Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
Mar 29th, 2007 by Bethany
Another book you should all read is Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray. Now, I'm not saying this book will solve all your problems or that everything in it is right on, but I do think there are a lot of valuable concepts Gray teaches and teaches well.
The premise of the book is helping men and women understand some of the differences in the way they do things and express themselves so they can "translate" eachother and themselves to improve their relationships. My favorite part is at the beginning of the book where he tells a story about his wife asking him to go out to the store in the middle of the night to buy milk for the baby. He talks about all the things she did right, and how easily she could have asked him "wrong" without knowing it. Simple things like, instead of asking him and then getting mad and saying "fine, I'll do it myself" when he hesitated, she just waited until he answered her. And instead of saying "the baby is sick and crying and we're out of milk–can you go to the store and buy some?" (which would have been insulting to him by questioning his ability to do it and sounding to him like she's blaming him for all those problems), she just said "Will you go to the store and buy some milk for the baby?"
Gray jokes in the book about how he had to phrase the title in terms of Mars and Venus because if he'd used intelligable lables all the women would have said it didn't apply to them. If you want to improve your relationship with or your communication with a person of the opposite sex, this book will help you understand some ways you can make changes in yourself that work to help you get what you want. Some of the specific exercises haven't been very useful for me and even seemed counterproductive, but many of the general principles and explanations of gender psychology have been surprisingly applicable and impressively helpful and I know my husband feels the same.