The Surrendered Wife: Laura Doyle found a unique way to make her husband a better man: She gave

him everything he wanted:

[National Edition] Charles Laurence. National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Jan 31, 2000. pg. D.5 People:Doyle, Laura, Gottman, John Author(s):Charles Laurence Article types:News Section:Arts & Life Publication title:National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Jan 31, 2000. pg. D.5 Source Type:Newspaper ProQuest document ID:248139791 Text Word Count1486

Abstract (Article Summary) [Laura Doyle] giggles, insists that her "surrender" is not quite the same as sexual submission, and blushes a bit. We are in the living room of her home in Costa Mesa, Calif., about an hour's drive south of Los Angeles, with two of her "surrendered" friends, Christine Gordon and Anne Kinney. They giggle and blush a little, too. Laura has proved popular on chat shows and with talk-radio hosts, who are always on the hunt for new controversy, but others call her regressive. Her critics see her disseminating a particularly refined version of the conservative values already aired in books such as The Rules, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider; A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit; and -- the latest in counter-revolution from Generation X -- What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, by Danielle Crittenden. "The concept of the surrendered wife is personally offensive and scientifically unfounded," storms John Gottman, a psychologist who hit the American best-seller lists with his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. "Laura is a dinosaur and a throwback." Full Text (1486 words) Copyright National Post 2000) After four years of marriage, Laura Doyle and her husband, John, rarely spoke to each other and had no sex life. She had, she believed, tried everything to make a decent man of him, but nothing worked. No matter how much she yelled, he still forgot to take out the garbage and to put his dirty shirts in the laundry basket. He never made enough money, dressed horribly and watched too much television. Altogether, she thought him a slob. As a last resort, Laura signed up John and herself for "couples therapy." Perhaps, she thought, a good scolding from a professional would make him change his ways. She made sure, of course, that the marriage counsellor was a woman. "You can imagine the shock," she says, "when the therapist listened to all my complaints, then looked at me, rather than John, and said it sounded as though I had the problems."

There were, suggested the therapist, some "control issues" going on in this marriage. This is a polite, shrink-speak way of saying that Laura had become a bossy wife from hell, who had driven John to cower in front of the television rather than talk to her. "I am a feminist, and it was just natural to me to be an assertive woman," says Laura. "And then, suddenly, I realized that to the man I love, I was a shrew. "I think a lot of women today, raised to put their careers first, have become control addicts. Feminism has taught us how to get on at work, but not in our relationships." In order to save the marriage, Laura decided to try changing her ways -and she didn't do so by halves. Five years ago she gave up working full time as an executive in the advertising business and now works from home as a freelance copywriter. She resolved to bite her tongue, be polite, pleasant and respectful, and let John make the decisions, just as an old- fashioned man should. More than that, she would surrender to his every whim and would even hand over all her money. Her plan worked. Building on that happy discovery, Laura, 32, launched America's latest self-improvement mission, which she calls The Surrendered Wife. Six years after she first looked in the mirror and saw a shrew, she published a book, The Surrendered Wife, A Woman's Spiritual Guide to True Intimacy with a Man (out under her own imprint, St. Monday Publishing, and soon to be published by Simon & Schuster), has toured television and radio shows throughout the U.S., and finds herself heading support groups that have counselled more than 1,000 women. "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," Laura says. "A surrendered wife always says 'yes' and is always available for sex. When a wife gives up control of when, how often and how, that can be scary, but it works better because he is going to want to come to you." That chemistry, says Laura, comes down to natural "gender roles." A guy, she believes now, is more likely to behave like a guy in the way that really counts if he is treated with some respect. And all equality ends at the bedroom door. "The surrendered wife will do anything, anywhere, as long as it does not hurt. Since you're the woman, come to the bedroom looking as feminine as possible. The first rule for a great sex life is to be respectful and wear something sheer and lacy. Surrendering has a very positive effect in the bedroom." Laura giggles, insists that her "surrender" is not quite the same as sexual submission, and blushes a bit. We are in the living room of her home in Costa Mesa, Calif., about an hour's drive south of Los Angeles, with two of her "surrendered" friends, Christine Gordon and Anne Kinney. They giggle and blush a little, too. John, the man at the heart of all this, is out of sight for the moment, working on his computer in a bedroom converted into an office. Later he comes out for a chat. He is tall, 10 years older than his wife and works as a software technician. "I am the beneficiary rather than the instigator of all this," he says, taking Laura's hand. "It is harder work for the guy -- I have to remember

to pay the bills -- but we really are happy. It's magic!" The scene is not quite what you might expect of the self- improvement culture of California. For a start, Laura and her friend Christine are California blonds, but of the type you would see at the drive-through McDonald's rather than leaping about in the gym. Both have grown rather too plump, and they wear their loose dresses carelessly. No one here learned their wisdom at university or medical school. The husbands they talk of are technicians, plumbers and car mechanics. The surrendered wives come from neat rows of bungalows, car ports and shopping malls, the Orange County where Richard Nixon famously first found his Republican middle-class majority and Ronald Reagan his modern suburban heartland. Their retro-philosophy tilts against the windmills of two generations of received wisdom from the cultural elite, among whom there is uproar at the notion of "surrender." Laura has proved popular on chat shows and with talk-radio hosts, who are always on the hunt for new controversy, but others call her regressive. Her critics see her disseminating a particularly refined version of the conservative values already aired in books such as The Rules, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider; A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit; and -- the latest in counter-revolution from Generation X -- What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, by Danielle Crittenden. "The concept of the surrendered wife is personally offensive and scientifically unfounded," storms John Gottman, a psychologist who hit the American best-seller lists with his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. "Laura is a dinosaur and a throwback." Gottman preaches that men must make more effort to be "influenced" by their wives, and that couples should stay "emotionally connected." These remarks make Laura splutter with rage. "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 is no good," she fumed. "We are 'empowered' to sue for lots of child maintenance, and then live struggling and lonely for the rest of our lives. Just great! "What we are trying to do is empower ourselves and other women to have long and happy marriages, to find real fulfillment in homes and relationships." The idea, she says, is to go to work and boss everybody about until glass ceilings break and true economic equality is achieved, but then to leave that spirit at work and come home a woman. The surrendered wives argue that their method is essential because the evidence from their own lives is that men and women really are different. They quote the book that lit the fuse of much of "neo-con" women's thinking, John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. "At home," Laura says, "I want to be nurtured, loved and protected. But this does not mean that I consider myself to be less than my husband, because I am not. I am not trying to be my grandmother." All three women agree that when they stopped trying to control their men and started to "give them space," the guys began "performing better." Husbands who couldn't be bothered to pay the bills or to check their credit card debts suddenly started to invest in the stock market, and those who had to be bullied into picking up their own beer cans have been seen cooking Sunday brunch.

There is one obvious caveat: In order to surrender, a wife must trust her husband. This is not, Laura warns, a philosophy that is easily followed by victims of violence or sexual abuse. She is convinced that the need many women feel to be in control of their environments and relationships is a sickness born of insecurity. Surrendering is unlikely to become a mainstream way of life, but Laura insists she has hit on a useful new therapy. Even if a woman tries her rules only for a few weeks, she may find herself giving fresh life to a moribund marriage. A dose of surrender could become the equivalent of the old village ducking-stool for scolds. A good cold dunking, according to this philosophy, might just lead to a nice warm relationship. Any takers? [Illustration] Black & White Photo: John Chapple, Cobra Media / Laura Doyle with her husband, John. She says empowerment isn't all it's cracked up to be. ;

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