Free The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle

to honor them. It means that you know that you deserve to have new things and things that you love. It means you don’t have to waste energy thinking about how to get what you want by making it seem like it actually serves some other more noble purpose. You’re not a martyr, and nobody has to guess what will please you. A woman who knows and respects herself simply says to her husband, “I want.”
    W HY M EN G O TO THE S TORE F OR T AMPONS

    If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
    â€”ORSON WELLES
    I t may not seem like it, but your husband wants to shower you with things that you love. As long as he knows you respect him, all you have to do is tell him what you want or don’t want, as in “Iwant a cat” or “I want to send the kids to summer camp” or “I don’t want to move.” Whenever he can, the husband of a surrendered wife will gladly respond to these words because one of his foremost goals is to make his wife happy. If you don’t believe me on that point, ask any married man you know how important it is that his wife is happy. I’ve asked hundreds of men this question, and their answers were always things like “Imperative,” “Critical,” and “It’s everything.”
    Whenever I think about the men I know who will hold their wife’s purse while she’s in the fitting room, give up their jackets because she’s cold, or run to the store for a box of tampons, I’m reminded of what great lengths men will go to for our happiness. On top of that, you see men moving their families across the country to be near her parents, commuting to work every day so she can live in a bigger house, and driving an old car so she can have the new one. Could their priorities be any more obvious?
    Still, we have a tendency to ignore the fact that our husbands want to make us happy and to believe that saying what we want is poor form. Sometimes we try to make our men guess what we want so we don’t have to acknowledge our own desires. To get a sense of what that’s like, imagine a server at a restaurant comes to take your order, and instead of telling her what you want, you say, “I think you know,” or “Can’t you see I’m hungry?” At best, the server could suggest that you order the special, or she could choose something off the menu at random and bring it to you. Chances are slim that your dinner would be what you want.
    Asking your husband to guess what you want is just one of the ways we try to avoid expressing our desires because we are uncomfortable admitting that we want something. Here are some of the other frustrating habits we have that prevent us from getting the desires of our hearts.
    Stop Telling Him How to Get You What You Want
    As I’ve said, trying to tell your husband how to do something is highly ineffective. Still, it’s not unusual for women to try to get what they want by giving their husbands instructions about
how
to get it—as if he wouldn’t otherwise know that there’s such a thing as a florist or a mall nearby.
    This doesn’t work because when a husband feels controlled or disrespected, he gets worn down and lethargic. He reacts with stinginess and distances himself because he’s lost the motivation to be generous. If you suspect your husband is stingy, it could be that he’s been so preoccupied with defending himself and avoiding your criticism that he hasn’t had the energy to focus on doing things to please you. If you excuse yourself from having to respect him because he seems so unkind and selfish, he will probably continue to withhold, and the two of you will be locked in a permanent standoff.
    Let’s go back into the restaurant for a minute to illustrate this point. The server wants to take your order, but instead of telling