Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex

by John Gray

To receive support we not only have to teach our partners what we need but we also have to be willing to be supported.

Sharing Love Letters can be scary. The person writing their true feelings will feel vulnerable.

The success of a relationship is solely dependent on two factors: a man’s ability to listen lovingly and respectfully to a woman’s feelings, and a woman’s ability to share her feelings in a loving and respectful way.

Instead we spent eighteen years learning unsuccessful communication skills. Because we lack education in how to communicate feelings, it is a difficult and seemingly insurmountable task to communicate lovingly when we are having negative feelings.

If you have problems communicating, it is neither a curse nor all your partner’s fault. It is simply a lack of having the correct training and the safety to practice.

To heal our inner pain, we must feel each of the four primary aspects of emotional pain. They are anger, sadness, fear, and regret.

The more we are able to heal our own unresolved feelings from childhood the easier it is responsibly to share our feelings and to listen to our partner’s feelings without being hurt, impatient, frustrated, or offended.

Ironically, the very act of avoiding our negative emotions gives them the power to control our lives.

A man’s common obsession with success is his desperate attempt to win love in hopes of reducing his inner emotional pain and turmoil.

A woman’s common obsession with being perfect is her desperate attempt to be worthy of love and reduce her emotional pain.

To grow in our ability to love ourselves we need to receive love as well.

To receive more love we need to have people in our life with whom we can openly and safely share our feelings.

Back on Venus, everyone automatically gives support, so there was no reason to ask for it.

If instead he said “Would you marry me?” then both his strength and vulnerability are present.

Keep in mind that men are much more willing to say yes if they have the freedom to say no.

When you ask a man for support and you do not reject him for saying no, he will remember that, and next time he will be much more willing to give.

Stretching is another way to understand a man’s resistance to your requests.

Assertive asking means asking with a sense of confidence and trust that he will support you if he can.

Imagine someone poking your arm a little or gently bumping into you. It doesn’t hurt a lot. Now imagine you have an open wound or sore and someone starts poking at it or bumps into you. It hurts much more. In the same way, if unresolved feelings are coming up, we will be overly sensitive to the normal pokes and bumps of relating.

Education theory states that to learn something new we need to hear it two hundred times. We cannot expect ourselves (or our partners) to remember all of the new insights in this book. We must be patient and appreciative of their every little step.

The challenge of being a parent has allowed me to understand the struggles my parents had and love them even more.