ACLAF Archives - Closer to Princess: The Surrendered Wife

An old post, probably originally published in July of 2007, but a good one.


Disclaimer: I know I'll draw some criticism for this, and I don't care. This idea is just too interesting to ignore.

Do my eyes decieve me? Have I taken leave of my senses? Did I take the blue pill? No, apparently, I'm reading this correctly, and there really is such a thing as a Surrendered Wife.

Increddible. Seven days ago, I talked about how modern women would never figure it out, that they seemed destined to a life as cruel and vindictive stepsisters. Today, it is obvious that I spoke a little too soon. Today's modern feminist certainly has that curse, but today's modern Surrendered Wife will definitely not share her fate. Pride goeth before a fall, both for me, and the modern feminist.

But the modern feminist is about to fall harder and farther than my little tumble.

Enter: The Surrendered wife.

Just what is a surrendered wife exactly?

Among other things, it's a misnomer, but in as short as I can manage, a "surrendered wife" is a woman who simply stops trying to exert control over her husband.

That's all it is. Stop trying to run your husband's life, and you get a happy marriage. Or so says a book entittled, The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion, and Peace with Your Man by Laura Doyle (Simon & Schuster,Jan 2001, ISBN-13: 978-0743204446)

Feminists absolutely hate this idea.

Of course, they don't really understand it either.

To the feminist the surrendered wife is little more than a slave, and now that there's apparently a Surrendered Wives movement, perhaps the biggest threat to their dominance, and the sufferened wife does so WILLINGLY! This is something that I'm going to go into detail during a later post.

But for the moment, I'd like to explain why The Surrendered wife is more happy than her moronic feminist counterpart. While it is true that there are some people who will take being a surrendered wife to extremes, such as having the wife put toothpaste on the husbands toothbrush, and putting on a blindfold while her husband drives. I certainly don't think that a husband necessarily needs to choose his wife's outfits, or act like a lazy slug. But then again,
this is no worse than the behaviour of some women, who rountinely tell their husbands how to dress, walk, talk, work, etc. At any rate, no marriage is identical, and therefore, no single micromanaged solution will work for everyone. Just remember for a moment the key, that a surrendered wife doesn't control her husband's life, and in any healthy marriage the details will work themselves out. That's not to say she doesn't influence, but she does so in a positive way, a way that befits Cinderella, and in doing so she BECOMES Cinderella, and she does live happily ever after.

You see, through some social fluke, Doyle has come to some understand that men are born programed to value pleasing women.

Much ink in the MRM has been spilled discussing the pitfalls of chivalrous behaviour extended towards today's modern woman, but as most MRAs would attest, chivalry is not so easy to abolish, and there's damn good reason for that. You see, providing for the needs women was for quite some time necessary to the survival of the species.

In modern context however, this impulse has caused many men a great deal of harm, and so it remains wise to continue to suppress it... Well... That is, unless you're lucky enough to have ended up with a surrendered wife.

In "It's Evolution Baby!" I talked about how gender specific idiosyncracies had various evolutionary componenets. I also however, described men as problem solvers.

If one takes a moment to consider a neolithic family on the African Savahna, much as it is today, one can immediately imagine how many challenges this family will face as it struggles to survive. If you consider the usual family of one man, one woman, and perhaps a few children. In the case of an infnat, it goes without saying that the father will have do most of the risky work, and help his woman wherever possible. He must provide for his woman and children because they cannot provide for themselves. What happens if dad runs off, or does not provide for his woman? His line will cease to exist, because without a man's support, his woman will not be able to support his offspring, and they will both probably die. We are not the offspring of deadbeat dads, because those kids died a long time ago! If the woman behaves like a selfish feminist and decides not to care for her children, then her line ceases to exist, because her children will not recieve what they need and they will die. We are here, because our distant male ancestors evolved
to put female needs above their own, and our female ancestors evolved to depend and value male support, and generally put their children's needs over their own. There was a time, when these behaviours were necessary to survive.

And some of these instincts are still with us today. It is well documented that unless drugged, if a newly born baby is placed on its mother's stomach, it will in a relatively short period of time crawl to her breasts. Mother and father also experience an instincual bonding with their children, sometimes within a few minutes after birth.

This explains the relatively common phenomena of couples who seek to save troubled marriages by having a child, which while misguided, is at least somewhat founded in what could best be described as proto-logic. Since it is well documented that both parents are very likely to develop an instinctual bond with the baby, they stay together not because they are happy together, but because they are more closely connected with the child than with each other.

All of this, has an evolutionary basis, because it was at one time, necessary to behave this way for the species to survive, and over time, this behaviour became an instinct.

And this is the underlying reason why the Surrendered wife is more likely to be happy than her quasi-femcunt counter-part.

There is a degree to which men will very easily give up control, and follow the leadership of someone else, which is also an evolutionary adaptation. When possible, neolithic peoples would form small groups, or tribes for mutual protection and assistance. Many hands make light work after all. And since the role of the man was the role of the hunter, and hunting was very much a team effort, it undoubtably became sometimes necessary for a leader to emerge. Since hunting would require people to preform a variety of different tasks, a leader would be necessary to ensure success by assigning those tasks. Again, this was necessary for survival at one time, and a man who consistently opposed, or made trouble for a leader would no doubt risk being ostracized. Thus, we've evolved to readily accept roles as followers, to a certain degree.
Obviously, if a leader calls for unnecessary personal risk, or abuses their position, the group would stop obeying the orders of a corrupt leader. And thus, we have theories of leadership which still hold true today. A leader should never ask a follower to do something that the leader would not be willing to do themselves. This is not to say that men aren't individuals, or don't have strong personalities, it does however mean that men accept leadership more willingly than women.

This also means that men evolved to be more comfortable and accustomed to leadership roles, and function best when the role of leader is most obvious. Therefore, when a man would be alone with his wife, he would have felt that he should take the lead, not to be abusive, but to make decisions, and try act as the sound foundation for his family, to ensure everybody's
survival, and therefore, the continuance of the species. At home, a man was a leader, and responsible for his family's well-being, no matter what he did in the outside world, and he did his best, because if he failed, they would fail with him. Thus men also evolved to feel burned by leadership, because so much rested on their shoulders.

A wife could feel safe and secure in the knowledge that her husband would always put her first, and try to make decisions that would be best for all, while she, as the bringer of life would be free to focus on that supremely important task. And thus, the two genders evolved into two fundamentally different, but complimentary roles.

Of course, this would eventually result in some of the abuses that we're familiar with today; a family is by no means a bed of roses, but for the most part, the system worked. And as long as it is generally workable, evolution says that humanity the species will survive, and people will be for the most part, happy.

That is, until we got feminism.

Feminism started by convincing women that they were not happy with the way that we evolved, and that women were really meant to be different. And by different, feminists meant that women should be more like men, and that men should change to suit women's whim, and if a man wasn't willing to do so, then fuck him, he doesn't deserve you! And in that moment, women
stopped being like Cinderella, and they became just like her step-sister. Not all at once, the transition took time. And at least at home, men offered little resistance to this female role, because men are generally willing to accept the role of a follower more easily than women.

And through years of misandry, feminism also convinced women that men were flawed and inferior to women. For the feminist, it doesn't really matter how good a man is, he's always going to fall short of any given woman.

Women however, never had the same evolutionary leadership training that men had, and thus while feminism convinced them that they all really were destined to be leaders and crusaders for women, it never talked about proper leadership. Feminism didn't and still doesn't understand leadership; leadership is a uniquely masculine trait. And so, since according to feminism,
men are flawed, and women are leaders, it naturally falls to women to change men for the better. Feminism says nothing about how to accomplish this impossible task, it only says that men must change. And not only that, feminists have made the mistaken assumption that leadership is about control, and therefore through female henpecking and nagging, which is what passes for female leadership, men will eventually come around to the feminist way of thinking, and everyone will be happy again. Of course, they were happy before, but feminism doesn't like to talk about that.

There's just one problem, and that may be man's best defense against feminism. When someone leads, men become followers, and that is exactly what had happened to many husbands of newly converted Surrendered Wives. When a man's wife becomes domineering and nagging, he simply accepts her leadership and withdraws. The more she nags, the fewer decisions he makes for himself; he is relying on his new leader to tell him what to do. The more she micromanages his life, the more he needs to be micromanged because in his mind it's her responsibility as a leader to give orders. If something goes wrong, he blames her, because she's made herself the leader, and it is her poor leadership which has allowed this to happen. And if such a wife fails to give orders, the man will do as he pleases, untill she corrects him. Many women have nagged themselves right into unhappy marriages.

Depending on what choices she makes, there are a few different possibilities for what will happen in such a scenario. If she continues to try to play the role of leader her husband will withdraw farther and farther untill the couple is married in name only. They may find a balance, but the happiness that they enjoyed at the beginning of their marriage will never return. If the nagging continues far enough, one of the two parties will eventually get fed-up, either the woman will leave, and the two will end up in divorce court, or the man's instincts concerning leadership will kick in and arguments will begin. If the arguments progress far enough, the man will eventually resort to physical violence to try to get the woman to give up the leadership role. He does this not because he wants to harm her, but because this is how he would treat a man who had become the sort of corrupted leader that his wife has become.

Of, if the couple is very lucky, the wife will surrender. She will stop nagging, and she herself will withdraw. At first, the man will be confused and insecure, but in a relatively short span of time, his instinct to provide for his family will assert its self. If his wife shows trust in him, he will feel like a leader, and he will begin feel the leader's obligation. If she is vulnerable he will feel compelled to protect her. The more she allows him to lead, the more he will lead. He will eventually come out of his withdrawn state, and begin to be a pro-active contributor to the marriage. And when his wife expresses need for intimacy, he will happily provide for her emotional need, not because he is being forced, but because he is being allowed to do so. If his wife allows him to love her, he will, because remember that if he does not, his line will not survive.

This does not mean that a wife needs to completely suppress her personality, it does mean that she needs to do away with feminist notions of "female strength," which is simply code for "acting like a bitch." Remember the only thing that a surrendered wife really needs to do is to stop trying to run her husband's life. I certainly don't think that it's absolutely necessary in every case for a husband to micromanage his surrendered wife's life either. I recognize that in order to learn how to surrender, some women will need an extreme level of micromanagement from their husbands, but this should probably be a temporary solution, and a few truly stubborn ones will need it constantly. But for the most part, once a woman learns how not to try to control everything about her man, then the two can easily come to a more balanced arrangement, as long as she doesn't try to exert control over his life. By the same token, a husband should be highly receptive to his surrendered wife's influence and advice. A good leader responds to the needs of his followers, and carefully considers what they have to say.

And thus, in this way, a surrendered wife will always be happier than her feminist counter-part.