The Enduring Popularity of ‘The Surrendered Wife’

Laura Doyle, bestselling author of “The Surrendered Wife” and several other books that promise to teach women to save their marriages, no matter how oafish their husbands might seem, has a question for me, the journalist who has come to Southern California to interview her. “Are you bossy?” she asks me, softly, almost shyly. “Are you controlling?”

I flash back to my ex, who labeled me controlling for pushing him to quit smoking, go out more, eat what I wanted to eat and take his shoes off inside my apartment.

“Um,” I stammer. “Some people would probably say so.”

Doyle is looking at me from her ivory couch, her husband of 36 years, John Doyle, next to her. “They would?” she says, her voice warm, with no judgment that I can detect.

I wouldn’t deny it, I tell her. But I have a question of my own. Given that Doyle considers herself a feminist, an ambitious, capable woman who was raised to be independent and has run her own company for nearly a quarter-century — given all that — does she hesitate to describe women, including herself, as “bossy” and “controlling”?

Because that is the premise of her books, the message she has been publishing, blogging, broadcasting, podcasting and teaching her international network of relationship coaches since 1999. That Doyle, 59, a self-described “former shrew,” thought she knew better than her husband as a young wife, “nagging” him to eat healthier, maintain the car on schedule and wear what she thought he should wear. That begging and cajoling only made him turn up the TV and drove him from their bed.

The message she is spreading is that with her marriage “in a ditch,” she reluctantly started taking the advice she received from happy wives to practice gratitude, apologize to her husband for emasculating and disrespecting him, metaphorically “duct tape” her mouth to curb her criticisms, make herself open to sex anytime, and relinquish control — even of their finances, even if it meant sitting in the dark because he forgot to pay the electricity bill (which actually happened). That taking care of herself (naps, beach volleyball) would help her show up better. That trying to change her husband got her nowhere, but changing herself gave her the marriage she had always dreamed of. That the intimacy returned so strongly that, nine years after marrying, she took her husband’s name. That the “intimacy skills,” as she came to call her findings, would work for other wives, even ones facing abuse, adultery or husbands with addictions.

That women are fundamentally different from men, whatever modern notions of gender equality might say. That a lot of women are controlling, and consequently, unhappy. That becoming a “surrendered wife” will save your marriage, but it might also save you.

The state of American gender relations is poor. Liberal-leaning straight women complain of heteropessimism, the conviction that dating men will end in tears. Young women increasingly reject marriage; divorce, in certain online spaces, is hot. Gen Z women are the most progressive Americans, speeding farther left as more Gen Z men supported President Donald Trump. Many of the far-right online ranters of the manosphere paint women as mere conquests, breeders who exist to serve men.

The women of a manosphere splinter sect, the “red pill women,” theorize that men (“captains” in marriage) are naturally dominant, and women (“first mates”) naturally submissive. Self-described red pill women may be a small minority, but they embody an increasingly visible axiom on the American right, that feminism is where it all went wrong. And if anyone asks them what to read, their answer is very often Laura Doyle.

Their philosophy has an apparent symmetry with Doyle’s, which holds that men, with their drive to protect and provide, “need respect like they need oxygen.” Women who want their husbands to desire and cherish them, she says, should “abandon the myth of equality.” Instead of acting like “smaller, less hairy men” and shouldering everything because they think he won’t do it or won’t do it right, they should practice softness, vulnerability and femininity — by which she means receptivity to gifts, compliments and help with suitcase-carrying, driving and household tasks. She used to tell women with abusive, alcoholic or adulterous husbands to leave, but later retracted that advice, saying that she had heard too many stories of such wives using the skills to save their marriages. If you want to leave, leave, she says, but if you want to fix your relationship, you can. You married him for a reason.

Since Doyle self-released “The Surrendered Wife” in 1999, eventually hitting the New York Times bestseller list, her books have been published in 19 languages across 30 countries. Friends surrendered, then friends of theirs, then women around the country and the world. Orthodox Jewish wives press her books on brides-to-be; evangelical Christian and observant Muslim wives have surrendered. But so have many secular or not particularly religious women who see themselves as strong and self-sufficient.

“I almost gagged myself when I saw the title,” said Darlene Davis, 66, a graphic designer in New Jersey who found “The Surrendered Wife” when her relationship was foundering. This was soon after Simon & Schuster published the book in 2001. “But within two weeks, I saw the difference.”

Presurrender, Davis described herself as a “big man-basher” who joked about male foibles with the best of them. Her postsurrender diagnosis: “Because I’m a strong, independent woman who knows how to get things done, I was doing all these things, telling him what to wear and speaking for him,” she said. “That’s great for business and all these other things, but it wasn’t good for him. He’s a very masculine man. He needs respect.”

Davis eventually became one of the first Laura-Doyle-certified relationship coaches, a group that now includes more than 600 women worldwide. The company — mission: “End World Divorce” — says more than 15,000 women worldwide have received Laura Doyle coaching through programs including “Ridiculously Happy Wives,” while others are receiving private coaching.

In her spacious living room in Corona Del Mar, California, Laura Doyle tells me she knows she sounds old-fashioned, even backward. But she is no doormat, as she has been accused of telling other women to be.

Her ambition and independence remain, “but I think you can actually parse that control out,” she says. Control comes from fear, she says; she would rather put positivity in charge. Surrendering, she says, “helped me honor myself and be more successful in my career than I ever would have been.”

Honoring and respecting yourself, not only your husband, is one of Doyle’s main prescriptions. She and the Laura Doyle coaches I interviewed said the skills helped them prioritize their own desires, stop “martyring” themselves to children or chores, take care of themselves, ditch resentment and blame and gain dignity and humility.

Doyle lays her hand over her husband’s, saying, “I think it’s OK if we want to be loved, not just have careers.”

I ask John Doyle, 70, whether he thinks men could do more. He says his wife’s self-improvement helped him step up.

Before, “you feel that nothing that you do is going to be right,” he said. Now, “I feel more willing to help and to do things,” he said, “because there won’t constantly be a rejection or a criticism just for basically being who I am.”

A few interviewees acknowledged that it did not work for some women they knew, recalling one or two who had left their husbands. Then I found Jennifer Phoenix Allen, 45, a trauma therapist outside Minneapolis.

Her 12-year marriage hit rock bottom in February. She had spent years frustrated with his parenting; he had spent years lying about using porn. He wanted a divorce.

She felt she needed to stay for their 8-year-old son, who has autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Enter Laura Doyle. And … it worked.

“Cue the moral dilemma,” Allen said.

Because she was a feminist and she wanted her man, all men, to step up without her having to practice what often felt sneaky, like wearing a mask. Because she thought Laura Doyle advised being meek and demure, which grated. Because Laura Doyle told her to yield control of the finances, and she needed a separate bank account for security. Because she wasn’t even sure that monogamy and marriage were anything but artifices that capitalism had foisted upon us all. Because if she had to be married, couldn’t marriage be between two equal adults who made it work together?

“Why is it me having to do all these things, whereas he can keep on keeping on the way he always has?” Allen said.

But, indisputably: He had changed. And nothing else she had tried had worked.

“It’s been a shift from viewing him as, ‘Oh my God, you’re an abusive narcissist,’ to realizing I was being so critical and I needed to clean up my side of the street better,” she said. “Looking back, was I more harsh to my husband than I needed to be? I believe that I was.”