Forget Mars & Venus, the problem today is when husbands and wives are TOO alike
REMEMBER Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? How could we ever forget? The famous self-help book was first published in 1992 and went on to sell more than 50 million copies around the world. Author John Gray was brutally honest about what he saw as an essential truth; that men and women are so humongously
different in every way — psychologically and emotionally, rationally and irrationally — that they might as well come from different planets.
The groundbreaking book was revolutionary at the time, arguing that couples could get the magic back in long-term relationships — but only if they understood that their partner talked and behaved as if he or she was from a galaxy far, far away.
One sample technique Gray came up with to overcome the yawning gulf between the sexes was the Venus Talk, in which the woman talks to the man about her feelings and he has to listen without interruption for at least ten minutes. Can you imagine?
Then there was the celebrated Point Scoring system, where the man gets points for hugs, washing the dishes and putting the toilet seat down (well done, darling).
Meanwhile, the woman gets her points for somehow managing not to say ‘I told you so’ when the man makes a mistake. And also for understanding that every man needs time alone in his man ‘cave’, perhaps to watch sports or whatever it is they do in there.
Another strategy, especially important at this time of year, found women trying their best not to come down with what Gray calls Resentment Flu; an allconsuming sickness, imaginary or otherwise, that befalls females when they feel they’re the only one doing all the chores and holding the household together.
Is it too Venusian of me to suggest that is probably because they are? Yes, John Gray would say, because
‘The world has changed, but men and women still aren’t the same’
‘men are motivated when they feel needed while women are motivated when they feel cherished’.
The book, the strategies, the mindset that humans are little more than misguided puppies who could be house-trained in more supportive ways, may have been a bit bonkers — certainly, the critics called it sexist and patronising — but the public could not get enough of the plain-speaking homilies and interplanetary advice, even if it was dished out by a man whose first marriage only lasted two years.
Men Are From Mars catapulted Gray to self-help superstardom. The American author became a multi-millionaire and a fixture on the talk show circuit, appearing on Oprah 18 times.
There were Mars/Venus seminars, audiotapes and best-selling videos. There were even themed couples’ breaks, a television sitcom and an off-Broadway show.
Remarkably, three decades have passed since Men Are From Mars first hit the bookshops. But are its pithy observations about the sexes still relevant today?
‘Not to be needed is a slow death for a man,’ he wrote solemnly back in 1992. Today’s woman might be rather more interested in detailing exactly what she needs from him before he withers away on his vine of self-pity.
And in the intervening decades surely everything has moved on for both sexes, in terms of careers, families, personal growth and goals?
‘Yes, the world has changed dramatically, with significant implications for our relationships,’ says Gray. ‘But just because women today work side by side with men, and men participate more in raising their children, it doesn’t mean men and women are the same.’
Indeed, he feels his original rules still apply.
‘Men are still from Mars and women are still from Venus, and both sides still make the mistake of expecting their partners to feel, communicate and behave the way they do, and they feel disappointed when that doesn’t happen,’ he says.
We are speaking over Zoom from Gray’s home in northern California, where he lives on a three-acre spread on top of a mountain, a 15-minute drive from San Francisco. He is sitting behind his desk, smartly dressed in a flannel shirt and light jacket. His office, he says, is built into the side of a hill, which makes it sound like the ultimate man cave.
Behind him is a wall of books, all bearing his name. There’s the original one, of course, and then the exhausting litany of follow-ups, such as Mars And Venus In Love, Mars And Venus In The Workplace, Mars And Venus: 365 Ways To Keep Passion Alive and, yes, even The Mars And Venus Diet & Exercise Solution. ‘Without a nutritious diet,’ he says on page 102, ‘we don’t have the fuel to make more endorphins.’
Endorphin-rich and plain old rich-rich, Gray turned 70 this week and celebrated his birthday with his girlfriend, two of his three daughters from his two marriages, and his four grandchildren.
However, he is no jolly septuagenarian grandpa ready to settle down in an armchair with his slippers. ‘I feel fantastic,’ he hoots. ‘I make love with my partner like I’m a 35-year-old. I feel youthful and energetic and happy.’
He stays this way, he says, by fasting and meditating for up to six hours a day.
He hasn’t gone public yet with his new love. ‘The woman I’m with now is someone who teaches about relationships and who has been greatly influenced by my work,’ he says rather grandiosely. ‘We have hundreds of coaches around the world and she’s one of the most successful ones.’
Whoever the lucky lady is, she sounds like someone who is perfectly placed to embrace the balance that Gray insists is at the heart of every successful relationship. Neither partner, he believes, should seek to fulfil their own needs at the expense of the other. That way, ‘we are sure to experience unhappiness, resentment and conflict’.
How did he win in the self-help lottery? Two episodes in his early life led to his career as a relationship counsellor and to his discovery of the Mars/Venus concept.
Aged 17, Gray attended a seminar where he met transcendental meditation founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famously one of The Beatles’ gurus who had encouraged the Fab Four to tune in and drop out in the 1960s.
Gray became a monk and was celibate for nine years, travelling around the world as the Maharishi’s executive assistant. ‘He [the Maharishi] would have a line-up of VIPs who would want to have time with him, and he would send me out to hear their questions and summarise them so he could give his answers. It became a skill that I used later as a counsellor.’
Ten years later, he went to California and discovered girls.
‘I’d say, “I haven’t had sex for nine years, but I’m not looking for a long-term relationship. I really just want to explore intimacy and understand women and what makes them happy.” ’
And was this a successful strategy? ‘It was! The first women I made love with, we stayed in bed for three days,’ he says. ‘But it was sincere. It led to my first workshops where the theme was making it safe for women — and men — to talk about what makes sex great for them.’
He married Barbara De Angelis, a relationship counsellor who went on to have her own successful career as an author, with books such as What Women Want Men To
Now 70, he fasts and meditates for up to six hours a day
Know. She left him for another man and they divorced in 1984, just as their workshop business was doing well . Clearly not a good look for Gray’s burgeoning career as a relationship therapist — but he was nothing if not adaptable.
‘It was traumatic, but I shifted gears and developed a seminar called Healing The Heart because I learned to heal my own heart after it was broken and she found someone else,’ he says.
In 1986, he married his second wife, Bonnie, and became stepfather to her two daughters from a previous marriage. The couple also had their own daughter, Lauren.
Then came more trauma. While he and Bonnie were on their honeymoon, Gray’s father died after giving a lift to a hitchhiker who robbed him and locked him in the trunk of his own car. The elderly man died of heat asphyxiation. Gray was devastated, of course, but managed to wring something positive from his father’s death.
‘I wanted to experience what he went through, so I got into the trunk of the car where he died. I felt the dents where he’d kicked the side of the car. I saw where he’d used a screwdriver to unscrew one of the rear car lights for air and I pulled it back a little bit more.
‘My family was outside, standing by, and my brother suggested I then try to put my arm though where the light had been and push the button [which opened the boot] and I did.
‘Dad could have opened the hood of the car, but he was looking to get out and wasn’t thinking about how to get in.
‘It was a life lesson — that when things aren’t working, look at something from the opposite point of view. That became a major part of the birth of Mars/Venus.’
Another eureka moment came when he and his second wife were in an astrology class.
‘One of the things you do in an astrology class is pretend you’re a planet, so Bonnie picked Venus, named after the Roman god of love and beauty, and I picked Mars, the warrior and protector.
‘I’d been looking for a way to talk about gender differences in my seminars without people becoming upset. People liked my ideas, but they’d get mad at me for saying men and women are
His blockbuster self-help book set the battle of the sexes ablaze. Thirty years on, John Gray puts on his tin hat to say: Men and women are now so equal it’s creating a whole new kind of domestic strife
‘I’m politically incorrect, but I save marriages every day’
different — they’d say you can’t make generalisations.’
Gray says that the 1982 film ET, about a shy alien, was popular at the time and one night he told women in the audience that their husbands were like ET, from a different planet, with different needs and speaking different languages.
‘One woman called out, “What planet’s my husband from?” I said, “Mars.” Everyone cracked up. I got goosebumps. I knew I had it.’
He couldn’t have known the book, which he wrote in three months, would become such a success. ‘It was gratifying because it wasn’t just women who read it and said it changed their lives, it was men, too,’ says Gray.
In today’s modern world, relationship dynamics have shifted, but many of the Mars/Venus insights are still relevant, he claims.
Men and women are freer than ever before to go beyond the stereotypes of their parents’ generation, with more women becoming breadwinners and men helping out in the home.
As more women take on the traditional roles of men, they relate more to Mars tendencies, while men have taken on Venus tendencies. This isn’t a bad thing, Gray insists, as long as there is balance.
‘Women who work have a hard time shifting back to feeling feminine when they get home, and complain they’re stressed, exhausted, depressed or can’t relax and enjoy their lives,’ he says. ‘It’s important for them to express their female side at home — it actually lowers stress levels.’
If men are needy and indecisive, it can be a turn-off for women.
‘One of the big reasons couples lose the passion is that they are missing the insights and skills to find this balance of male and female qualities within themselves.
‘If a man is suppressing his masculine side or a woman is suppressing her female side, it creates boredom or restlessness. He becomes too soft or emotional and she becomes too hard and detached. He sinks into passivity, and she becomes overwhelmed, feeling she has too much to do.’
Gray says he knows how men’s minds work and credits his second wife, Bonnie, with helping him understand women’s minds. He tells a story about a battle over switching off lights at home.
‘My house is half the distance of a football field and as I walk through a lot of rooms, I tend not to turn off the lights.
‘In the beginning, it wasn’t a big deal and Bonnie would turn out the lights. Then she’d complain and say, “John, you leave the lights on! You have to turn them off.”
‘Sometimes I’d remember and sometimes I wouldn’t and over the course of about five years, it became a thing.
‘I’m thinking that my wife is criticising me for something that’s silly. Yes, our electric bill is going to be higher, but we can afford it. But you can’t use logic in a situation like that.
‘In my wife’s brain, she was asking for something that meant a lot to her and because I wasn’t doing it, it upset her and made her feel like I didn’t love her.
‘Then she found a way to ask for what she wanted. One day, she poked her head into the kitchen and said, with a smile on her face, “John, I’ve noticed you’re turning the lights out. You’re still forgetting, but I love that you’re trying.” She did that three times, and after that I always turned the lights off because I wanted to put that smile on her face.’
His wife died in 2018 at the age of 68. They had been married for 32 years. ‘She had a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and nine months later, she was dead,’ he says.
‘I cried and wailed and couldn’t sleep for a year, but I’ve written books on healing, and I healed myself. I have pictures of her everywhere, but I don’t feel pain, I don’t feel guilt, I don’t feel sad. She’s in my heart.’
Gray has moved much of his work online (marsvenus.com) and he now teaches courses with his daughter, Lauren. Together, they answer questions from men and women still baffled by the vagaries, the knowns and the unknowns, of the opposite sex.
Gray knows that many people will throw up their hands in horror at his opinions, but he says if men and women understand the alien they live with, then they can relax and stop trying to resist or change them.
‘I’m politically incorrect,’ admits Gray, ‘but I save marriages every day.’