Even though Laura Doyle is saying that wives have to give up the reins and let their husbands do more (all?) of the thinking, you can't force a man who dislikes doing the thinking and initiating the action to change, any more than you can turn a guy who does not wish to be the dominant partner and take you in hand into someone who will.

In a way by refusing to answer when he asks your opinion, you ARE forcing him to change, and this is right back to the controlling behavior she deplores. I find these paradoxes all over. Here again is an example of "topping from the bottom" especially in those first six months when she advises wives not to say what they are about.

I do try to control my urge to tell him what to do and how to do it, but frankly I am up against a situation where if he isn't advised he won't take action. Not every man "naturally" longs to be the leader. And he was born in 1952, that heyday of the dominant male (according to people too young to remember the reality).

The fact is, his Mom was the dominant partner in his parents' marriage and his father was not a leader but was more passive. (I don't think submissive is quite the right word). And this was the case in more homes than people who dreamily look back on the "traditional fifties" can imagine. So he has an image in his mind of that, not of "Father knows best."

I really think it has more to do with what you grew up with and whether your parents were happy with the arrangement they had, rather than the propensity of males to rule and females to follow. I could sit back from now till eternity and say, for instance, I want the bugs out of our house (we have a terrible problem, this is one of the bad years and the exterminator's poison was totally ineffective), but he will never lift a finger to do something about it unless I take the action first. And if I sit back and let the bugs roost everywhere, Laura Doyle might say, "so what?" and that it is more important to keep harmony in the marriage, but no, some things are too serious to just blow off the way she does.

So while there are indeed grains of truth especially for women who unnecessarily control their husbands, she's off target for many women who have to take the lead lest some pretty serious consequences result that no one will be happy with.

This time I managed to get through The Surrendered Wife to the end. I am prepared to admit that although most of it is pretty silly, there is the occasional flash of common sense here and there. I suppose if you are a woman who has habitually tried to control every aspect of your husband's life, and if you have a husband who is daft enough to let you, then this book might be helpful to you.

If, however, you are not married to a man who is a complete pushover and incapable of asserting himself, then you may, like me, find most of it irrelevent. Much of the book is taken up with telling me not to do things that I never used to do anyway.

And whether you are a controlling person or not, I still think not telling your husband when he's taken a wrong turning is damned silly.

That's it. I am positively not going to read any more self-help books ever. I probably only have another 30 or 40 years to live at the most, and I absolutely refuse to spend any more of the time I have left reading this sort of thing. Life is too short.

Louise wrote:

If you're married to a tight bastard he'll stay that way, no matter how much you surrender, in my opinion.

In our case, when I read The Surrendered Wife, I was actually much more surrendered on most issues than she recommends in the book. The one thing I was still doing was the finances. One of the reasons I was reluctant to give them to him to control was because he is rather thrifty (I don't want to use the term "tight bastard", as that seems a bit derogatory, LOL). He does not make a purchase for himself unless he has made quite sure that he really needs it and that there is no chance of him getting it some other way. Example: he has been wanting some moderately expensive sporting equipment but has been putting off the purchase because his birthday is coming up next month. He started talking about this in about June!

I thought that he would want my spending habits to match his. His reactions to my purchasing things in the past supported this idea.

It turns out, however, that much of his resistance to buying things stemmed from simply not knowing how much money we had and where it was going. Now he is very generous and hardly ever say no to anything. He does have very definite ideas about what should be bought with our money and what should be bought with "discretionary funds" but we mostly agree on those and when we don't I am usually the more strict on that one. He is still pretty tight with himself, just not with me. He just doesn't like to buy himself things.

Oh, and we don't pay our bills by direct debit because my husband likes to have a paper trail in case there is a dispute about whether something got paid or not.

She even thinks you shouldn't worry if the electricity is cut off because he hasn't paid the bill, she admonishes herself for being so wicked as to have paid the bill when this happened to her.

I think this is another one of her strategies to keep the woman from stepping back into control. I think these may apply if you are using her system by which you sort of secretly give a man control and hope that he finds that he likes it (I have to admit I find this a bit dodgy, but more on that later). I think the thing about consciously not giving your opinion unless it specifically deals with your own wants is another of these strategies. I guess you might need these if your husband was one of those men who thinks he doesn't want control of the relationship because people have told him that in control equals controlling. Maybe, until they get used to it, the woman has to refuse to take control back. Some of the surrendered wives that I have talked to seem to be in this situation. After a while their husbands get used to being in charge and this stops.

I do think this is a bit unnecessary with a man who is already in a Taken In Hand relationship (which is where we were when I read TSW). So when my husband asked me where the new books of checks were or when certain bills were due or which bills came in the mail, he was not trying to covertly give me back control, he was asking for the information. (He, in fact, had *told me* that he would be doing the finances and wouldn't give back the checkbook when I offered to take it back.) If I had airily said, "Oh, I don't know. I'm sure you will figure it out." he would have known I was lying and I would have ended up more sore than surrendered, I promise you. =)

I guess some of it does sound a bit moronic, especially if your husband has no problem with being in charge. But from the perspective of many mainstream American marriages, this is the only way to talk about male-led relationships and meet with any kind of acceptance. I think it is rather sad personally.

Otter*

"The moment that I looked into your eyes, you owned me."
-Kenny Chesney

I read this book and i'm somewhat of an experimental person so I tried some of the techniques. It did actually wake me up to a couple of areas in which I was controlling and bossy about things that he could very well take care of and did not want my opinion about.

But a funny thing...

We're on the way to the movie theater one afternoon and he starts to pass the exit that would be the closest to get there. I started to say something, then thought, "well, according to that book (and I do think there is a very specific example of letting your husband drive the wrong way, no?) I'm just supposed to sit here cuz he's a grown man and he can figure it out, blah, blah, blah." so after a couple of minutes he turns to me, says, "hey, I passed the exit, didn't i?" I say, reluctantly, "well, yeah." he's incredulous. like, "what?! you knew I passed it? did you know before I passed it?" I admitted that I did but I just thought he could handle it. he's like, "that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Why would you sit there and let me pass the exit?" case in point.

I picked it up at the library and read it in its entirety awhile back when I was first realizing what a control freak I can be. There were parts that really make sense and other that don't for my relationship. I think I gained more from the overall theme and flavor than from the specific details. Since reading it, though, I find points from it coming to mind when encountering certain situations and realizing the value in handling them the Surrendered Wife way. In the end, I bought my own copy and am looking forward to finding time to flip through once again.

Lucy