Becoming the Woman You Always Wanted to Be

Some people find the phrase “Surrendered Wife” shocking and
offensive. They think it means “obedient wife” or “subservient
wife.” When paired with the phrase “Empowered Woman,” it can
be even more upsetting because these phrases seem mutually
exclusive.

A Surrendered Wife is an empowered woman because she lets go of
trying to control the things she can’t, like the weather, heavy traffic,
and other people, including her husband. That leaves her with more
energy for the things she can control, like herself.

A Surrendered Wife knows she can’t change anyone but herself. She
won’t try to change her husband by telling him what to eat, what to
wear, or what to do at work. Instead, she focuses on her own
happiness and that, in turn, fosters intimacy.

But how does surrendering give you more intimacy in your
relationship? How does it make you feel more confident and
connected? How does it empower you to create the kind of
relationship that you know, deep down, is possible?

That’s what this book is all about. This collection of true stories
describes how real women have applied the skills in real marriages
and single-handedly saved, healed, and transformed them.

This book chronicles the experiences of passionate women who not
only learned The Six Intimacy Skills at the highest level but are also
helping other women to create magical relationships. These women
have been certified as Laura Doyle Relationship Coaches and work
shoulder-to-shoulder with me on my mission to end world divorce.

Surrendering is a gateway to living purposefully because it requires
courage. It’s deciding to choose faith instead of fear.

It means becoming aware of the times you’re tempted to bulldoze
when all you need to say is what you want. It’s about being
vulnerable instead of making demands. It means expressing
gratitude even if what you have isn’t perfect and focusing like never
before on your own desires and choices.

Surrendering means being a better receiver and a better listener. You
become more respectful of men—especially your man.

When you surrender, you become more cherished by your man. You
turn the clock back to the beginning of the relationship, to when you
felt adored and you were crazy about him.

Surrendering is calming. It’s relaxing.

Surrendering in my marriage is the best self-improvement program
I’ve ever undertaken.

 

What I Know about You

One thing I know about you is that you’re a seeker. You want to
understand relationships. You want to feel inspired and empowered.
Having a fulfilling relationship is deeply important to you.

Why else would you pick up a collection of stories from eighteen
women who have transformed their relationships from unsatisfying
or downright depressing to vibrant and amazing?

You want to learn from these women—to stand on their shoulders
and use their experience to quickly gain insight into what they have
learned. You want an insider’s glimpse of the tips that have brought
about the most connection and intimacy. You want access to the
brain trust of the wise women who coach and train on The Six
Intimacy Skills. You want inspiration and motivation to do what
they did.

I think that’s exciting because what you’re seeking is exactly what
started the most exhilarating, terrifying, and gratifying journey of
my life—learning how to love and be loved in return.

It turns out that it really is all it’s cracked up to be.

But previously my relationship with my husband of twenty-six years
was mystifying, frustrating, and painful.

I was completely unequipped to nurture an intimate relationship
when I married at the age of twenty-two. There was no Relationships
101 course at my school. My parents are divorced, and I was
following their failed recipe for happily-ever-after in my own
marriage—and edging ever closer to the same results.

I thought I would just know how to have a playful, passionate
relationship, but for a long while, I didn’t, and I couldn’t crack the
code. I read popular relationship books but saw no improvement.
Years of marriage counseling made things worse. Even though (or
maybe because) I followed conventional wisdom, I was stuck in the
painful, lonely mud.

Those were dark years. I was doing everything wrong but didn’t
realize it. I believed our problems were all because of my husband,
John, and that our home was filled with tension and hostility because
of his rotten attitude. I was absolutely certain that I was the more
spiritually evolved, smarter, and more mature person.

I Was Wrong About Absolutely Everything

I know now that I always had the key. As the wife, I’m the keeper
of our relationship—the one with the feminine gifts that contribute
to connection and a lifelong bond.

It turns out that I was not more spiritually evolved than my husband.
I was angry, scared, and complaining most of the time. There’s
nothing spiritual about that.

I was not smarter; I was making a lot of extra work for both of us.

And I was not more mature; I was more like a martyr.

I have to laugh now because it seems so ridiculous looking back.
What was I thinking?

I just didn’t know any better. I did the best I could with what I knew.

Then I had an epiphany seventeen years ago. That’s when things got
a lot better for my marriage, my other relationships, my career, my
confidence, and my dignity.

As I was writing this passage, my husband brought a cup of tea into
my office and gave me a quick kiss. So apparently he doesn’t have
a rotten attitude anymore either.

One More Thing I Was Wrong About

When I was fantasizing about divorce and wondering what I’d ever
seen in my husband, I never dreamed that there were so many other
women who were having the same struggles.

I thought I was uniquely, incurably flawed with my urge to control
and not appear vulnerable, without even understanding what
vulnerability looked like.

I thought I was alone. And because of that, I was ashamed of our
struggles. I wanted to appear to my family and friends as if I had a
good marriage because I didn’t want to lose status in my tribe.
One day, I finally admitted things were bad—really bad. That’s
when I discovered I wasn’t alone.

As I opened up to friends in desperation, other women admitted they
were struggling too. Now I see that I would never have discovered
The Six Intimacy Skills at all if I hadn’t finally started admitting that
John and I were struggling as a couple.

The End of Life as I Knew It

When I first discovered The Six Intimacy Skills, I remember
thinking that a veil had been lifted and I could finally see how I
actually had power over the culture at my house. It could be loving
and fun or distant and tense—it was all up to me! I walked around
with my mouth open for the rest of the day in wonder at this
realization.

But even once I had that knowledge, it wasn’t easy to just stop being
a controlling shrew. In order to jump that chasm, what I did—what
I had to do—was pass on the discovery to other women.

So I quit controlling my husband and started controlling my
girlfriends instead. I would say, “Here’s what you should do.
Apologize for being disrespectful when you said he was a slob.”

For some reason, they did what I suggested. Through hearing myself
apply my best thinking to their relationships, it started to sink in for
me as well. That’s when my marriage got magical. That’s when I
started to feel the butterflies in my stomach again when he looked at
me a certain way. That’s when I saw his face light up when I came
home.

I came up with the idea to have a small support group on the topic
of marriage. Five of us attended our first meeting in my living room.
One had a cousin who wanted to know what we were doing, but
lived on the other side of the country and couldn’t attend our
meetings.

I decided to write a book about what I’d learned from the longmarried
wives, my own experiments, and those meetings. That book
was The Surrendered Wife, which tells the whole embarrassing story
of how I went from controlling shrew to cherished, ridiculously
happy wife by way of trial and error.

I self-published a meager 2,500 copies. Two years later Simon &
Schuster reprinted The Surrendered Wife, which debuted on the New
York Times bestseller list. It was published in sixteen languages in
twenty-seven countries. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and
started a worldwide movement with a simple system for having
intimacy, passion, and peace.

I had no idea what I was in for when I included my email address
and phone number in the book.

An avalanche of women contacted me saying they felt I was writing
about them. They wanted to know where I’d hidden the recording
device to capture their conversations and reprint them in the book.
Most of all, they wanted me to help them with their struggling
relationships.

Of course, I couldn’t help everyone, but I tried to anyway. I felt
overwhelmed and inadequate.

All I could do was point everyone who asked for help to Surrendered
Circles, gatherings of friends to support each other with practicing
the principles of surrendering. Over the years, thousands of women
have started Surrendered Circles in their living rooms.

While I included a format for such Circles in The Surrendered Wife,
unfortunately there just wasn’t enough structure to the Circles. The
leaders didn’t have training to run them, and the Circles largely
fizzled out. So Surrendered Circles weren’t the answer I was hoping
they would be.