In my 60+ square meter apartment, there is no door partition between the bedroom and the living room. My husband Mark and I have been staying here for the past year. When I picked up a hardcover edition of a 1992 bestseller, "Men from Mars, Women from Venus: A Practical Guide to Improving Communication and Achieving What You Want in Marriage," it wasn't because our marriage was redlit. However, after a year of isolation, there's no way we can say "thank you, we don't need" to any form of marriage advice. And lately Mark's colleagues have been asking him to do this and that, and he always says "okay, okay, okay," and I hate that habit. I didn't want to kill him, but I didn't want to stop killing him. I'm sure he felt the same way about me.
I thought of the book as an ironic little book club project, and Mark was very willing to participate. Besides, what else can we do at the moment of the epidemic? Not only will we finish reading it, but we'll also order a cheese fondue set and a couple of royal blue glasses, like a sample of Pinot Noir back in the '90s. In other words, we can pretend that we are our parents, who at our age run their small families plainly.
In short, it is possible to pretend to be a certain fragment of their married life. If I'm honest with myself, the significance of this reading project is by no means just ironic. I suspect that thirty years on, the secret to a happy marriage hasn't changed much. For some people, it's comforting; but to me, it's a little scary. Because my parents' marriage ended in marital opposition and divorce. I wish I could confidently say after reading all those terrible advice they got at the time: of course they're going to break up! Follow such advice, marriage does not fail is strange!
And what about us? We are the cool generation and we doubt everything. We are not the kind of couples who are led by the nose by self-help books. In the spring of my year at 32, my husband and I read the (radical) marriage improvement advice that my parents received at the age of 32, and what can these suggestions teach us (even in the negative case)?
The book begins with the following:
"Imagine that the men on Earth are actually from Mars and the women are from Venus. One day long ago, the Martians discovered the Venusians through telescopes. A glimpse of the Venusians awakened feelings that the Martians had never experienced before. They fell in love and quickly invented space travel and flew to Venus. ”
The book was so popular around the time of Princess Diana's separation that it's no wonder there's such an opening. At that time, the games people played at night were still knowledge quizzes, and sushi restaurants were just beginning to appear on the commercial streets on the side of the road. This book is not a science book, but a work of popular psychology. Still, it appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for 235 weeks and sold more than 7 million copies in the United States between 1992 and 1999, including Bridget Jones in BJ's Single Diary. In 2000, the book developed into a talk show, and Dr. Gray has since conducted a series of seminars and lectures around the world, both public and private.
In our book club, Mark and I read, "Martians tend to avoid contradictions and think silently about what bothers them, but Venusians instinctively have the urge to discuss what bothers them." As if the book's metaphors for planets weren't vivid enough, Dr. Gray also cites elements such as dragons, caves, waves, and rubber bands to illustrate people's tendencies to deal with heterosexual relationships. This book teaches women how to tell stories to avoid angering her man (tell him the results first). In one chapter, we learned about a scoring system and learned about 101 ways to rate them (specific scoring items range from "identifying with their feelings when she's unhappy" to "taking responsibility for making a fire in the winter." ”）。 We also learned that the correct number of hugs per day is four. In addition to the dazzling metaphors, repetition is another rhetorical tool that Dr. Gray excels at. He likes to bold the font of the main ideas and frequently uses various lists and tables. I couldn't help but wonder how happy he would have been when he found PowerPoint.
We learned a scoring system and learned about 101 ways to rate. We also learned that the correct number of hugs per day is four.
Martians are simple creatures that like to watch big sporting events alone after work; Venusians are also simple creatures that get elevated by listening to tapes that can help them improve themselves and love to drink with their peers. Gray assures us that neither of these two people is superior to the other. The content of the book is easier to understand if the reader believes in the word "of the opposite sex," and we see it so many times in the book that I subconsciously think that the popularity of the word is somewhat related to Gray. Although we rolled our eyes countless times together, Mark was happy to say that he agreed with the ideas in the book.
After all, even though his parents were kind feminists, Mark's code of conduct was exactly the same as Gray expected, and so was I. Mark largely agrees with Gray's assertion that "a man's deepest fear is that he's not good enough or incompetent." In my book, I wrote "hahahahaha" in the blank space next to that passage.
The situation has gotten worse. Gray's openness to male sensitivities was appreciated by Mark, which surprised even him. Mark also agrees with a culture that teaches men to avoid sharing their inner world. Sometimes, Gray's words are profound ("Not being needed is a slow death for a man"), and Mark admits that he agrees with Gray that men in particular need to be trusted. When I asked him if he had washed his hands since he returned from the store, he was angry. "Can't you believe that I can maintain basic personal hygiene?" He was curious to know my answer. (I can't believe him.) Because it's the middle of the pandemic! He's more receptive to good news and more likely than I am to forget bad news: "This book is like a time capsule from the '90s," he shrugged, "and not all information has to work or resonate with everyone at all times." "And I'm the complete opposite. I feel pain whenever I see any good advice (when someone says they're "nice" right and believes them until they have a new argument?). I can't do it), not only because I feel like I'm being satirized, in fact, I don't like shopping, but I also have some snobbish little emotions that don't want these slogans to guide my life. I'm not a simple creature, I'm a skeptic, and I'm a subscriber to the New York Review of Books! If I'm looking for advice on a happy marriage, I'll have to at least find someone who is good enough in using fonts.
Perrier stresses the importance of being separated and alone, and people often ask too much of their partners: want them to be best friends, sexual partners, patron saints, etc. It's a bit tough to have one person play all the characters at the same time, and it's awkward to mix these roles together.
This man was Esther Perrier, a Belgian psychotherapist. She is the author of MatinginCaptivity, published in 2006. Few gender relationship experts have a place on millennials' bedroomside tables with their work like she did. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and more than 20 million people have seen her TED Talks. Her readers and viewers are neither implicitly heterosexual, nor explicitly heterosexual, or even necessarily monogamous fans. Many of her listeners believe that gender is inherently fluid. Her world is secular and real, and I think that's where she's popular. A few years ago when she started doing the podcast show "Where Should We Start?" Mark and I became her audience. It's a show that solves tricky marital problems, and she records each couple's journey in real time to solve them. On the show, the issues faced by the couples are complex —immigration, abandonment, relationships with their fathers, and so on—and these topics sound very deep.
Perrier is the kind of popular psychologist who is a person with deep thought who would like. She guides people to explore the human underpinnings that make them attractive, without the need for people to admit that they have any problems. There is not a hint of self-help and self-improvement in her book, which may be her shrewdness.
Perrier stressed the importance of being separated and alone, and her reasons made me feel realistic. According to Perrier's observations, people often ask too much of their partners: they want them to be best friends, sexual partners, patron saints, etc. It's a bit tough to have one person play all the characters at the same time, and it's awkward to mix these roles together. In May 2020, about two months after the outbreak, New Yorker magazine's Rachel Sam interviewed Perrell to discuss how to get along with her partner during lockdown days. Perrier stressed that whether it is in peacetime or during the lockdown, couples must always grasp the degree of "togetherness" and "solitude". Perrier seemed to know that our apartment was not door-to-door. Because she even said, "You don't need to leave the room by opening/closing the door." You can stay somewhere in the house and focus on doing your own thing without worrying about anything else. "Mark and I agree with Perryl very much, and there is no embarrassment that some people agree with and some people disagree with when we watch "Men from Mars, Women from Venus."
Is it fair to compare Perrell and Gray? Well, they do have one undeniable similarity: whether supporting any of them or thinking they're all full of, but almost every guy over 55 has heard of Men from Mars, Women from Venus, and every guy under 55 seems to have heard of Perryl. Both are packaged as passionate goods. When you're done reading their book, you can also sign up for their webinars, lectures, and presentations. Now Gray has even launched a video series online where his daughter Lauren is reinterpreting his theory for a younger audience.
I found Lauren attractive, and her face gave me an inexplicable, inexplicable familiarity. In her video, she is not a psychologist, but more like an actor who details her process of following her father's approach to "the opposite sex" and improving her relationship with her partner, Glade. Most of our generation believes that the sexes are not in opposition to each other, but two points of fluid change within a certain range—and it is possible that she is skeptical of this, but she does not show it.
I read about Lauren in 1992's Man from Mars, Woman from Venus, when she was a baby. As I revisited the book, I noticed information that I had long overlooked: John Gray and Lauren Gray were both from my hometown of Mill Valley, California. After clicking two or three times on Facebook, I remembered that Glade, who had become famous online, had taken an eighth-grade musical theater class with me (and he did a great job). To my disappointment, lauren refused to be interviewed, despite the coincidence that seemed so rare.
Fortunately, her father agreed to talk to us.
I connected with Gray at my home in Mill Valley via ZOOM. Behind him was his writings. For better visuals, the covers of the book are facing the camera. After a few moments of conversation, it became clear to me that nearly thirty years later, Gray was still sticking to his theory. He remains focused on gender differences and emphasized the presence of hormones. This has not been mentioned in his past writings. (Interested readers should not miss his 2017 book Beyond Marsand Venus, which Gray showed several times in front of the camera.) ）
Making ourselves happy requires "personal inner effort" that our partner cannot do. If we have the right mindset, we can look at the differences with our partners in a positive light.
Gray expressed to me his concern that some psychotherapies might "reinforce the concept of victim" and that he should focus on looking inside yourself and discovering what makes life unsatisfactory. He understands that such claims may offend some people and claims that he was threatened with death in the 90s. He argues that the "culture of boycott" that is now prevalent will only make the problem worse. As for the view that gender is a variable concept, he considers it purely "nonsense". But when I asked if his book was suitable for transgender, non-binary, or gay readers, he didn't show the slightest hostility, only that his book was really written for cisgender (and that's my word, not his original words) heterosexual. If his books or seminars helped in any way with intimacy between men and women other than men and women, that would be good, but it was only by chance. This conversation is slightly uncomfortable. I felt as if I was chatting with the father of a friend who had inadvertently misled someone else's gender.
Gray's core theory is hard to refute with an inclusive mindset: he wisely argues that making himself happy requires "personal inner effort" that our partner can't do. He also suggests that if we have the right mindset, we can look at differences with our partners in a positive light.
Speaking of his wife, Bonnie, Gray was filled with words of praise and admiration. During the 33 years they were married, Bonnie made a significant contribution to his work. She once agreed with Gray's classic idea of "listening to your wife nagging about her experience of the day, don't complain," which he still remembers to this day. Bonnie once said to him, "I know you think it's a waste of time, but listening to me nagging for a while can really help me soothe a lot." "I tried to say this to Mark later, and I won't lie to you, and as soon as I heard me say it, his attitude was less tense. When I asked Bonnie if she was also a psychologist, Gray, as if just remembering, said, "Oh, Bonnie died two years ago." ”
Perhaps the greatest joy of childhood is the mistaken belief that parents can do everything. The bumps and bumps in the process of growing up made us understand that everyone is groping to live a life. Parents quarrel, divorce, make bad decisions when buying and selling homes, do jobs they don't like, and the interior of the Volvo wagon they buy turns out to be black. In other words, they are also human beings. They also buy trench coats, they also watch Seinfeld, they try to get to know each other, and in the process realize that they need some help.
It turns out that reading this thirty-year-old man from Mars, woman from Venus is really hurtful. At first, I was saddened to think that my parents' generation would look for answers in such an conceited and absurd book. But as mark and I drew to a close, I realized it would be even more heartbreaking if parents didn't go to the book to find answers. Suddenly, it didn't feel like a coincidence that we were living in the same place as gray's family. It was very painful for me to discover that my parents had never read his books, that they had been neighbors on the same street as the so-called master for so many years, but still could not save their marriage. Why can't they superstitiously believe that being a neighbor to a master of gender relations will give them some blessings to make their marriage last? Can't they be less confident and less suspicious like me?
Perhaps the greatest joy of childhood is the mistaken belief that parents can do everything. The bumps and bumps in the process of growing up made us understand that everyone is groping to live a life.
I'm miserable, but will that pain help me? To sum it up this way: Although I have laughed at this book, I am very eager for it to bring me the wisdom that my parents once missed. I was desperate to show humility in the face of what I thought was stupid, but at the same time soberly aware that remaining skeptical would also make me feel stupid. Maybe we're repeating our parents' mistakes time and time again, and the masters are squeezing millions of dollars out of people generation after generation, but whether it's 1991 or 2021, every night, when we close the bedroom door (if we're lucky enough to have one), carefully put the books that threaten to get us out of failure into the drawer of the bedside table, when we lie down next to our partners and turn off the bedside lamp, we all have a firm belief in our hearts, whether it's psychological self-help books or science fiction. When the sun rises the next day, we will all get better in the hearts of our loved ones.
Written by: KellyStout
Photo by Jeremy Liebman
Translator: Liu Tingting
Art Editor: Fire Lord
New Media Editor: Neil
New Media Execution: Eva