To Love and Obey?

A seductive idea floating around the relationship cosmos is that we’d all be better off if men were men, and girls were girls. Is this misogynist bunk or the key to happily ever after?

Elle Magazine/August 1, 2006
By Sarah Elizabeth Richards

Everything was different now, my friend Shannon gushed on telephone. Her husband of five years—who’d divulged in therapy that he loved her but was longer "in love" with her—was suddenly affectionate. He wanted to know what she needed. He promised he’d never leave her.

Just weeks before, Shannon, 35, a high school counselor, and Jeff, 36, and advertising executive, were plodding toward divorce. They fought all the time: She pressured him to start his own business, and he wasn’t ready, she wanted a second child, and he didn’t: she liked to save, and he was a spender. That was before Jeff had attended a Men’s Weekend by relationship expert A. Justin Sterling.

Jeff was sworn to secrecy about what had happened during those three days, but he told Shannon he’d learned how to be a man and handed her a list of solutions to improve their marriage: She should make the house her domain, and he’d stop questioning her about the cooking and decorating. In exchange, she had to stop micromanaging his career and let him take over the family budget. She balked at the last part, but he stressed that she had to trust him. She decided to take a chance and do as he asked…and the unexpected happened: Her edginess began to evaporate. She felt a sense of security. They began making love again.

"My aggressive personality was emasculating him," she told me, saying that a husband must feel powerful in his marriage. Jeff had convinced her that since they both had been competing for control, they didn’t know how to relate as man and woman. When she surrendered, he took his rightful place as protector of the family, allowing him to feel more like a loving, giving partner. And now he was urging her to sign up for the Women’s Weekend so she could learn her own role. "You might think of going too," she told me. "It’s supposed to really help relationships.

I was reluctant to plunk down $600 for what sounded suspiciously like Stepford School (prices have since gone up to $795), but a part of me did find the idea of surrendering to traditional gender roles alluring. When I was younger, many of my relationships had degraded into power struggles: I was constantly negotiating with men about where to eat, how fast to walk, when to have sex. I spent so much time pushing my own points that sometimes I’d lose track of the part about building a life together.

And I certainly didn’t give anyone the chance to feel powerful—I was too busy being amazing and self-sufficient. Why should he negotiate with the maitre d or assemble the Ikea furniture when I could do it better? Once an ex and I took a romantic sunset kayak trip in Maine with several other couples. I was the only woman who insisted on sitting in the back of our little kayak for two because I thought I was the better navigator. I was bossy. I was obnoxious. And more often than not, I felt alone. Looking back, there was no room for anyone to be a partner, let alone a man—whatever that was supposed to be.

By the time I met my current boyfriend, however, I’d mellowed a bit. I let him do traditionally male things, such as hail taxis, open doors, check in luggage at the airport, and kill insects. It was a courtship: He called, he pursued, he surprised me with fancy restaurant reservations—and I reciprocated by making him his favorite crab qesadillas. We were floating along in a "Mars, Venus" bliss bubble, and I was shocked at how much I liked it. After talking to Shannon, I wondered if maybe this Sterling guy was onto something.

A. Justin Sterling, who was born in the early 1940s as Arthur Kasarjian but changed his name in the 1970s, has been running his weekends for a quarter of a century, though he is not a licensed therapist or marriage counselor. He got his start by informally advising women and, he says, demand grew from there. In 1992, he wrote a book called What Finally works With Men: Solve 95 Percent of Your Relationship Problems (and Cope With the Rest). The book’s publication was followed by media scrutiny of his teaching—including several scathing exposes on his Men’s Weekends (men allegedly pee in garbage cans in the corners of the room and run around naked in war paint beating drums and chanting, "I’m a jerk! I’m a jerk!)—and of the acrimonious dissolution of his first marriage. Since then, Sterling has avoided the press, relying on word of mouth for the five Men’s and five Women’s Weekends he runs each year. While he hasn’t become Tony Robbins, Sterling attracts about 2,000 men and women a year to his weekends.

When I called the Sterling Institute of Relationship in Oakland, California, the woman who answered the phone said I needed a sponsor to attend a seminar and that she would arrange one. Within minutes, my new "Big Sister" called me and prattled on about how the weekend she had gone on in 1996 in her mid-twenties had improved her self-esteem and relationships. Now, she was neither married nor in a relationship, but that was beside the point, she said. "You’ll just have to trust and see."

When I arrived at 8:00 AM on a Saturday at an old institutional building in a town a few hours outside New York City, I was relieved to see a crowd of about 120 friendly-looking women who appeared to be a cross-section of middle-class America—as though they’ve been rounded up on line at the Cheesecake Factory. "Does anyone know what happens? I asked a small group.

"We’re going to be brainwashed," shouted one woman, to nervous twitters. The group was a mix of married and single women, and all said they’d been referred by coworkers, friends, or relatives.

The chitchat quickly ended when a stout, sever-looking woman in a long skirt and rubber-soled flats lined us up in front of a table and commanded us to pick up our pens "when I say." She instructed us to read and sign the confidentiality agreement and waiver releasing the Institute from liability for any physical, emotional, or psychological injuries. We also consented to being videotaped.

During the next half-hour, more humorless women in long skirts collected our cell phones and read us the rules: We couldn’t take notes or eat inside, and we had to ask permission to use the bathroom. If we abused that privilege, we would only be allowed to go during breaks. If we returned late from breaks, the entire group would have to sit in silence as a form of punishment. If we violated any of the rules, we’d be kicked out and forfeit our money. The weekend was expected to conclude at around 8:00 AM Monday, but we were told, it would only end when "Justin says so and not before."

Then out handlers led us to a giant windowless room, where we sat doing nothing for four infuriating hours until suddenly Sterling introduced himself over a loudspeaker, Wizard of Oz-like, welcoming us to the weekend. Disembodies, he lectured us for about an hour about surrendering to the experience. Then were dismissed for lunch.

When we returned, we discovered Sterling, a short man with a round face and bulbous belly, sitting in a director’s chair. He announced that he would entertain questions. First though, we had to identify what kind of "bitch" we were.

"I’m not a bitch," one woman protested when he called on her. All women are bitches, he insisted. After conceding that she was the frosty kind, she told us she was considering divorce after she learned that her husband was sleeping with her best friend.

"What gives you the right to do that to your kids?" Sterling snapped. Seventy-two percent of men cheat, he said. Shit happens in a marriage. You deal with it. Besides, she owed it to her kids to stay together. Divorce is legalized child abuse.

"Do you trust him?" he asked, strutting in between rows of women glaring at him with their arms crossed.

"But he cheated!" she exclaimed.

Then he made one of the points that we would hear repeatedly throughout the weekend: In a marriage, you need to unconditionally trust your husband—no matter what he does. You don’t take away that trust once he screws up. "Now sit down!" he barked.

I scanned the room and saw several dropped jaws. He yelled at another woman for withholding sex. He told a neglected housewife to stop complaining and make her husband’s damned dinner at 8:00 PM, like he asked, since he worked all day. What was so hard about that? When he berated a single mother who wanted to date, I started to loathe him. Her eyes welled up as Sterling questioned whether she could be a good mother and drag strange men through the house.

He expounded like this for hours. We should make ourselves available for sex, whether we’re in the mood or not. We have to adjust ourselves to the "way he f—ks" and simply trust that if we are warm and receptive our needs will be met. We are 100 percent responsible for a relationship’s success. Men never initiate actions: they only react to what we do. They have only two modes: valiant or violent. If we talk to men in a way that doesn’t blame them, we will bring tout the hero. The replacement of the traditional marriage with a 50-50 model has led to a gender-confused world, where men are wimps and women have become she-men. The premise of fair and equal also sets us up to assign blame. Women don’t like men or sex anyway; we marry for status and because religion and biology force us to. Still, if you offer your husband unconditional love and stroke his ego for at least 15 minutes a day, you receive the gift Sterling says all women want: to be taken care of.

Finally, at about one in the morning Sunday (by now, we had been there for 17 hours with only two short breaks), we began the first in a series of exercises designed, we were told to purge our pain so we could become sweet and likable for our men. We were supposed to find a partner and scream about everything and everyone we hated in life. The room erupted so quickly with such unrestrained rage. I cowered in the corner. "How could you do this to me, you mother f—ker?" one woman railed. Another woman sobbed into a microphone about past sexual abuse with such intensity that she finally fell to the floor and convulsed. The handlers helped her to a chair and watched her vomit. I felt sick to my stomach, too. This was getting out of control. I was all too bizarre.

Several hours later, they finally let us go to our hotel. We were told that volunteers from Sterling’s men’s group would escort us to our cars so we could feel what it was like to be protected by men. We filed out quietly past dozens of guys dressed in white shirts and black pants, standing silently at attention and shining flashlights on the ground.

In the morning, after I got three hours of sleep, we listened to more from Sterling: Men can’t handle emotions, so don’t make your man your girlfriend. Don’t talk to your man about the relationship; it’s your job to take care of it. Two egos can’t exist in a romantic relationship. So don’t compete or debate with him. Real men are warriors who succeed by conquering, not cuddling. My head was cottony, and I was having a hard time following the sermon. Sterling’s version of relationships was so counter to everything I’d been taught about communication and equality between the sexes. And this didn’t even seem to be about something benign like letting men walk all over you and never standing up for yourself. I got the part that meant they didn’t want ballbusters for wives, but didn’t they want emotionally honest partners who could say "That movie made me sad" once in a while? Wouldn’t they be bored to death otherwise? And didn’t this possibly underestimate men? I surveyed the room and saw other women looking as confused as I was.

Before we could get answers, though, it was time for more crying: We were not to get in touch with our unresolved grief over past hurts and learn how to support each other. One woman volunteered her story about her boyfriend’s betrayal while a group of us touched her arm and stroked her hair. When my neighbor started to wail about her father, more women ran to comfort her. Within minutes, little clusters of howling women formed, and the emotional contagion spread via heartbreaking confessions of abuse, infidelity, depression, incest, abortion, loneliness, and just sheer misery. When one woman flailed her arms in the air while shrieking "I want my baby! Why did you take my baby?" I fantasized about grabbing my cell phone off the table guarded by a handler and fleeing back to New York City. But while I was sick of these people, I had somehow become sucked in. I wanted to see what happened next.

Two hours of sobbing later, as the last sniffles began to subside, Sterling emerged to congratulate us. Someone turned on the stereo and removed the blinds from the windows, reminding us that it was now late Sunday afternoon. We danced wildly to "We Are Family" and "New Attitude."

No we all beamed—some because they appeared to have become true believers and others, like me, just happy to have gotten to move around a little—as Sterling lectured: Happiness isn’t the goal in marriage. Be ready to give up your unmarried lifestyle, and be willing to subordinate your personal needs to the need of the relationship. Single women should never cohabitate with a man. Before marriage, don’t try to control his behavior; see what kind of man he is. Never trust a man until you know you can. Once you do, never stop. Women erupted in applause. Was he starting to make sense, or were we just relieved not to be crying? When he told us to wear the four p’s to work (pink, pumps, pearls and perfume) so we didn’t challenge our male coworkers few flinched. You could show off your MBA or get him coffee. Sterling preached. But whom will he like best? Who will he want to promote?

"I just got my money’s worth!" one woman cried out, jumping from her seat. Was she really saying this? Sure, flattery will get you somewhere, but wouldn’t your boss prefer you were at your desk contributing to the company’s bottom line rather than messing around with the lattes?

Than evening, the male volunteers made us a candlelit potluck dinner so we could understand how to receive love from men, we were told. It sounded cheesy but, addled as I was, my heart swelled a little when I saw the tables festooned with red roses and homemade cards with cutout pictures from magazines of happy couples. "I will always love you" or "I see our children in your eyes" were scrawled on the place mats. I felt as if I’d just received a teddy bear from junior-high boyfriend, and I had a little pang for those days, when love was more innocent—before it got bogged down by expectations, demands, miscommunication, silence, and disappointments. According to Sterling, by expecting nothing, I could somehow get everything. That part did make sense. Love affairs should be made up of free gifts; coffee in bed, weekend getaways, compliments, back rubs. But wasn’t that just a nice way to deal with people? What did gender roles have do with it? I mulled that over as pulled an all-nighter, listening to Sterling pontificate until seven Monday morning, with the goons periodically poking us if we nodded off.

At the "graduation ceremony," I walked through the horseshoe shape of smiling women holding candles to the strains of a march. Sterling reminded us that thousands of women had walked through the circle before us and that we should encourage more women ("Two hundred next time!" he said) to attend the next weekend. The Big Sisters arrived carrying armfuls of roses, welcoming us to the Sterling family. Women couldn’t stop crying and hugging each other. I wasn’t quite sure what had happened or how I felt about any of this. I’d had three hours of sleep in two days.

It will come as no surprise that some have criticized Sterling’s methods as abusive and his institute and the support groups that have sprung up around him as cult-like. Rick Ross, who founded the Ross Institute, a Jersey City—based cult watchdog group, contends that Sterling is a dangerous practitioner of what is know as "large group awareness training," a tactic popularized by Werner Erhard’s est seminars in the 1970s. Sterling uses personal discourse and catharsis during mass marathon weekend to wear people down emotionally so they become more receptive to his thinking. "The goal is to break people down by controlling their environment, controlling the flow of information, controlling sleep, and making them more susceptible to your influence," Ross says. "People come out of the weekend changed. People often become devoted to the Sterling Institute, the support groups, and his philosophy.

However, Ross points out that Sterling does not have the qualifications to understand what people can and to recognize when someone is unraveling. "A marriage and family counselor wouldn’t ask you to sign away your rights," he says, Ross receives at least one complaint a month about Sterling’s teachings and the tactics used by his support organizations, and he’s been hired twice to do interventions on Sterling devotees.

Still, it’s hard to understand why any intelligent, sophisticated man or woman would fall for Sterling’s revisionist—and venomous—1950s schlock. But those who study the battle of the sexes professionally say Sterling is touching a cultural nerve. "Right now, there is a lot of ambiguity about proper male and female roles," says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, codirector ot the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. She detects a shift of women returning to exaggerated feminine roles by being submissive to men or "trying to be more attentive to pleasing and serving men’s desires than being interested in fulfilling her own," she says. At the same time, women account for nearly half of enrollment in professional schools and increasingly manage men at work. "But some of those [work] habits carry over into the relationship world. And some women feel it’s not working at home as well as it is for their careers," Whitehead says.

Such a cry for clarity has led to nostalgia for the seemingly easier roles of traditional marriages, says John W. Jacobs, MD. A psychiatrist who specializes in couples’ therapy and author of All You Need Is Love and Other Lies About Marriage. "The appeal for retro stuff is that we’re desperately looking for simple solutions without appreciating that the old model never worked that well in the first place," he says. "We think it worked because there was less divorce. It’s because people didn’t have the opportunity to get out of a marriage."

Yet a surprising partially government-funded study of more than 5,000 married women recently found that women who had more traditional attitudes about gender roles were happier in their marriage than women in more egalitarian relationships. "Even women who say they believe in egalitarian values are happier when they don’t work outside the home and when husband’s ear the lion’s share of the income," says the study’s author, Brad Wilcox, Ph.D., professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. "There is something to this notion that women, regardless of their official view of gender attitudes, like to play a more feminine role in their relationships." Wilcox also found that women who described their marriages as more traditional said they received more affection and understanding from their husbands. "That’s more predictive of martial happiness than who does the dishes," he says, theorizing that women who don’t work outside the home may have more time to spend with their husbands, so they have a stronger relationship.

But others maintain that though traditional couples may fight less about childcare and housework there’s no evidence that those marriages are better. "Many men don’t want to be dominated, but they want a woman they can respect. They want a woman who has her own strength and perspective." Says Bay Area psychologist Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., author of The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework. "I disagree that women should be compliant. That didn’t work for many, many years. So many women were depressed and resentful. The best relationships are where both feel a sense of power and control."

Stephanie Coontz, historian at The Evergreen State College and author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage, agrees. "You look back at stable 1950s marriages, and the best you can say about many of them is that they were based on affectionate contempt," she says. She cites a growing body of research that counters Wilcox’s study; showing one of the most consistent predictors of marital satisfaction is egalitarian ideas and sharing of housework and childcare. "Men with more traditional attitudes are more likely to end up divorced, usually because the women can’t stand it anymore," she explains. "What will happen is that women will give in for a while and then they will start silently counting up their resentments, and they’ll blow up at a point where the man doesn’t even know anything is wrong."

Coontz made sense to me: You could keep up the submissive act for a while, but it couldn’t be all about him forever. After the seminar, I called Sterling to talk over the conflicting research. He declined to comment, but his wife of three years, Lynn, who also works as the Weekend’s registration director, explained that I had gotten it all wrong. It isn’t about sacrificing your own needs, she says; it’s about them met by "living in your feminine power."

"Women get in touch with that for the first time in their lives. They realize they don’t have to live like a man," she says of the Weekends. "We learn the differences between men and women and respect the differences between men and women. Women are confused about their priorities of work and family. [The seminars] are a place they work that out."

"Being married and having children is not for everyone. It’s about women knowing and admitting what their priorities are and having the courage to live by them and not just going with what the trend is. There’s nothing subservient about that," she says. "Knowing who you are and becoming the strongest woman in your life…For the last quarter of the century, women were trying to do it all, and you know how that turned out. Now, we help women choose what they want."

I was unconvinced. If you had to take 100 percent responsibility for a marriage, withheld sharing your emotions from a man, and couldn’t even express your needs in bed, would you be satisfied? How was this power? And unions where men were relegated to only being protectors and providers while you shared real intimacy with other women didn’t sound like much fun for them, either.

Out of curiosity, I tried out some of Sterling’s principles to see how my boyfriend would react. I showered him with compliments. I bitched about my work to my girlfriend and "spared" him the misery. When we went skiing, I let him go ahead of me, even though I’m faster. I deferred to his brunch suggestions. I shut up during his Sunday Fox talk shows. When I blathered on about how I appreciated how he made me feel taken care of when hailed taxis, I notices him looking at like I had put one of the goons’ long skirts.

But when he announced how much he liked the latest round of Supreme Court justices, I couldn’t take it anymore. I went off and told him he was crazy. As he smiled while I ranted, it suddenly occurred to me that he was baiting me. He wanted the old me back—the one who yakked his ear off about hating eggs Benedict and Bush. And that’s when it hit me: My guy may carry the bags, make the restaurant reservations, and steer the kayaks in our relationship, but he also brings me coffee in bed, clips out story ideas for me, and holds me when I’m upset. Sometimes we play along gender lines; sometimes we don’t. Sometimes I’m a bitch, and sometimes he’s a jerk. But we both offer each other unconditional love and share responsibility for "the relationship." We’re partners. And that’s more than enough for me.