Guy Spiro: John, I usually like to start by asking people to briefly tell the story of how they came to their work.

John Gray: I had an unusual background for becoming an expert at relationships. I was a celibate monk for nine years of my early adult life and didn’t start having romantic relationships until I was 28 years old. I had a different perspective when I entered into having romantic relationships because I’d already found a sense of inner fulfillment and wasn’t looking outside myself for that. I was really quite content with my relationship with God and my spirituality. I knew myself really, really well. I’d had my whole life to learn who I am and what makes me happy. Then I entered into relationships with women and they would have ideas that I should change. [laughter]

     I thought, “Well that doesn’t make sense.” There were times when women seemed to react in ways that were different from me and rather than judge them, I was curious, as if I was a visitor from another planet. Learning their language, learning the way they responded to things, learning what made them happy was really quite a fun journey for me. Gradually I developed these ideas of men are from Mars, women are from Venus, which is unique in that it is a non-judgmental or critical approach to how women and men commonly approach relationships. Without understanding that they are different, they tend to make a lot of unnecessary mistakes.

GS: What kind of monk were you?

JG: Back in the ’60s when the Beatles went to India, I also went and eventually became assistant to the Maharishi and lived with him for nine years.

GS: A lot of people have come out of the Transcendental Meditation movement and gone on to do great work.

JG: Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a very happening thing. If you wanted a way to get high without taking drugs you went to meditation.

     Then I came back into the world and began this new perspective into intimate relationships. I took a bunch of the seminars that were happening in California and realized that they were missing the spiritual perspective of unconditional love. Then I started teaching my own, and within a few years had a very successful seminar company. I got married to my wife Bonnie and started a family, and gradually over ten years, I developed the ideas of men are from Mars, woman are from Venus. In those days it was very challenging to talk about the differences between men and women because it was seen as politically incorrect. People would misunderstand as if I was saying women should turn back the clock and be living bare foot and pregnant in the kitchen.

     Of course, that was not what I was saying. I was saying that we have these ways of misinterpreting each other. Often women are sharing their feelings as a way of relaxing and feeling good and feeling close. For men, talking is generally a way of providing information to solve a problem. If she was talking, she must be providing information and looking to him to solve the problem, so men interrupt with solutions. Having been a monk, I knew that I needed my own time as well, but in relationships with women, that would always frustrate them. They felt like if we have a good relationship, we should always be spending time together. It seemed really natural for me to take my own time. As a counselor I found that this is a common phenomenon throughout all men.

GS: In the ’70s and into the ’80s, it was all about how men and women are alike. You really did swim upstream with that.

JG: Right, it was very controversial at the time. But I was not the only person who was talking about it. Robert Bly was talking about men’s groups and how men have to go off and bond. There were a variety of feminist groups forming circles and talking about how women’s needs and experiences are different. They were sharing their uniqueness and sharing their plight. But nobody could really talk to both men and women at the same time without offending one or the other. That became my challenge. That’s really what forged the ideas that men are from Mars, which was a fun way of understanding and accepting our differences, particularly the differences that tend to be universal and the differences that we tend to misinterpret and cause havoc in our relationships. If it has been a stressful day, men will tend to want to spend some time alone. In some cultures men just want to sit and meditate. In other cultures today they want to sit in front of a TV. Fifty years ago, men would come home and read the newspaper or they would have a hobby.

     Women typically want to connect with their partner and share and interact and so forth. They don’t understand. They think that if he loves her, why wouldn’t he want to do that with her? So I call that cave time. Men need to take their cave time. Women need to understand that this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love her. It doesn’t mean that she isn’t important to him. It just means that he needs time to cope with stress.

     I’ve written this new book Why Mars and Venus Collide. It is an update of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus because two things have happened in the last eighteen years. One is that women’s and men’s stress levels have dramatically gone up, and because men and women react to stress differently, it creates a whole new set of problems. I wrote this book to help men and women understand how men and women are affected by stress, and how they can cope best with that stress, and how they can help each other lower stress. This is immensely helpful in relationships. Often, without this knowledge, we try to help our partners and it ends up making the relationship worse and making our lives more stressed.

     That is one aspect of the new book and the second is that over the past eighteen years, gender studies departments have developed in all the universities as people begin to accept that men and women are different. Also, with new technology we can measure through brain scans how men and women have different brain activity, how our brains are different, how our hormones are different, how our different hormonal cycles have played havoc with our emotions and our relationships, particularly if we don’t understand what is going on. Once we begin to understand that, the mystery starts to make sense and we can more effectively give our partners the support we want to give and get the support we need to get to make a relationship thrive.

GS: What are the new breakthroughs? What is cutting edge for you now?

JG: It is very exciting to help men and women understand each other. Women are often seeming stressed. Men will look at that and think, “Why is she making such a big deal out of this? It is not such a big problem.” Unknowingly thinking that, responding that way and saying something like that, sends a message that causes more stress to her, when she is already more stressed than him. He can’t believe that she is more stressed because he wouldn’t be feeling that much stress. We can now see with brain scans that women under moderate stress, and by that I mean uncertainty and change and urgency, being in a hurry, having to reach a deadline, having too many things to do at once, those simple daily stresses bring about eight times more blood flow to the emotional part of the brain.

     That is an enormously significant difference. In a man you don’t see that happening unless he is under extreme pressure. So already moderate stress causes a much stronger emotional reaction in a woman, which has been associated with other brain scan studies on feelings of distress and unhappiness. Then what the brain does is use up its supplies of serotonin to wash over the limbic system of the brain to calm it down. So by the end of the day, stressed women have run out of serotonin and they are hungry to restimulate their serotonin levels. One of the most efficient and effective ways to stimulate the production of serotonin is to talk about problems. So she is talking about the problems of her day and the man is wondering why she is so upset about this and why does she need to talk about it?

GS: So the man says, “What’s the big deal?” and that makes it worse.

JG: That makes it worse. What ends up happening is that she doesn’t get what she needs and he ends up frustrated trying to solve the problems for her by saying, “That’s not a problem. We’ll do this or I can handle that for you.” He wonders why his solutions are not enough, when the truth is that is not what will stimulate serotonin. What will stimulate serotonin when it is low is talking about problems. The man not only doesn’t know what to do for her, but actually the solution for him under stress is the opposite.

     When men are under stress, it just doesn’t show up emotionally. What shows up for men under stress, if you look at the brain and the stress center in the man, it is twice as big and it is wired up to the action center of the brain and the visual cortex. Under stress, men want to do something about a problem, and when there is nothing they can do about it, they become inactive. They go from being very active to solve a problem or they go into inactivity, which is often called the fight or flight response. When men are under stress, they are either solving problems or they go to their cave. The problem today is that they are under so much stress that either men become workaholics or they go into their cave and they don’t come out.

     The dynamic for women is they are hungry to talk about problems and share and be intimate and spend time together, which stimulates serotonin, calms the blood flow in her brain and lowers the stress levels as measured by cortisol. Then, she will have twice as much energy. One of the problems with stress is that it inhibits energy production in the body. Cortisol levels inhibit fat burning, so she doesn’t get the benefit of burning fat and she gains weight and she wonders why and more importantly, she has low energy and feelings of overwhelm.

GS: Just letting her vent prevents all of these things? [laughter]

JG: It is not just letting her vent. It is learning how to listen and for her to learn how to vent in a way that a man can listen. This is the art that I teach in my workshop. I call those Venus talks where a man can easily do what she needs—and he can. This is very simple for men once they learn how. There is a technique and a process and there are several chapters in the new book that explain it.

GS: How does a man increase serotonin?

JG: Men typically don’t need increased serotonin. If a man becomes violent, it is often a sign that he is low in serotonin, if a woman if feeling overwhelmed or stressed or depressed, or hungry, she usually has low serotonin. When I say hungry, I mean after a meal she is still hungry, or between meals she finds herself having food cravings. That’s usually low serotonin. For men, when you have symptoms of depression or you have symptoms of anxiety, it is not about serotonin. It is primarily about low dopamine levels. What happens for a man is that dopamine is the brain chemical that gets produced when there is an emergency and there is urgency. Dopamine is great for men, where for women it just causes them to feel more stressed. For men it causes testosterone production, which then lowers a man’s stress, if he has confidence in his life. If he doesn’t have confidence, then it doesn’t have that effect. But if he has confidence ... let’s say there is a fire in the house and you are a fireman so you know how to put out the fire, so you suddenly come to life. You could have been depressed, anxious and stressed and mad at your family but suddenly there is a fire and you’re a fireman and you rise to the occasion and put out the fire. You then find that you are not mad at anybody and you are happy and you are satisfied and all your problems seem to melt away, because you are producing the right brain chemistry. But we don’t want to depend on house fires and big emergencies.

GS: Yes ... a better way than starting a fire in your house would be? [laughter]

JG: That is the whole point of the new book, which is how to communicate in ways that will stimulate the hormones that women need as well as the hormones that men do. In relationship with someone, you are always communicating in some way. Even when you are silent, you’re communicating. There are always messages you are sending to your partner. Women unknowingly send enormously critical messages to men telling them they aren’t doing enough, telling him that he hasn’t satisfied her. They unknowingly send these messages. Some women knowingly do it and that is when a relationship is really going downhill. Women do it even when they are feeling really quite loving towards a man, not knowing that it is like pulling out a gun and shooting him in the gut.

     A simple example: Two women go to a restaurant and the beans are bad. They can spend ten or twenty minutes talking about how bad the beans are, how can they charge so much for these bad beans, why would people come to this restaurant, and then go on and on and talk about their own bean recipes. To them, it’s a problem, they talk about the problem, and then they feel good and they bond. The good hormones get produced.

     Let’s say a man is taking a woman out on a romantic date. The last thing he wants to hear is her complaining about the beans and go on for twenty minutes about them. When he is trying to do something to make her happy, his testosterone levels which make him feel good, are dependent upon feeling confident and successful that he can make her happy. That he can make her happy makes a difference. So he plans this date, takes her to this restaurant, is paying for this meal ... it is a little thing, but it still is a big deal. He’s taking her here to make her happy. Rather than her focusing on what makes her happy, which would help him feel successful, she will unknowingly just talk about the beans. Then, without her knowledge, he is feeling like, “Gee, she doesn’t like my beans.” Even though he didn’t cook them and it’s not his restaurant, he will take it personally on some level.

GS: She could be talking about any other complaint in her life with the same result?

JG: That’s right. There is a time and a place to talk about complaints and there is a time and place not to. Women don’t understand the distinction in that for a man, and men don’t understand the distinction of the things that they say or do. When she is talking about a problem, it is not the time for him to solve the problem unless he asks. He can say, “Is this something you actually want me to solve or do you just want me to listen?” There can be really simple solutions to all these dynamics that I’m talking about.

GS: So essentially, men should listen and women should praise? [laughter]

JG: It is not as simple as that. Nothing is black and white. That is why my name is John Gray. But this is the biggest problem in the world today. It is such a big problem that nobody wants to look at it. There are all these courses everywhere on how to make more money and how to do this and how to do that. But when it comes to relationships, the books in the bookstores don’t sell that much. People think that the problems in their relationships have to do with their partners. They just think something is wrong with their partner or they haven’t found the right person yet. Rather than knowing the truth. They just don’t know how to respond to the opposite sex. They don’t know how to communicate who they are in a way that will make them attractive and encourage the best in their partners to sustain a relationship. People just don’t know and they don’t have the skills.

     Why don’t they have the skills? We are at a new time in history where the roles between men and women have changed and there is massive stress in the world for women. Women often don’t know what will make them happy. They expect men to do it all and that is a huge dead end street. Men try to do it all and that is a dead end street. They don’t know how to do it all. You find huge amounts of divorce, huge amounts of dissatisfaction, and while the divorce rates are still rather high, as they have been over the last 38 years, around fifty percent, the reason they are not significantly higher is because there is less marriage. There is significantly less marriage than ever before in history. That is simply because people have wised up and realized that relationships aren’t working. They don’t want to get involved in something that doesn’t work. Over fifty percent of women live alone, which was never the case before.

GS: Some comedian said, “The next time I feel like getting married, I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and buy her a house.” [laughter]

JG: I know that one. There is such a lack of knowledge today about how to cope with the new problems in relationships because we are so unaware of our unique differences, and our differences only increase when we’re under stress. With a better understanding of our differences, we can give each other the support that our partner needs. One of the things that men come out of my workshop with is a whole new way of listening and an understanding of the legitimacy and importance of listening to a woman for a longer time than they would think necessary. It gives a great sense of benefit to the woman. I know it makes men cringe at first. The worst thing they think they can hear a woman say is, “We need to talk.” The way I present it though, every single man can say, “This is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I can do this every time she wants.”

     One simple message is, whenever a woman is talking a man, she needs to say something like, “Really, I just want to talk about this. You don’t have to fix it and you don’t have to change in any way. I would just like to talk about this and then I will feel better. I am the one that needs to change right now.” Men will go, “OK, great, I can do [listen to] that.” Normally when men are listening to women, we think we are supposed to change or we are supposed to create a response to fix things or change things. The woman needs to reassure him that that is not what he has to do, he really just needs to listen. Women think, “Well why can’t he just remember to do that?” It’s because his whole brain is wired up completely differently and each time she may need to remind him.

GS: Well, if he loved her, he would just know that right? [laughter]

JG: He should just know. Anybody would know. Any decent person would just do that. [laughter]

     But it is important what I am saying. Couples take these workshops and learn all kinds of new skills and they come out glowing. A lot of single people also take my workshops. For women, wow, what an incredible thing to be empowered with a set of tools and skills and insights to help bring out the best in a man. He doesn’t have to be there at the workshop for him to get enormous benefit.

GS: At the overly simplistic level, men should listen and women should ...

JG: Women need to communicate their feelings in a way that is easier to hear.

GS: Less threatening, less seemingly critical?

JG: Less appearing to be critical, less appearing to be demanding, less appearing to be needy.

     But there is another group of women who are becoming more like men. They are the ones who are compelled to practice being like men and are going into their caves when they get home. Then the man wants to go into her cave with her to try to create some kind of connection, so she pulls away further and further. That is a whole other dynamic that I didn’t cover in Men are From Mars because it wasn’t as common, but today it is much more common. What will happen when a woman is on her male side in a relationship and the man wants to please her, is there is this natural tendency to find balance and he becomes more passive rather than being assertive. That can be the biggest turn-off for a woman. As she is giving orders and directing things, being this “man” in a woman’s body, he will tend to be low energy and passive. But there is a way for her to empower him, which is one of the major roles women have in life, to empower others, particularly their partners. It is easy, easy, easy to take the power away from a guy who just wants to please his wife. But once she takes the power away, then she’s turned off to him and he is passive and doesn’t have the same energy he had before.

GS: How would she empower him?

JG: Here’s an example. Instead of trying to do everything herself, she does less and asks for more help. She doesn’t walk around feeling like she does everything and he does nothing. She doesn’t have an attitude that she can do it better than him. So many women go, “I can do it better, so I’ll just do it myself.” So he will just be happy to let her do what she wants to do.

     Imagine the man is with his wife in the woods and there is a bear outside the tent. The wife says, “OK, you sit in the chair and I’m going to go outside and look.” She just made him into a wimp. He’s going to sit there and go, “Well, I’ll make her happy. I’m just going to sit there and she can go out and look.” They are not going to have great sex that night. If she says to him, “What do you think we should do?” And he says, “You sit in the chair and I’ll go out and look.” Now he’s the man. He’s taking the risk. He’s going into the jungle. He’s doing the dangerous thing, which is the testosterone stimulating thing. That will lower his stress, empower him and increase his libido. He will come back in and they will have the best sex of their life. She will be waiting, feeling like she is being protected and cared for and supported. She will have the best sexual experience of her life.

     This is what the research shows. The hormone oxytocin is what lowers stress and provides all sexual function for women. It is something that women need to cope with stress. Men don’t need it to cope with stress. Men need the testosterone. Women need the oxytocin. When a woman is feeling high levels of oxytocin, she is feeling safe and secure. She feels there is support available. She feels that the man is there to support her, not to do everything for her, but kind of like the emergency man. I explain how to make your man like the emergency man. I explain how to wake up the romantic part of your partner.

     Women expect men to create romance. It is an illusion. Women have to learn how to create romance and they’ll have it. They are the ones who want it, complain they don’t get it, and expect a man to know all about it. If she wants romance, she has to learn how to create practical romance, how to make sure it happens and how to communicate in ways that men want to be romantic.

     It’s the same with communication. Men are happy not talking. She has to learn how to motivate him to want to be in a conversation, how to communicate in a way that speaks his language as well, so that she understands what he is saying. Women sort of look at the big issues and expect men to “just know,” and even women don’t know how to do it and don’t know how they sabotage it.

     This is a course that teaches women how to come back to their female side and how to cope with the new stress of the world, how to educate men and communicate with men in a way they like, so that men will be supportive. Likewise, for men who care about their partners and want to have great relationships, it’s for them to learn how to be supportive of women. The ironic thing is that if a man says to me, “What about me, John? I want to find ways to lower my stress.” I say, “Don’t worry about you. If you can lower her stress, then your stress will lower automatically.” There is not a man that is stressed out that is married to a happy woman. When a woman is happy, then a man feels like, “Well, I did that.” His stress levels go down.

GS: There is the time honored quote, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” [laughter]

JG: That’s right.

GS: How did you come to settle on Mars and Venus? Among other things, I am an astrologer and, of course, those planets are appropriate to the genders.

JG: My mother is an astrologer and I have a background in astrology.

GS: Ah, well, that makes sense.

JG: The way it emerged was that I was teaching for several years these ideas of gender differences and there was a lot of resistance. People would hear it as a sexist conversation. I was looking for a way to lighten things up and I had just seen Steven Spielberg’s movie ET. This was back in ’84 and I just happened to say to an audience, “Imagine your husband is ET.” They all laughed and said, “Where is my husband from?” I went back and thought, “this lightens up the whole subject.” What planet would be flattering to men? Clearly men would relate to Mars and everything about it and women would feel flattered if they are from Venus because she is the goddess of love. There wasn’t much resistance there. They were happy to be from that planet. So I developed the idea and that’s when it exploded.

GS: One very powerful little difference. Do you want to talk just a little bit about what you will be doing here in Chicago?

JG: I’ll be teaching a two day workshop with Warren Farrell, who is also an expert in gender difference and a good friend of mine. He has written the book, Why Men are the Way They Are and several other books. Together we will teach a course on understanding gender differences as a way to create lasting intimacy, romance and happiness in relationships.

---

John Gray, Ph.D., and Warren Farrell, Ph.D., present “What to Do When Mars and Venus Collide: Deepen Your Understanding of Why the Sexes Are theWay They Are.” A weekend retreat August 2-3. For more information, see www.infinityfoundation.org or call 847-831-8828.

---