Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus is the most famous book on relationships ever published and for good reason. Its author John Gray, an experienced relationship counselor of many years really knows his stuff when it comes to effectively communicating, healing built up tension and pain, and overall increasing the quality of relationships.
The thing is that most of us have no idea how to exist in a successful relationship because we have never seen such a thing in action. Most of what we know of relationships comes from our parents who in 95% of cases have a far less than perfect relationship in the first place. As a result we are conditioned from childhood to repeat the same patterns we have seen our parents exhibit and to react in the same ways we have seen our parents react to various relationship situations. To put it simply: We need saving!
In its 285 pages Gray explains how the cause of all problems in relationships are a result of differences in the way men and women perceive the world, interactions, other people, themselves and more, just as though they were from different planets (as the title suggests).
He describes the characteristics of the two species Martians and Venusians and talks about how they have different primary needs, communicate in different ways, show love in different ways, give support in different ways, and value different things.
He highlights many important variances in the two natures such as for example the male desire for autonomy during challenging times in contrast to the females need to feel closeness and connection in the same situation (one that causes a lot of conflict) and men’s tendency to focus on solving women’s problems rather than validating their feelings, listening and empowering a women to solve a problem on her own.
After explaining the main theory the book goes on to divulge in detail each of the most important of these differences and how they affect our intimate relationships on a day to day basis.
It then focuses on how to understand, adapt to and live and deal with these differences while maintaining the love and connection that is the heart of any great relationship. This aspect of the book covers how to communicate difficult feelings, how to ‘score points’ with the opposite sex (and understand their points system in the first place), how to avoid arguments and much more.
It’s one of those books where you find yourself laughing at the situations and examples the author describes because you know how often you make the same mistakes and get into the exact same situations yourself… Then after you laugh you slap yourself and say “I can’t believe I DID THAT… How could I be so stupid!”.
The book provides real world examples and practical advice with techniques and solutions you can implement right away.
The real magic of this book I found was the in depth explanation of the opposite species. As a man, I have never understood women and why they do what they do as clearly as I did after reading this book. That knowledge alone I feel is invaluable.
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