues she used to have with her husband – subtly or not so subtly seizing control of every situation – and invariably either screwing it up, or ruining her husband’s motivation to do anything.

The goal is to see controlling behavior for what it is, and replace it with virtuous behavior.  Controlling behavior includes not only acting as our husbands’ mother, supervisor, or tormentor, but also all our attempts to critique, change and “help” our husbands.  She notes that “helping” in wife language translates into “controlling” in husband language.

Virtuous behavior includes trusting rather than controlling, being grateful rather than complaining, and valuing intimacy over “rightness.”  The overriding idea is that control and intimacy are opposites, and intimacy needs to be our priority, rather than control.

Not being in control allows us to drop a lot of excess responsibilities, and allows our husbands to pick up the ball.  In fact there’s a chapter on how to refuse to continue taking on a wide array of responsibilities that should be our husbands’; how to not engage when your husband is asking for prompts about what to do; and how to not do things for men that they can do for themselves (and you).  When you’re controlling, it doesn’t make you “powerful,” it makes you exhausted.

Something that keeps coming back to me is her examples of all the rationalizations we tell ourselves for maintaining control.  In my case, I really had developed this fantasy that I was so well functioning, and my husband goofed up everything he dealt with.  Aside from the very dubious reality of this viewpoint, we all have to make our mistakes.  We tend to forget our own mistakes, and remember the other person’s.  Now, whenever I think or more likely fantasize that my husband is blowing it, I remind myself, as the author says, that if he really is blowing it, he’ll learn from his mistakes.  And that if you’ve been controlling everything for years, it’s going to take some time to get out of that mode.

Another aspect of virtue is respecting our husband’s thoughts rather criticizing, attacking, or trying to “improve” them.  This leads to her admonition to answer anything your husband says with “whatever you think.”  It’s a way of giving him respect, space to dream out loud, and a venue to verbally work things out.

My husband and I had this exact same argument for years.  He used to say to me, “When I talk, just say ‘uh-huh.’  I don’t want to hear all your commentary, arguments, and so on.”  I would look at him like he was crazy and say, “Are you out of your mind?  Do you really want me to just be a robot and say nothing but ‘uh-huh’ to you?!”  Yes.  He was adamant that this was what he wanted, so I really had no choice but to reluctantly comply.

After reading this book, it all made sense.  He had even tried to tell me, “When I talk, it’s part of a process in which I’m working things out … I don’t want feedback on it …”

I was raised in a family that thought highly of giving feedback, which always made sense to me.  Then I married a man who had no use for feedback whatsoever.  Since I saw feedback as a positive thing, I was always trying to give it to him, and it infuriated him.  After almost twenty years of battles over this, I had reduced it to a trickle, but not enough.  This book elaborated on the destructiveness of trying to change or improve your husband.  Didn’t you marry him in the first place?  If he’s going to change, is it going to be the result of your nagging at him?  (Absurd idea.)  So I was finally able to see his viewpoint as legitimate.

There is a brilliant chapter about expressing wants, in which she points out the flaw in saying anything other than “I want …”  Demanding is angry and counterproductive, complaining is unattractive, and even asking is setting oneself up for disappointment.  Saying “I want” is simply being direct; it’s giving information without any demands.

When you say “I want” and describe all your desires, no matter how outlandish, you’re giving your husband the opportunity to fulfill them, to pull off something amazing, to surprise you.  At the least, you’re letting him know what’s on your mind.  She gives the example of a woman who wanted a rug for her garage because her toddler played there a lot, but knew it wasn’t within their budget plan.  She expressed her desire anyway, and the next week, her husband came home with the perfect rug!  A client had given him a beautiful rug he was replacing for free.  If she hadn’t expressed her desire, her husband wouldn’t have even known to take the rug.

Although some may fear that this book encourages women to be “manipulative,” in truth, what it preaches above all else is directness.  Women are counseled to express our desires, feelings, and limits, directly, without trying to control the outcome.

Being “surrendered” doesn’t mean that you don’t express yourself.  It means that you stay on your side of the court, and express your own thoughts, feelings and wants, while leaving his alone.  A conversation becomes a place for two people to express themselves, without criticizing the other.

Another prevalent theme of the book is the need to put self-care first.  Also, that if we’re asked to do something that jeopardizes our physical or emotional well-being, the proper response is “I can’t,” which is the truth.

Also stressed is the difference between male and female culture, and the fact that most men are not comfortable expressing feelings, never will be, and women should abandon that goal.  However, it is imperative that women express our feelings, which is part of our feminine nature.  In fact, it is often much more effective for us to express our concerns in term of our feelings than as objective reality.  For example, “I’m scared of that man down the street” may be more effective than “Do you think that man down the street is a criminal?”

Additionally, the book gives the absolute best advice on how to deal with verbal abuse from men: say “ouch” and leave.  It’s otherwise known as non-retaliation, and has been the other main tactic that has saved my marriage.  After years of knowing it was the right thing to do, but not quite being able to get myself to do it, I finally learned to simply say, “I’m hurt” or “ouch” when verbally attacked, and leave it at that.  I also gained the faith that if I don’t attack back, in a matter of minutes or hours my husband will apologize, and maybe even make amends.

If our husbands are ignoring us – my pet complaint – we’re advised to simply say, “I miss you”; that this phrase is the truth, whether we miss his company, his lover’s touch or help with the kids.  We should skip the “Why are you getting home so late?”  “Why are you watching so much TV?” and other accusations.

But probably what keeps filtering back into my mind the most from the book is her descriptions of how “your husband really does love you … Doesn’t he go to incredible lengths to please you?  Doesn’t he devote his whole life to making you happy, in a sense?  Isn’t his world destroyed when you’re unhappy?”  This is so true, at least in my case, and so easy to miss.  I don’t know whether it’s idiocy, insanity or lack of self-esteem, to fail to see this so completely.

The Surrendered Wife is one of these books that is so profound, you just wonder how she figured all this out.  Especially since much of what she says is so counter-intuitive, at least to me.  She also expresses it exquisitely and convincingly, with plenty of examples and dialogues that clarify it all.

I can’t say that this book has changed my actions that radically.  I haven’t gone so far as to turn my bank account over to my husband, as the book advocates.  What has changed more than my actions is my goals.  I now have the goal of zero feedback.  If there really is a problem, I try everything else first, or wait and see if time will somehow take care of it.  And I’ve found that now that I’m genuinely and sincerely trying to avoid giving my husband feedback, he is able to accept it when I feel in my heart that I really need to make some comment on what he’s doing.

All in all, I can’t even say how much this book has helped me.  My husband had complained bitterly, forever, that I was always controlling everything.  Actually, he expressed it whenever we really tried to get to the core of what was wrong, which wasn’t very often.  Maybe he just gave up.

From my point of view, I just didn’t get it.  My viewpoint was that I tend to take charge, and he refuses to take charge.  I was used to men who control, having been raised by one, and without knowing it, I saw life as a battle for control.  I couldn’t see it any other way.

This book showed me the virtue of not being in control, and of actively not being in control.  If you’re an active person, you have to actively and voluntarily not be in control; actively support someone else in being in control.  This book gave me a whole new way of looking at not only my marriage, but at life.

Needless to say, our marriage has improved about a thousand percent …

— Daria Doering