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Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex Paperback – April 3, 2012
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The Phenomenal #1 New York Times Bestseller
In his classic guide to understanding the opposite sex, Dr. John Gray, provides a practical and proven way for men and women to improve their communication and relationships by acknowledging the differences between them.
Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.
Based on years of successful counseling of couples and individuals, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has helped millions of couples transform their relationships. Now viewed as a modern classic, this timeless book has helped men and women realize how different they can be in their communication styles, their emotional needs, and their modes of behavior, and offers the secrets of communicating without conflicts, allowing couples to give intimacy every chance to grow.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Paperbacks
- Publication dateApril 3, 2012
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
- ISBN-109780060574215
- ISBN-13978-0060574215
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A valuable, much-needed book. A contribution to the understanding of the communication styles of men and women.” — Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Want
“Gray offers a Berlitz of the heart, a translation of that foreign language your spouse is speaking. And hearing.” — USA Today
From the Back Cover
Rediscover the most famous relationship book ever published
Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.
Based on years of successful counseling of couples and individuals, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has helped millions of couples transform their relationships. Now viewed as a modern classic, this phenomenal book has helped men and women realize how different they can be in their communication styles, their emotional needs, and their modes of behavior—and offers the secrets of communicating without conflicts, allowing couples to give intimacy every chance to grow.
About the Author
John Gray, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading relationship experts, and an authority on improving communication styles for couples, companies, and communities. His many books have sold more than fifty million copies in fifty different languages worldwide. John lives with his wife and children in northern California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Children Are from Heaven
All children are born innocent and good. In this sense our children are from heaven. Each and every child is already unique and special. They enter this world with their own particular destiny. An apple seed naturally becomes an apple tree. It cannot produce pears or oranges.
As parents, our most important role is to recognize, honor, and then nurture our child's natural and unique growth process. We are not required in any way to mold them into who we think they should be. Yet we are responsible to support them wisely in ways that draw out their individual gifts and strengths.
Our children do not need us to fix them or make them better, but they are dependent on our support to grow. We provide the fertile ground for their seeds of greatness to sprout. They have the power to do the rest. Within an apple seed is the perfect blueprint for its growth and development. Likewise, within the developing mind, heart, and body of every child is the perfect blueprint for that child's development. Instead of thinking that we must do something to make our children good, we must recognize that our children are already good.
Within the developing mind, heart, and body of every child is the perfect blueprint for that child's development.
As parents we must remember that Mother Nature is always responsible for our children's growth and development. Once, when I asked my mother the secret of her parenting approach, she responded this way: "While raising six boys and one girl, I eventually discovered there was little that I could do to alter them. I realized it was all in God's hands. I did my best and God did the rest." This realization allowed her to trust the natural growth process. It not only made the process easier for her, but also helped her to not get in the way. This insight is important for every parent. If one doesn't believe in God, one can just substitute "genes" - It's all in the genes.
By applying positive-parenting skills, parents can learn to support their children's natural growth process and to avoid interfering. Without an understanding of how children naturally develop, parents commonly experience unnecessary frustration, disappointment, worry, and guilt and unknowingly block or inhibit parts of their children's development. For example, when a parent doesn't understand a child's unique sensitivity, not only is the parent more frustrated, but the child gets the message something is wrong with him. This mistaken belief, "something is wrong with me," becomes imprinted in the child and the gifts that come from increased sensitivity are restricted.
Every Child Has His or Her Own Unique Problems
Besides being born innocent and good, every child comes into this world with his or her own unique problems. As parents, our role is to help children face their unique challenges. I grew up in a family of seven children and, although we had the same parents and the same opportunities, all seven children turned out completely different. I now have three daughters ages twenty-five, twenty-two, and thirteen. Each one is, and has always been, completely different, with a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
As parents, we can help our children, but we cannot take away their unique problems and challenges. With this insight, we can worry less, instead of focusing on changing them or solving their problems. Trusting more helps the parent as well as the child. We can let our children be themselves and focus more on helping them grow in reaction to life's challenges. When parents respond to their children from a more relaxed and trusting place, children have a greater opportunity to trust in themselves, their parents, and the unknown future.
Each child has his or her own personal destiny. Accepting this reality reassures parents and helps them to relax and not take responsibility for every problem a child has. Too much time and energy is wasted trying to figure out what we could have done wrong or what our children should have done instead of accepting that all children have issues, problems, and challenges. Our job as parents is to help our children face and cope with them successfully. Always remember that our children have their own set of challenges and gifts, and there is nothing we can do to alter who they are. Yet we can make sure that we give them the opportunities to become the best they can be.
Children have their own set of challenges and gifts, and there is nothing we can do to alter who they are.
At difficult times, when we begin to think something is wrong with our children, we must come back to remembering that they are from heaven. They are perfect the way they are and have their own unique challenges in life. They not only need our compassion and help, but they also need their challenges. Their unique obstacles to overcome are actually necessary for them to become all that they can become. The problems they face will assist them in finding the support they need and in developing their special character.
Children need compassion and help, but they also need their unique challenges to grow.
For every child, the healthy process of growing up means there will be challenging times. By learning to accept and embrace the limitations imposed by their parents and the world, children can learn such essential life skills as forgiveness, delayed gratification, acceptance, cooperation, creativity, compassion, courage, persistence, self-correction, self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and self-direction. For example:
* Children cannot learn to be forgiving unless there is someone to forgive.
* Children cannot develop patience or learn to delay gratification if everything comes their way when they want it.
* Children cannot learn to accept their own imperfections if everyone around them is perfect.
* Children cannot learn to cooperate if everything always goes their way.
* Children cannot learn to be creative if everything is done for them.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venusby Gray, John Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.Copyright © 2003 Francess Lantz
All right reserved.
Product details
- ASIN : 0060574216
- Publisher : Harper Paperbacks (April 3, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780060574215
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060574215
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Men's Gender Studies
- #31 in Interpersonal Relations (Books)
- #52 in Love & Romance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

John Gray, Ph.D. is the #1 bestselling relationship author of all time. He is the author of over 20 books, including The New York Times #1 Best-Selling Relationship Book of All Time: MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. His books have sold over 50 million copies in 50 different languages around the world.
John is a leading internationally recognized expert in the fields of communication and relationships. His unique focus is assisting men and women in understanding, respecting and appreciating their differences. John's advice can be easily used to improve relationships at home and in the workplace.
For more than 35 years, John Gray has conducted public and private seminars for thousands of participants. John entertains and inspires audiences with practical communication techniques. John's mission is for men and women to understand, respect, appreciate and work together.
John Gray is a popular speaker on the national and international lecture circuit and often appears on television and radio programs to discuss his work. He has made guest appearances on such shows as Oprah, The Dr. Oz Show, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The CBS Morning Show, Live with Regis, Fox & Friends Weekend, Good Morning New York, Larry King Live, CNN and Company and many others. He has been profiled in major publications across the United States. John Gray lives with his wife and children in Northern California.
Visit www.MarsVenus.com
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Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2018
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First off, if you're looking for a book to explain the innate differences (if there are any?) between men and women, this is definitely not it. Further, if you're looking for a book that dives deep into communication theory and has profound statements regarding the nature of good communication, this is equally lacking. The title betrays the purpose. This book is a badly written collection of common sense ideas and tactics to use when communicating in a relationship.
Why 4 stars? Because common sense is not as common as people think. I am amazed at the 1-star ratings by "intellectuals" who charge that this book stands on very shaky philosophic ground, and that it does not live up to the high caliber of true scientific studies into communication fundamentals and/or gender differences. Get a grip! That's not the purpose of the book!
This book is equivalent to an "Idiot's Guide to Listening, Respect, and Communication, with Easy-to-Remember Examples." Intellectuals charging that the common person should read XYZ's scientific study about the fundamentals is missing the basic point -- I don't want to know the fundamentals of communication (at the moment), I just want to know why my last girlfriend got offended when I offered solutions when she was complaining about work. Sounds simple? Not for all of us.
I have a degree in rocket engineering and I am very confident that I could tear a book about "Physics for the common person" to ribbons for making vast over-generalizations and ignoring (what I consider to be) key details in the trade. I could easily humble half the readers of this review if we were talking about rocket dynamics. But would I criticize a beginner's physics book if it generates interest in my favorite subject? Of course not! You can't mock a beginner's book for not addressing the advanced issues.
Further, it is hard to argue with the couples who say their marriage has been saved by this book. All idealism and charges of misogynistic text aside - if it works, it works. Period.
I find it kind of humorous that those most offended by the generalizations made in this book are the ones most quickly to generalize. You must remember: Not all stereotypes are false, or even bad. When I go to China and sit down at a restaurant, I'm going to ask for chopsticks, and not forks. Why? Because I stereotype all people in China as eating with chopsticks. Is this bad, or just efficient?
Many men and women fall into the stereotypes as described in this book. Whether or not you agree with those stereotypes as being "right" or "acceptable" is really irrelevant to the point. Further, the stereotypes are just a method of conveying the information. Gray is just trying to document the two different most common reactions to stress, and labels them "male" and "female" according to stereotype. He might as well have labeled them "North" and "South" for all I care -- the point is not the male/female generalizations, the point is understanding BOTH ways of dealing with stress (talking about it or receding into thought) and how to correctly handle it when you or your partner starts doing either.
Last, but certainly not least, let's get off the charges of women-hating. The book is almost literally a mirror within itself, as every paragraph generalizing women has its counterpart generalizing men. While you can charge that he mislabels both equally, those who look at this evenly stacked book and somehow derive a women-bashing lean are simply playing up their own insecurities, opinions, and political stances regarding the genders. The book is an almost word-for-word split between the two (if you don't believe me, go back and look!). If you can only see the women-bashing side of things, while nonchalantly accepting all the male generalizations, then you are reading through your own mental filter, and should take a moment to consider that.
I recommend this book to those of you who may not have the common sense that the elitist intellectuals profess, nor the ludicrous sensitivity to one side of an equally balanced portrayal of (admittedly overgeneralized) gender roles.
To make the the matters worse, we don't always learn the right lessons from our experiences without consciously seeking personal improvement! It is like if we screw up doing something, instead of learning what to do to succeed, we often learn the lesson, based on our fear of failure, don't do it, it's not for me.
That's why so many people fail their marriages over and over again, even though you'd think they must have learned from their experiences. Or some people learn "marriage is not for me", so they don't try it anymore. It's like if you got sick eating something once, you concluded never to eat that thing again, without finding out why.
Mistakes are never the problem, refusing to learn is. If you think your relationship can be improved, this is a must book to read! If you think changing parter will solve your problem, you are wrong! Because whatever the problems we have in any relationship, are the same as the successes we have in a relationship . They are the result of team work! That means we are partially responsible for it. As far as which part, that is for us to face the issues to find out. So that we don't bring our unresolved problems to our next relationship.
Marriage and Divorce are just ways to accomplish something, hopefully in the long run better for everyone involved. Conscious decisions require wisdom, courage and knowledge ( tools). This book doesn't cost anything compare to your pain or potential gain. It is available in many languages. Now you know what's available. You can practice this with your partner, or not. We are given the freedom of choice. With that freedom, we are no longer a slave. That means, we must take initiatives to better ourselves and our lives. Nobody will require us to do so. We are our own masters, like it or not.
If after going through this with your partner, you are still not getting the expected result, at least you will be more conscious about what is really going on. What the problem really is. Then you can make a better decision with your partner what to do. Through the process, you will become an emotionally stronger and more conscious person. You will not be a victim easily anymore. And you will not continue practicing resentment, avoidance, evasion, rationalization, self justifications to blind yourself ..... easily anymore. Your honesty and courage will induce your incredible self love, self respect, true compassion for yourself and others, and your personal power.
Life is to be lived, knowledge is to be practiced! The game of life is not for spectators! If you want to watch from the sideline, you can do it after you leave this earth. Now is the time to live, love and grow fully.
Please remember, from my personal experience, we don't know what we don't know. Ignorance is not a blessing! Be humble, be curious.
The cost of ignorance is like signing a blank check, the universe will fill in the amount as it sees fit to catch all your attention at some point!
May all of us live with passion, joy and peace !
Top reviews from other countries


I noticed how politically out of date it is as it suggests a lot that women are more likely to do the cooking, cleaning, shopping and child rearing than the man is, and he can score points with her by taking her out to dinner. In my house, everything is 50/50 and we don't score points against each other, whatever the author says.
The book doesn't really touch at all on the basis for most couples arguments; money and financial infidelity. The outdated PC issues aside, I felt that there was a lot of nonsense in the second half of the book that I found it hard to relate to. The author boasts how he can 'heal' 20-year marriages in a weekend. I don't agree. Deep rooted psychological or communicative issues that have dogged long-term couples since the outset are unlikely to be healed in 48 hours. I felt the book was a little patronising to this extent.
In the beginning I felt there were some interesting concepts that I cold see certainly related to other couples I know, but then I lost interest around the time he started to introduce writing love letters. I don't see how this is helpful as it is pandering to the lack of communication couples have. Just talk to each other for crying out loud, don't make silly little games out of it just open your mouth and pour out what's inside. Basically, don't hold onto it and let it eat you alive.
I think the book could be revised to be more befitting to the modern societal values. I would not recommend this book at all. A lot of condescending waffle.

If I had continued to take this book seriously I would never have found myself in a happy and deeply satisfying relationship that I have been in for many years. Our relationship flourishes exactly because I stopped trying to apply mars/venus in my life.
I don’t like to be so critical of anyone’s work, I know it was all well intentioned and has helped many to some degree, but over the years I moved from studying psychology to trauma healing and what I see is that many of our core wounds and frustrations are around not being able to express ourselves authentically because of the stereotypes and expectations we grow up surrounded by. Stereotypes such as those imposed on us by our parents, or even those set up in this book.
The binary approach of this book limits the authenticity of ALL individuals — particularly in light of what we now know (or should educate ourselves about if not) about gender and sexual identity. Even if we see the model through masculine/feminine energies, this book is no longer helpful.
Yes people are different and have different needs. Yes, it can sometimes feel like we are talking different languages. That is very helpful to understand. But it’s not as simple as just being from Mars or Venus and it's not even limited to our most intimate relationships. It's all relationships.
There are better, more recent and relevant, non-gender based explanations and theories for much what is presented in this book.
As an example, the idea of men needing to retreat like rubber bands into their caves could just as easily be seen as a human being who simply needs to self-regulate, to go inward and/or who may not feel safe feel to express emotions because of the gender stereotypes or upbringing they may have had. The need to retreat and socialise in community is a very healthy cycle for self-regulation - for ALL genders. How much we need to retreat or socialise can depend on all kinds of things, including levels of stress.
As John Gray himself writes, it's mostly (*heterosexual) women who read this book - and I believe it's as harming to us to buy into the idea of someone else's outdated idea of the kind of woman we should be. No disrespect - but it’s time to update our ideas again, just as we update our technology.
What has helped my relationship with my partner thrive is having learned to have a better relationship with myself first. Most of the times I have been upset or frustrated have really been about my own personal baggage that needed to be understood and healed. And vice versa. Then accepting and embracing that my partner has a different experience, history and programming to me and together we discover the alchemy of what happens when we come together in our own unique way. We've found that understanding the Polyvagal Theory has helped give us a language around our stressful emotions that removes blame and helps us to co-regulate - this helps us avoid disagreements or to work our way through them constructively.
If you are interested in improving your relationships, I highly recommend learning more about emotional intelligence, the Polyvagal Theory (particularly the work of Deb Dana who presents it in a very user friendly way - she has plenty of talks on YouTube), learn to self-regulate your emotions (mindfulness courses are excellent for this), do your personal healing and you’ll see how it transforms the way you relate to others. Esther Perel is also a more relevant expert on relationships. If you want to go further, learn about attachment theory and IFS... there's so much more out there.

I didn't even manage the first chapter. Example- Sue should not comment if Tom is driving and is lost as he will feel unappreciated - when Sue doesn't comment, Tom feels valued and appreciates her consideration. WTF? It's like reading a Woman's own guide from the 1950s. This is just brain numbing rubbish

This is a relationship book for adult men and women… yet it is written for children, smart last year primary school children who have a limitless attention span. The idea that men and women are from different planets and forgot they’re not the same, isn’t just on the cover, it’s not even just in the intro (which is a good place for it), it’s in the entire book. Every page is so condescendingly simplistic, I felt like I was watching one of Laci Greens old YouTube videos on sex ed.
And much like Laci Greens old content, most of it isn’t necessarily bad advice, the problem is that it genuinely doesn’t know exactly what it is talking about, yet it’s stating opinions as if it’s proven fact.
Now there are differences between the sexes, in fact there’s far more difference than similarities, but there are some similarities. This book goes on as if there are none, it just makes blanket black and white generalizations about the sexes, that doesn’t take into account the grey. As such, the generalisations are wrong.
For example, he talks about how when women complain about issues, they don’t want to have solutions, they just want to empathized with, while men don’t want to be empathized with when complaining about problems, because men only complain about something if they want advice. Now to some extent this is true, it might even be more true than false, but it is at least partly false. As a man myself, there has been some times in my life where I haven’t been at my strongest, and just needed to vent and have someone validate it, and in my life at least 3 different women have responded to me like this unempathetically with advice. But as far as this book is concerned, that cross over never happens.
Honestly, this reads as a man who has generalized himself as a representative of all men, and his wife as a representative of all women, not accounting any of those differences to personality type or upbringing, and accounting all of them to innate gender. And he’s done so with short, overly simplistic, black and white metaphors, stretched to ridiculous excess.
Seriously, all books have filler, that’s par for the course. If a book doesn’t have filler it’s either a pamphlet, or a really good book. I have never seen so much filler in my life. The second chapter can literally be done in one sentence that it does in 15 pages, and still has the exact same amount of information provided: “Emotional people don’t want advise, they want empathy, for people only want advise when they ask for it”. How does someone stretch a sentence like that into 15 pages and not add any more value to it what so ever?
Honestly, this just makes me think there needs to be a case study to find out why things like this or Laci Greens old content become so popular in the first place.
1 star.