Beyond Mars & Venus: The Evolution of John Gray’s Wisdom Sponsored by Acorns

You are now tuning in to Discover Your Potential. So listen, participate, be inspired, know that you can discover your potential. Today we have a truly extraordinary guest joining us. He's an internationally acclaimed relationship expert, best-selling author, sought after speaker, with millions of copies of his book sold worldwide. He's made an undeniable impact on the way we understand and navigate relationships. You may know him best for his groundbreaking work. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but today we'll be delving or diving deeper into his insights and discussing his book Beyond Mars and Venus Relationship Skills for Today's Complex World. And I would, and also explore the ever-changing landscape of relationships. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to our esteemed guest, Dr. John Gray. Dr. John Gray, I'm so excited and blessed for you to be here today. Thank you, Dan. It's a real pleasure to be with you on your show. My whole life has been about discovering my potential, expressing more of my potential. I've been doing this for over 50 years, teaching these ideas as I've been learning them and developing. So, to a certain extent, I'm a good advertisement for we can discover more of our potential and express it. Also, can you start by giving our listeners, I know most people know about your background and your work, but could you give a brief introduction to your background, your work, and also about your own kind of relationship with your family as well? Well, I'm 71, so that's a big, big, big request, but I'll briefly go through. I grew up with a family of six boys, one girl. My parents were happily married, more the traditional marriage. So, I had that as a background that marriages can work. But they worked for a different reason in those days. They had certain roles they played, and those roles were expected, and they fulfilled their expectations. So, there wasn't much to argue about. My mother was a good homemaker, my father was a good provider, and he was also a good policeman for the family because my mother had six boys. So, she says, if you don't listen to me, I'll tell your father. So, that all worked out. And so, the traditional role of men have always been protectors and providers. And we'll get into my new book, Beyond Mars and Venus, because in that book, we explore how that dynamic has changed where women are their own providers and how that affects relationships. And, but as far as for me, I grew up as a teenager in the 60s, so I became a very excited, had a motorcycle, long hair, hippie, free sex, free love. I mean, this was an amazing time of fun and joy. And what I'll talk about in my recent books is that when men do what they love to do and joy doing, they're going to their female side. And it's important that they stay anchored on their male side as well. So, for me, I went way over my female side. And then sort of the balance out, I became a monk for nine years. I was a celibate monk, which is a lot of discipline and meditation and prayer and selflessness. In that sense, and selfless, I mean, it's really very selfish. And from one point of view, I want to develop my full potential. The Beatles were very popular, they just come back from India with being with the Maharishi. We're all fans of the Beatles back then. And the Beatles said, you can get high without LSD and all the other drugs, you can get high on meditation and you don't crash. So that was like really key for me is that after Woodstock, I really crashed. And this was a revelation. And so I loved meditation. I really felt very good at it. Very accomplished. They did research on my brain. I really dedicated myself to it. And after about nine years, it was now a part, you know, following my heart, it was time to come out into the world and coming out into the world, I eventually married my lovely wife, Bonnie. And there was a foundation of having known what a man is and having a sense of myself through all that self sufficiency during my twenties. The world really, you know, it was turning in this direction where there's no difference between men and women and having grown up in a family of six boys and then coming out into the world and being a monk with mainly men, then coming out in the world and interacting with women, they were clearly from another planet. And my wife was certainly that way in a non judgmental way. Because when you have that much spirituality and that much grounding and your self esteem, you don't really judge people as much, you know, if it's okay for me to be me, it's okay for you to be you, you know, the cliche is you can't really love someone until you love yourself. And while that's a cliche, you can understand it from the point of view of if I accept myself and my imperfections, then I can accept your imperfections. There's less judgment. And from that place of less judgment, I was able to develop the ideas of men are from Mars women from Venus, trying to understand my wife and help other people go through the same sort of challenges. And you know, what's very unique about this is that I've traveled to 20 different countries, given huge talks to people workshops and so forth. And everywhere I go, people relate to these misunderstandings between men and women, even though their cultures are quite different. So there is this biological underpinning that we are designed differently. And if we don't understand our partners are designed differently. There's a lot of predictable misinterpretations that will have frustration, disappointments, and communication skills can add to our understanding. But just the way we communicate can avoid all the arguments and the fighting and the lack of intimacy that happens for so many people today when they get married. Yeah, I wanted to just actually go back and kind of what motivated you to write about. I mean, I know you've written some phenomenal books, obviously, but and this is one of them. But what motivated you to write beyond Mars and Venus relationship skills for today? Well, Mars women from Venus had a nerve. It was very universal. It was so helpful for many, many couples, your mother included, she appreciated it very much. And it applied particularly to people that were more in the mode of man as the major provider. And that shifted, you know, almost half of relationships, the woman is making as much money or more money than the man. And in that situation, what happens is she doesn't feel she needs them as much. Okay, it used to be you needed a man to provide for you and provide security. The world was a different place. Now when women are more independent, which is evolution, progression and so forth for many people, that's their choice. The challenge is similar to the challenge I had as a young teenager is when the hippie land came in and men went to their female side, do what you like, do what you like, free sex, you don't have to have a job before having sex, you don't have to make a woman happy or commit to her before having sex. You can just have what you want. It makes men, it changes the biology of men, you literally make more female hormones if a man is moving too much to the side of doing what he enjoys doing. You know, today we see it so common with young men playing video games and free porn online, doing what they like to do, rather than not doing that and working to have a job, making money and anticipating that when I make money, a woman's going to like me and love me. That was a big part of being a man in those days. You had to develop a certain character, a certain talent, find your abilities to earn a woman's love. Well, now you don't have to do that, you just swipe and either you're happy man because you get picked or you don't. But it's a lot of new challenges today and in men from Mars, many, even back then some women would read it and if they were like busy business women, they would often say, I feel like I'm from Mars and I go, yeah, well, when you do Mars behaviors, then you start producing Mars hormones. But the problem is that when women are not making female hormones, they're stressed and that's biologically proven. And when men are not making enough male hormones, they're stressed. So we think a lot of our stress is what's happening around us, but you know, anybody in the personal development field knows it's not the stress that's happening around us primarily, it's how we react to it. And how we react to it is based upon our self-esteem, the support we have, the knowledge base that we have. And based upon how we intellectually hold our life, that generates certain hormones. If a man feels confident, for example, he produces a lot of testosterone, his stress will go down. If a woman feels confident, it produces male hormones and her stress doesn't go down. There's a lot of competent women out there who are wondering, why can't I fall in love with a man? And you know, there's a lot of men out there who are very loving and kind and sensitive and so forth, female characteristics. And they wonder, you know, why am I not getting ahead in the world and why are women not wanting to be with me? Because women are attracted to, over time, to a man who has more testosterone than she does. And that's just testable. You can see that the typical man, if he's not depressed, if he's feeling good about himself and motivated in life, he'll have 10 times to 20 times more testosterone than a woman. And when he's depressed, it will go down, way down. And for women, they have testosterone, but when their testosterone goes too high, that's a problem. That actually a health problem as well. PCOS is a health problem she has. But bottom line, she's stressed out more than your average woman, because she's not taking enough time to nurture the female side of her. The female side of her, because we both have a male and female side. The problem is we have so much freedom today. When you go too far to the one side, if you're a woman going to the male side, you have symptoms of feeling overwhelmed and not being able to fall in love or stay in love. And for a man, you lose a lot of your motivation, a lot of your self-confidence. Your self-esteem goes down when you're producing too much female hormones compared to your male hormones. I wrote a whole book about that because the world has changed. If you just look at these statistics right now, your average 20-year-old man has 20% less testosterone than he'd had 20 years ago. This is a and it's just become normal for men's testosterone levels to dramatically go down as they get older. That is the average today, and it goes down 1% in all age categories, and it was never that way. I'm 71 years old. My testosterone levels are 50% higher than they were when I was a young man. Now, that has a lot to do with my self-esteem, my confidence, my success. Success raises testosterone in men. But does it necessarily mean success in the outer world is going to keep it up? Because you can be a successful man, you come home to your wife, and she says, you didn't do this, you forgot to do that, and I'm not that interested in you. That can crash his testosterone instantly, which is what I'm seeing for many successful men. There's not all. They have divorces. You look at the richest men in the world, they have divorces. Does money solve all problems? Absolutely not. Did you know that nearly half of people age 55 to 65 have nothing set aside for retirement? Listen, it's not too late for them, but you can make things way easier on yourself if you start planning for your golden years now. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start investing for your retirement, because the sooner you start, the more of a chance your money has to grow. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns recommends a diversified IRA portfolio that can help you weather all of the markets ups and downs. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the money you've got right now. You'd be surprised at what just $5 a day could do. Plus, sign up for Acorns Gold, and you'll get a 3% IRA match on new contributions in your first year. That's extra money for your retirement on Acorns. I truly believe that it's never too late to make a fresh start, and that includes changing your mindset about money. I'm grateful for opportunities like Acorns that allow small changes to make an impact and give my money a chance to grow. Sign up now and join the over 1 million all-time customers who've already saved and invested over $2.2 billion for their retirement with Acorns. Head to acorns.com slash dyp or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non-clay and endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 1 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash dyp. I'd love to hear a specific example from your book where you mentioned these new dynamics of relationships, which is really interesting and how the world has shifted. I'd love to hear more about and understand the new dynamics of relationships that has helped couples improve their connection. Yeah, there's so many. I love talking about things for asking. One of the things that men have been taught for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, is you don't get angry at a woman. That was often said you never hit a woman, but usually when men would get angry, they lose control and they hit somebody. That's the more primitive male. But the dynamic when I explain it in my book is for men to know that when you start talking about your feelings, psychology is telling us all to talk about our feelings. There's a time and place for that. But when you're having an argument with your partner, or you're having a heated argument, what happens is men's estrogen levels are going up. Whenever a man is angry, his estrogen, female hormones are going up, and his testosterone, male hormones are going down. When you're solving a problem and you're confident, you have self-esteem, you don't get upset. That's confidence is present with testosterone. When a man starts to get angry, he will talk in that state of anger, and his estrogen will go higher and higher. One of the things I point out in the book is that when you're upset and you talk about it, estrogen will go higher and higher and higher. Now, for women, when estrogen goes higher and higher and higher, their stress level goes down, down, down. That, which was a big deal, becomes no big deal if she can talk about it. This is a revelation from men. We think we have to talk her out of it. Now, ironically, I said almost the same thing in the original book, Men Are From Mars, which is women need to talk about their feelings sometimes just to feel better. They need to talk about their feelings sometimes to solve a problem. That's when they're on their male side. But sometimes they need to talk about their feelings just to feel closer to their partner. Sometimes they need to talk about their feelings in order to discover what's bothering them. These are the things we do as therapists with women and sometimes with men, but 90% of the people who go to therapists are women. Why? Because talking about what's going on inside has an extremely beneficial effect for raising estrogen. When women's estrogen levels are low, then their stress levels will be high. When your stress levels are high, if your woman, your capacity to feel love for your partner is diminished. When your capacity to feel love for your partner is diminished, then you find yourself obsessing over little things that bug you or bother you about your partner. That's called resistance. Then, as that resistance is not overcome through good communication skills, we can get that in the moment, then it turns into resentment. She finds she starts keeping score. I'm doing this and he's not doing that. Almost every woman that's ever wanted a divorce came into my office. She'll say the same thing. She says, I give and I give and I give. I don't give back. She's keeping score. Men, not that way. We have a different sense. We keep scoring a different way. But a man will say, no matter what I do, it's never enough. She never happy. She never happy. She never happy. I tell these men, you think what you're doing is enough. It's not. It's a lot easier ways to make your wife happy. To the woman, I say, well, you've been over giving. You have to learn how to receive. The art of being feminine is the art of receiving. The art of being masculine is the art of effectively giving, serving. Any effective person is serving other people's needs. You're doing as a man, as you don't understand women, so a lot of things you do doesn't work. For example, getting in an argument with your wife is a simple thing. That will close her down. That will prevent her from producing estrogen. She doesn't feel safe when a man gets angry. It pushes all of her fear buttons. Not only does it prevent him from calming down, it causes her to become more and more upset and more distrusting over time. She can't open up and then they lose their connection, they lose their passion, they lose all that good feeling love that they had in the beginning. Because a man goes too far to his female side, meaning he talks when he's upset. And what he needs to do is, if he has a sense of confidence, he won't get upset, but it takes a while to build that. The confidence is if I don't talk, but if I ask more questions, she will calm down and she will start to appreciate the situation in a more realistic way. Then, if necessary, we can have a conversation about what needs to change. But once there's escalation, you just have to stop it. I give men the logic and the women the logic of why you have to stop it. Because instinctively, women feel if we can talk about it, it will get better. But usually it doesn't get better if you're upset. That's called escalation. What do you need to do when you start to get angry? Well, one is solve the problem right then, which is stop talking and start asking more questions. Questions like, help me understand that better. Get her to talk more. Tell me more. You could say, and what else? And you feel you're grounded and you say, well, I'm thinking of, she'll say, well, how do you feel about that? What are you thinking? What's going on inside of you? I'm thinking about it. I need to understand it better. I need to take some time with this. And then if she doesn't have more to say, then you say, well, let's talk about this tomorrow. I need to, you know, mull it over. And I call that cave time. That's for a man. And that's what he can do without having to take cave time right away. Stop the conversation. But usually I don't even need to go to my cave. But most men, once their estrogen is flaring, it's like the volume of their female side goes up when you're angry. You say something nice, like I need to think about this and walk away. You have to walk away. And so couples don't do. Usually women will follow him or if she walks away, he'll follow her. No, you can't follow. You can't keep talking once you're escalating. She's going to his cave. Now, what does he do in the cave? How does he come back? How does he recover without feeling any resentment, whatever? Depending on how long he has argued, it's going to take longer. Okay. Just it's like bruising. You get a bruise. It takes a while for it to go away. That's called shutting down. If you can, if you can walk away sooner, you don't shut down. You say, look, I just need to think about this. We'll talk later. You're feeling confident because you know what you're doing. Men don't know what they're doing with women. We think we have to point out to them that they're wrong or that they're making a big deal out of nothing or that she's just as bad as he is. You know, she'll say, uh, you didn't turn out the lights. And he says, well, the other day, you didn't turn out the lights. That's called ping pong. It doesn't work. You know, we have to become a bit more civilized. People have always done that, but rarely did they do it because they're pretty much getting their needs met. Cause the basic need that women had in the past was the need for a man to provide. And if he was a good provider, then they didn't have these problems. Uh, and that's where all the person in the past came from. It's usually a man's out of work or a man makes too much money. Uh, when a man makes too much money, what happens? He has big ego, big arrogance, and he thinks that his money should make his wife happy rather than his attention, his affection, his understanding, their interactions, and so forth. Anyway, so what I do is explain to men what you can do to recover, which is various things. And I go into detail in my book, various things, but various things that will bump your testosterone level up. But to summarize it is doing anything, doing anything that will bump your testosterone up and what bumps your testosterone level up, particularly most efficiently, is anything you're good at, anything that makes you feel competent, anything that you're confident at, anything that's challenging to you. So that's why historically men would have hobbies, men go play golf, men go play tennis, men go play basketball, or men meditate. That's also another one. That's my favorite one. Introvert. So that's, uh, works really well for me going to the gym. Um, and then there's other things that can raise your testosterone level. So you'll feel better, but it doesn't reconnect you to your partner. That would be things like racing, uh, taking drugs, drinking too much, or doing porn. These things bump your testosterone up temporarily and it will crash back down and, uh, has a long term effect of continuing to lower the male testosterone levels. It's one of the factors that's causing all men's testosterone levels to go down. But, you know, just a sociological picture, as soon as soon as there was birth control and the popularization of, which has now happened, the popularization of, of getting abortions, it's kind of, it's become casual, uh, casual. Well, so when sex becomes casual, men's testosterone levels drop. Uh, why? This is a very interesting concept. Most people don't think about it. It used to be that for a man to have sex with a woman, he had to perform. He had to be, have enough money to provide for her. You get married. That was a whole idea of it. You have a job. You're making, uh, you feel happy through your own success and you're not dependent on a woman to feel happy. You're dependent on a woman to be happier and have sex. Okay. So men would have to, you know, that's a big motivator. How do I get a girl? People can, what do you mean? Well, any parent knows that when your teenage boy doesn't brush his teeth, that body odor dresses like a slob and suddenly they get, come to the therapist, go, what am I going to do about my son? You say, I'll just wait till he gets a girlfriend. Suddenly he's wearing cologne, you know, better clothes. That's because he was trying to earn a woman's affection and traction and he had to make a commitment before they would have sex. Well, as soon as you don't have to make a commitment, which is a very masculine thing, you know, I set a goal. I'm going to achieve it. I have integrity. I'll follow through a purpose in my life. I mean, you know, this is, these are masculine qualities that get diminished as soon as one of the major motivators, the major evolutionary motivator for men to please women is sex. And now you can have it for free. You suddenly lose that motivation to be better. You know, that, you know, my generation, you know, self-improvement or making more money or accomplishing a goal was a big, big deal because you couldn't get laid. But that just stopped as soon as you do what you like and sex was for free. So these are shifts. You know, I'm not saying that women shouldn't have sex with whoever they want or whatever. I'm just saying why, one of the reasons why men don't have the power that they used to have to rely on becoming better as opposed to more so to do what they enjoy doing. When he goes to his cave, he can do what he enjoys doing, but it needs to be something that's not going to produce a lot of estrogen. For example, going for a walk with his wife at that time would not be a good thing or playing with his children. He needs to do something separate from nurturing activities or competitive activities. Competitive activities is I win, you lose. But not in a playful way, you know, to measure one's strength and confidence and to improve your challenge to be better as opposed to nurturing behaviors is you win, I lose. Okay, I'll do for you. And that's my win. It's still a win-win to be nurturing, but it's that masculine energy. There's even books I've got read on by psychologists and how bad competition is. Competition is very, very important and ultimately to compete with ourselves to be better. But sports is always an outlet to find that masculine energy. And women appreciate that. So women enjoy sports too, you know, to go to a game and have all those people going, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's being included to have your team a very important estrogen producer. So the traditional things of culture in the past were there to support men producing masculine hormones and women to produce estrogen hormones. But in a world today, it's so different because women are out there making testosterone all day long. So what they need, you know, one of the nurturing things in the past was basically cooking a meal or cleaning your house or doing laundry, go to culture. You'll see women are very happy bringing the clothes down to the river or other women and talking and sharing whatever. And because it produces female hormones. But today, it's not enough. Most a lot of independent women go, I don't like cooking. I don't like cleaning. And part of it is they just don't have time to do it. But if they have time, they say, I don't like it because they need more estrogen stimulation. So now we have a context where we have to produce higher levels of estrogen, what can do it? It turns out that romance does it. It turns out that conversation does it where a man is primarily interested in her. Not he's talking a whole lot. But she can have time to sort of unfold what's going on in her life to reconnect with him, to de-stress with him, and so forth. And help around the house. Help around the house is very important, particularly if you've got two people working outside the house, where she comes home in a sense her genes are going, the place has to be organized in a certain way, but she has no time for that. And so they really need a man's help. But just help around the house will very quickly become taken for granted. While I do this, so you should do that. And then suddenly, he's not going to get his testosterone boost he needs. And she's not going to feel the extra support because she feels like I earned it. I did things for you. Whenever you feel I earned it, testosterone goes up. But when it comes to conversation, that's the key thing. Communication is everything. Communicating what's going on inside and communicating a request for support and help in a manner that motivates a man and also communication around romance in a way that educates a man and motivates him to do things that will make you feel special, make you feel number one, and so forth. And then add to all of that, which is romantic skills in the bedroom, which are sorely lacking in our culture today, even though there's wonderful books written about these things. They don't always fit right into people's lives. I've written one called Mars Venus in the bedroom, which is very easy for couples to step into because it focuses on male and female differences, which creates a context of, oh, I should do this for that reason. My wife is demanding more from me or he's insensitive and doesn't care about me. We can realize that there's biological reasons why we don't always automatically harmonize. But with knowledge, we can choose to harmonize, but we can't harmonize without that knowledge. Yeah, I wanted to quickly also harken back to you talked about the role of technology. What is your perspective on the role of technology in, I would say, modern relationships and how can couples navigate that kind of new territory? You know, one great poet, I don't know who it was, but made a quote, which is comparison is the thief of happiness. Comparison is the thief of happiness. It's also a source of happiness, okay? Mine is bigger than yours kind of a thing. I am more than you. My house is this, you have that, but I have this. You know, there's always this one upmanship that status, you know, is like, what am I good at? You could be really good at what you do, but I'm good at what I do. It's sort of the way the mechanisms of the brain works and it gives us happiness whenever we feel we have more. It also makes us feel very unhappy when we feel we have less. Now, it turns out that the brain, when you're experiencing stress, stress hormones, when your body is making stress hormones, you go into comparing others have more than you. When you're not stressed, your brain goes into comparing in a way that makes you very, very happy. And that would be a feeling of gratitude, comparing what I have now from what I didn't have. So that's a really healthy kind of happiness, which gratitude and love, which is things are getting better compared to what they were in the past. That's not having to put somebody else down in order for you to be happy. So gratitude is a real key for that. Tell me the question you had again. Oh yeah, no, sorry. I was just asking, I was talking about technology. Oh yeah, technology. So technology is you sit there on Facebook and suddenly you see what everybody else has your constantly being blasted by fantasy. The fantasy of porn is dramatically addictive to males and now more and more so to females. But the fantasy of just seeing everybody smiling in a picture. Now, everybody knows when I pull out the camera, everybody smile, everybody look happy. And then after that, people go back to all their little, she said this, he didn't do this or why are they getting that those people have that, you know, and, but we get this, it feels as though everybody's always on vacation and everybody's together and everybody's happy and anybody who's done therapy, any therapist knows that's not what's going on in their lives. It looks like they're all just having the best time of their life. And because you capture a moment, but what happens before what happens after is not being seen. So constantly comparing ourselves with what other people have or do. And that's not very healthy. That's really hard on us and technology provides that. Now, what's also interesting is, you know, one of the one of the premises of our country, America is freedom of speech. And it's kind of a mirror of what's going on when we see so many people being censored today. In the name of freedom of speech. I liken this to relationships where people feel like, well, I can say whatever I want to say. And when you can't say whatever you want to say to your partner and end up having a good relationship. You know, we all have this different parts of it. We can say higher self, lower self, we can say who we are versus when our heart is closed. You know, my wife would say to me anytime we started arguing or something, she says, I don't feel you're talking from your heart. I get a little annoyed. It felt like real new agey for me when she'd say that. I said, okay, I'll try. And then you walk out of the room and not be mad at me. A few minutes later, we'd be seeing each other. She's not holding it against me, but she would not tolerate, allow me to communicate in a way that didn't feel heart felt. And in the beginning, I struggled and resented it. I have to say what I want to say. And then I realized, we have to find appropriate ways to express ourselves in relationships. You can't just negate people for what they say. And so what we see happening a lot in technology is people anonymously expressing their discontent and really saying mean things to other people. And that's a bad habit to say mean things to other people. And also to hear people saying mean things about you. When people say mean things about you, it closes us down from feeling connected to the world. And when I mean, truth is truth, I'm fine with truth, but when you throw in judgment and meanness and names, it's closes people down. So you're reading all this negativity, you feel afraid to express who you are. And the same thing happens in relationships. When we say negative things in our relationship, which is, could be true, it's true, this is how I feel. But it can be hurtful to someone and also cause people to become afraid to open up to you, to trust you, to depend on you. So we have to be very, very careful about how we communicate. There was like this, you know, along with the 60s, do what you like and get it all out there. We had encounter groups and you say what you want and people would be in groups and react back and that's not healthy. That is not healthy to do. And so we stopped all that, that doesn't happen anymore. What you do is you can say whatever it is you feel if you're talking to someone you're not set with, that's sort of therapy. Wives will talk to me, they'll never say thanks to their husband and thank goodness, they'll tell me. And it helps them come back to a state of more lower state of stress reaction because they're talking about whatever's inside. It has a benefit to sort of let it come out. But it doesn't have a benefit if you're letting it come out and it's communicating to your partner in a way that they cannot hear and feel loved. I can hear you throwing up all over me, but I don't feel very loved. Then it's not beneficial to her or to him. And so we have to learn proper ways to communicate. And so the technology of people being anonymously saying mean things, and ironically a lot of those people would never say those things if it was me talking to you. You could see that this is not working, this is hurtful to someone. And ironically, in intimate relationships, we lose control and we do these things. We say these negative things about each other. And so here's a practical takeaway with that. Again, there's so many in my books, but for example, men, your wife will be saying, talking for a while and you start to feel a little bit attacked, okay, criticized or complained like you didn't do enough. And you little defensive reaction inside. So a man's first thing is he's going to become withdrawal. He'll sort of start to close up a little bit. And when he closes up a little bit, the woman will immediately feel it because estrogen is dependent upon feeling connection, connection. So he's going to be pulling back. Whenever a man is pulling back, actually biologically what's happening is his body is trying to raise testosterone up so he can stay positive. That's it. If he's starting to react defensively, that means he's in a fear state, his emotions are rising and his testosterone is going down. So his pulling away is literally a mechanism because he cares about her and doesn't want to argue with her or fight. So he's going to just become silent. That's called mulling it over or withdrawing a little bit. Then what she's going to do is notice that she's going to because she understands many women are different. She's going to say, well, what's going on inside of you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? And that's where the argument starts. Predict it every time. Well, I really didn't like it when you said this and this and this. Then she's going to go, well, why didn't you like it? Well, because of this and this and this, where you should do it. And it goes back and forth. It's predictable. What happens? I speak to audiences and they all go, yes, yes, that's what's going on. And what's happening is inside of her, she feels that pulling away and she needs reassurance that he's not thinking mean things about her or being critical of her. But because she's already in somewhat of a fight flight, a flight state, she's not going to be able to go to hear when he says, oh, well, you said this and I don't like that. She'll be defensive. And then it gets both become defensive. And ironically, when couples are so intimate, where they become naked in the bedroom, so to speak, these mirror cells that we have in our brain just fire so quickly. So if you're not trusting me, I'm not trusting you. If you're defending me, I'm going to defend back. It's hard to control that. So what I suggest is when women are seeking reassurance from a man by what's going on inside of you, what are you feeling is usually what they'll say. Then a man can simply say, well, I'm thinking about what you said, that's all. And that's it. Don't talk more. This is not the time to do inner soul searching when you're feeling threatened in any way by her or reactive to her, because you need to handle that stuff privately in your cave or with a coach or in a process with a letter. A lot of techniques you can do when you're getting upset, men cool down to relax because when a man cools down, he warms up. This is so interesting is that man cools down. That means testosterone is going up. Testosterone is detachment. It's like, okay, let me think about this. I'll think about cool, cool down. Once his testosterone goes high enough, then his estrogen will start to come up in a warm, friendly way. But it's first, he always needs to have enough testosterone in order for estrogen to rise up in a warm, friendly way. You can kind of conclude, you know, make these conclusions from these observations I make. It's almost any negative emotion a man has. If it's negative, it's because his estrogen, which is emotion, all when you're emotional about it, happy as an emotion, that's estrogen going up. But when you're happy and you're a man, your estrogen is going up, but your testosterone is still higher. You're healthy, testosterone and estrogen is going up. So all positive emotions in men occur when their testosterone levels are in a healthy, healthy place. Another way of saying that is men have positive emotions when they're feeling confident, okay? Not feeling defensive. Now any negative emotion a man has is estrogen is going up, but testosterone is going down. And that's a wake up for many men because they want to be masculine. They want to feel powerful. They want to have confidence. They want women to be attracted to them. They want to be a good guy. And to be emotionally upset means you're becoming overly feminine and less masculine. So let's take some time out to come back to our masculine side, soften up inside and feel the love again, go back and be more understanding and reasonable in the conversation. And being reasonable is to realize when you understand women are different from men, being reasonable means don't tell her she's wrong. Don't tell her she's upset about nothing. Don't try to solve the problem. But the reasonable thing to do when a woman is bothers, let's talk about this. Tell me some more. Get her to talk until she feels heard. And when she says, and do you feel heard, then you can say, well, this is what I think if she wants help, if she's wanting help. But sometimes she just wants to be heard. So do you need me to, you know, help you with that? Are you fine with just talking about it? And she'll say, yeah, I just wanted to connect. So there's, without a thorough understanding of the reason somebody's saying something, we can easily think we're helping and making it worse. Finally, if you don't mind, if you could share just one piece of advice for couples that they can live by, what would that be? Well, understanding how many women are different, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, in many, many ways, and many ways were just the same. But when you understand what those differences are, then you have a key to providing the extra support that women need, and the extra support that men need to be their best in the relationship. And that extra support can be summarized, it's in all my books, it's women particularly need messages. It's kind of like dessert for her that she's important, that she's special, that you care, that you empathize. And that's one, caring. Two, understanding, she needs to feel that you hear her and you know where she's going through, not to have to fix her, but you still love her in spite of whatever she's going through, because you understand that you've walked a mile in her, her moccasins, so to speak, because she shared those feelings with you. And three is respect. And we all deserve respect, of course, but women need more respect. That's honoring her, honoring her needs many times, more important than your own. An example of that is I used to make light of things. And I say, oh, I'm just kidding. Say something that might be a little challenging for her. Oh, just kidding, just kidding. He says, you know, I don't like it when you're kidding. And I said, what am I supposed to stop my sense of humor just because you don't like it? And she says, look, you could be as funny as you want with your friends, but just don't have that kind of humor around me. So I was all like, well, I can't be who I am, as opposed to let me respect her boundaries, her needs, and make her a priority. It doesn't mean I can't be that way in other situations. Same thing when I drive the car. When I'm driving alone, I drive one way. When I'm driving with her, I drive another. That's respecting her sensitivities, understanding what women need in the bedroom, what women need outside, and also in the car are great foreplay techniques. Now, on the other side of this, what men need most for women to understand, bring up the best in your man is messages that you appreciate him and messages that you accept them just the way he is, and messages that you can depend on him for certain things that are meaningful to you. That's called trust. These are all very important messages that build up a man's sense of self and messages that build up a woman's sense of self. And a sense gives us reassurance, affirmation of who we are as good people. And there's just their keys to make sure it works most effectively. And that's a dance of the relationship between men and women that people are just not going to have if they don't understand how different we are when it comes to these meaningful moments. And if we bring in, in my new book, I'll also be bringing in the human genome and how it's different. Our genes are different. Now, most of our genes are all the same. Men and women have so many similarities. It's just there's this extra Y chromosome, which gives men about 30 extra genes that women don't have. We've got all the female genes, but we've got 30 genes. That's all it takes is to create many of the tendencies of our female side. For example, the tendency to become emotional and need to talk. Well, there's a gene that says, basically, you don't need to do that. A gene that says, I need to remember my problems and share them is our female side. A gene that says, I can temporarily forget my problems and then solve them. Women just typically don't have that automatic go-to. They can develop that, may become more masculine, but they don't have the automatic genes to help men to do that. So there's a lot of understanding that on a genetic level, we are different. And then we want to support that difference in a positive way, bring up the best of our partners. I want to just thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your insight on relationships and personal growth. And just thank you for being here. I truly, truly appreciate it. And my goal here is to touch people's lives as you have so many. Thank you so much, Dan. It's a real pleasure talking with you again. And one final thing, people like to have a walk away. What can I apply right away? It was so much I said, but here's something for women to know. Whenever a man's talking, just listening to him, say little comments like, if it's true for you, that makes sense. Or, oh, what a good idea. That's so helpful. Oh, you're right about that. See, these are messages that cause a perk in his affirming his masculinity. And for a man to affirm her femininity, tell me more. What happened? How did it feel? What else? Tell me more. And then help me understand that better is one of my favorite ones, because it really draws her out. Let's explore this more. Oh, that's so interesting. So bring her out is the key. And for men, acknowledge what they do. And in saying that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge a woman for what she's doing. You can't bring a man out. But these are the priorities and helps us bump up each other's masculinity for men, femininity for women. This is Cindy Gilman and you're listening to Discover Your Potentials. So until next time, do something nice for yourself, but do something nice for someone else.