Mars and Venus I

To the best of my own knowledge, I have no friends at all who are fans of John Gray's Mars and Venus industry. Standing in their shoes, I'd have to say they have a point.

Gray doesn't have any training relevant to the kind of advice he offers--although you must admit that being the head trainer at hundreds of seminars probably amounts to a real education for the trainer. His gender schema is so simplistic, you wonder whether to laugh at it or cry. Kvetching is, I believe, the accepted middle way.

He applies his arguments so very broadly that he ends up saying "this is what (all) men are like," a claim so aggressive that not even he could have much confidence in it. And he has constructed a system in which nothing, absolutely nothing, can be counted as evidence against the truth and usefulness of what he is saying.

But I am not standing in my friends' shoes. I am standing in my own shoes and I am a fan of Mars and Venus. It's really awkward for me, as you'd imagine.

I don't have any rebuttals to make against the criticisms my friends make, nor of the legion of well-credentialed counselors and researchers who make even nastier and better grounded criticisms. And I don't want to make any rebuttals. Here is the single claim that grounds and "justifies" my commitment to John Gray's work. When I do what he says to do, it always turns out better than if I did what I would otherwise have done. Or, more briefly: it works.

My friends don't argue against that. Nor, I am happy to say, does my wife.

Let me give you an example. This is the first one that grabbed my attention. The chart to which I am referring can be found on pp. 119--120 of Mars and Venus on a Date. The section is headed "Explanations Don't Work on Venus."

He Says: I’m sorry that I was late. There was a huge accident on the bridge. The traffic was terrible. It was so hot and it took so long, I was stuck behind this huge truck…

She Hears: I have a good reason for being late, so you shouldn't be so upset about this. You should be happy that I made it here at all.

Now I am the kind of guy who really hates to be at fault. I am not the only man in my acquaintance who has that particular difficulty. All my inclinations, before I read this chapter, would be to say exactly what his schmuck said. If I were told that "she" would hear what I said as this woman has heard it, I would have argued that she doesn't have any right to hear it that way and that she really ought, in the spirit of fairness, to be more generous than that. You can see what this chart would have meant to me. It was a slap in the face.

So to the best of my ability, I say whatever it takes to enable her to hear that I am sorry to have inconvenienced her. That is really the only point worth making first. Later on, maybe, there will be time for an explanation, but by that time it will not be heard as a reason why she really should feel differently than she does feel.

So here's my John Gray dilemma. I don't like his views. I don't like his system. When I do what he says to do, it works. The cost to me, so far as this topic is concerned--you noticed, I trust, that the title of this post is M & V I--is giving up my attempts to justify myself; to show that, contrary to appearances, I am not really in the wrong. The benefit is that I say to my wife what will meet her objections and open her to hear my explanation when the time is right and open her to me right away. Those sound like pretty good outcomes, especially given that the cost is so small by comparison.

So I'm a fan. Some smaller, less noble part of me wishes that I could say about the Bible what I have said about the Mars and Venus "tracts," but in fact, the Bible is not a tract--thank God--and the behavioral implications are not always straightforward. (See Frances 1, Jesus 0).