A Response to the Christian Defense of Laura Doyle's Intimacy Skills

As I have raised concerns about Laura Doyle's Intimacy Skills—particularly their application in marriages affected by abuse, addiction, coercion, and chronic deception—I have had conversations with a number of Christian and Catholic women who practice, coach, or defend these skills.

What has been interesting to me is how remarkably similar many of the responses have been.

Again and again, the conversation moves away from the substance of the concerns I am raising and toward personal testimony: the skills transformed my marriage. They taught me to surrender. They helped me stop trying to control my husband. They taught me to respect his free will. They brought me closer to Christ. They helped me choose faith over fear.

I don't dismiss those testimonies. I believe women when they tell me something has brought greater peace to their lives or helped them grow spiritually. Personal testimony matters.

What concerns me is when that testimony becomes the answer to a fundamentally different question: What happens when this methodology is given to a woman experiencing abuse, addiction, coercion, or chronic deception—particularly when she does not yet recognize what she is experiencing?

I have also noticed that, among Christian defenders of the skills, the response frequently becomes theological. Surrender, relinquishing expectations, focusing on one's own behavior, and respecting a husband's free will are associated with trust in God, faith, mercy, Marian surrender, and keeping one's eyes fixed on Christ. Seeking accountability, confronting wrongdoing, pursuing justice, or protecting oneself can then be subtly contrasted with those virtues—as attempts to control another person, focus on his sin, demand justice, act from fear, or take one's eyes off Christ.

I think that deserves a serious theological response.

Surrender Does Not Mean Passivity

My work with women and couples is itself deeply connected to evangelization. I have had the privilege of watching people return to Christ through recovery, truth-telling, repentance, accountability, and healing. For me, the question of who Christ is necessarily shapes how I understand who Christ says we are and what He calls us to do.

Scripture does not describe us merely as passive recipients of God's action. We are His children, co-heirs with Christ, and God's co-workers. Surrendering an outcome to God therefore does not require withdrawing from participation in His work. I can trust God completely while also doing what He has clearly commanded me to do.

Scripture is remarkably clear about some of those commands.

Isaiah tells us to “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression.” Proverbs tells us to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy. When Jesus announces His own mission in Luke, quoting Isaiah, He speaks of good news to the poor, liberty to captives, and freedom for the oppressed.

Both people trapped in addiction and spouses experiencing abuse can be captive to profoundly destructive realities. Sometimes they are also economically vulnerable, isolated, or otherwise without adequate protection. Christian concern for oppression is not somehow separate from Christian concern for marriage. It belongs inside it.

Mary Embodies the Both/And

I find the Gospel of Luke particularly meaningful because Marian imagery is sometimes invoked in Christian defenses of the Intimacy Skills. The contrast is occasionally framed as a movement away from the grasping or controlling posture of Eve and toward the trusting surrender of our Blessed Mother.

Yet Luke's infancy narrative preserves an extraordinarily intimate account of Mary's experience, and Christian tradition and biblical scholarship have long considered the possibility that Mary herself, directly or indirectly, was among the sources behind this material. We cannot know that with certainty. The portrait of Mary that Luke actually gives us, however, is striking.

Mary's surrender is not passive.

Her fiat is followed by the Magnificat—a proclamation of a God who “has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly,” and who “has filled the hungry with good things.”

The Marian spirituality I see in Luke does not require us to choose between surrender to God and concern for justice.

Mary embodies both.

Faith, Justice, and Loving Confrontation

Jesus is equally clear that mercy does not require us to avoid directly naming and confronting sin.

In Luke 17:3, He tells His disciples, “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.”

That is meaningfully different from reducing our response to wrongdoing to an expression such as Laura Doyle's “Ouch.” “Ouch” can communicate that something hurt. It does not necessarily name the behavior as wrong or call the person engaging in it to repentance.

Those are different moral functions.

Christ Himself holds confrontation and forgiveness together. Calling someone to repentance is not the opposite of mercy, surrender, or respect for his free will. It can be an expression of all three.

When I seek justice, confront oppression, protect someone who is vulnerable, uphold my own God-given dignity, or call someone I love to repentance, I do not understand that as taking my eyes off Christ.

I understand it as following Him.

Calling a husband to repentance also does not mean believing that a wife controls his free will. Quite the opposite.

She can respect his freedom enough to recognize that repentance is his choice while simultaneously respecting her own freedom enough to speak truth, establish boundaries, allow consequences, and refuse to cooperate with what is harming him, herself, or others.

That's not pride. It isn't mothering a husband. It is accepting the responsibility God has actually given us while refusing the responsibility He has not.

This is another place where I see a profoundly Catholic both/and rather than an either/or.

I can leave ultimate justice to the Father and work for justice alongside Him as His daughter. I can surrender the outcome and still participate in His work. I can respect another person's freedom and call him to repentance. I can extend mercy without removing consequences. I can keep my eyes fixed on Christ while looking directly at suffering and responding to it.

I would therefore be very hesitant to elevate a private sense that God has “called” someone to a particular marital response above the things God has already clearly called Christians to do in Scripture—to seek justice, correct oppression, defend the vulnerable, speak truth, and call one another away from sin.

When Personal Testimony Becomes a Spiritual Hierarchy

This is where I become particularly concerned about some of the Christian responses I have received.

The language is often beautiful: keeping one's gaze on Christ, walking on water, surrendering to God, choosing faith over fear, becoming more like Mary, extending mercy to the prodigal, trusting the Holy Spirit.

None of those things are problematic in themselves.

The problem arises when one particular marital response becomes associated with those virtues while other responses are implicitly associated with their opposites.

If remaining, relinquishing expectations, reducing confrontation, and focusing primarily on one's own behavior are described as surrender, faith, mercy, and trust, what does that imply about the woman who establishes a hard boundary? What about the woman who insists upon accountability? The woman who exposes what has been hidden? The woman who protects her children? The woman who separates? The woman who ultimately leaves?

Is she less surrendered?

Is she choosing fear instead of faith?

Is she demanding justice rather than extending mercy?

Is she looking down at the storm rather than keeping her eyes on Christ?

I don't believe so.

All said, discernment is deeply personal. What I cannot accept is the implication that remaining is therefore inherently the more surrendered, Marian, merciful, or faith-filled response.

Loving confrontation does not necessarily represent fear rather than faith. It actually requires extraordinary faith.

This is where I believe humility and curiosity about other women's stories become essential.

Your testimony matters. My testimony matters. The testimony of the woman whose marriage improved after practicing the Intimacy Skills matters.

So does the testimony of the woman whose life became safer and more truthful when she lovingly confronted abuse and refused to tolerate it.

No single testimony gets to become the theological measuring stick for everyone else's faithfulness.

The Question That Still Hasn't Been Answered

This brings me back to the concern that started these conversations.

The question isn't whether Laura Doyle's skills have helped some women. I believe women when they say they have.

The question is whether a framework that teaches women to interpret surrender, relinquishment of expectations, reduced focus on wrongdoing, and reduced pursuit of accountability as virtuous can be safely offered to women who may be experiencing abuse, coercion, addiction, or chronic deception—especially when many women experiencing abuse do not yet recognize what is happening to them as abuse.

That is a very different question.

A personal testimony—even a beautiful, sincere, spiritually meaningful testimony—does not answer a substantive concern about whether a methodology can cause harm to vulnerable people.

This is what I find consistently missing from the responses I have received. I hear why the skills have been meaningful. I hear stories of changed marriages. I hear theological reflections about surrender, trust, mercy, free will, and faith.

What I still rarely hear is an engagement with the actual argument.

What happens to the woman who doesn't know she is being abused?

What happens when the behavior she is being taught to relinquish is actually an attempt to establish appropriate accountability?

What happens when “staying on her own paper” leaves serious addiction or coercive behavior insufficiently confronted?

What happens when spiritual language about surrender reinforces her existing belief that holiness requires tolerating what should never have been tolerated?

Those questions cannot be answered simply by telling me that the skills worked for someone else.

I have tried to engage seriously with the testimonies, theology, and spiritual experiences of the Christian and Catholic women defending this methodology. I hope there can be equal willingness to engage seriously with these concerns.