Dr. John Gray will once again blow you away with a steady stream of life-changing relationship insights and distinct strategies to get things back on track when your relationship is feeling strained or downright broken. John lays the foundation for discussion by describing his “80/20” relationship principle. This means you should develop self-love and self-sufficiency such that you establish a baseline state of happiness and look to your relationship to make you 20% happier.
A dull, strained, or broken relationship is a natural consequence of the stresses of modern life, the rapidly evolving relationship roles in modern culture, and the hormonal differences between men and women that make everything from basic communication to maintaining a romantic spark really difficult. Dr. John explains that it can be really helpful to break free from arguing and blaming by reading a book together. Such as, ahem, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Beyond Mars and Venus, or Mars and Venus In The Bedroom. When you can gain self-awareness from a book, it’s easier to acknowledge your mistakes, apologize, and rebuild hope that a new strategy can work where your devoted efforts have failed. For a quick example, Dr. John says women should resist their natural tendency to interrogate a man, as this will agitate them further.
On the other hand, men should overcome their natural tendency to avoid lengthy dialogue by probing and questioning your woman to draw out further insights and understanding. Dr. John also contends that when it comes to implementing the recommendations, “Fake it ‘till you make it” is not only okay, it’s 10 times more important and effective for men to do so! “I’m sorry, I was wrong, I overreacted, I was inconsiderate, I was selfish.” It’s not that hard to say, come on men, you can do it!
This show is nonstop action, entertainment, and life changing insights, so tune in, and listen again and again, ‘till you get it right! Dr. John’s discussion of his two-year grieving process over the passing of his longtime partner Bonnie gives us some important perspective and inspiration. We are all compelled to do the very best we can every day in life, take nothing for granted, cut out the ego-driven bullshit, and transcend the disturbingly common flawed relationship dynamics that we have come to perceive as normal. As Dr. John said to close a previous show, “If we can’t do it now and model this to our children, what hope do we have for the future of humanity?” Connect with John at MarsVenus.com and also enjoy his daily Facebook Live educational seminar at John Gray on Facebook, where he covers a different topic every day in live Q&A format.
TIMESTAMPS:
You can heal relationships sometimes, just by laughing at your own mistakes. [04:19]
A couple of quick gems to look at are: Women, don’t question men. And men, ask more questions. [07:11]
John talks about his grieving process and how he has learned more about himself. [09:53]
As men and women, we both have a male and female side. [17:23]
Your partner can make you happier but they cannot make you happy. 80% of your happiness comes from within you. [19:45]
Men are more affected by a woman’s negative reaction. [22:55]
Lithium Orotate is a mineral that does wonders to calm the thoughts. [23:45]
The balance of the brain chemicals in your brain affects your hormones, but your hormones affect your brain chemistry. [26:49]
Too much testosterone automatically goes into estrogen. Road rage is not caused by too much testosterone! [29:12]
Never look a guy in the eye when he is angry. [30:49]
It is important to consider the woman’s cycle when knowing how to relate to one another. [33:30]
When a woman is emotional, asking her questions will help calm her down. When a man is emotional, it is not a good time to get him to talk. [36:35]
What are some of the healing steps to be taken when the relationship has been suffering? [38:00]
Sex is controlled by the unconscious mind. [41:13]
The key to every relationship is based on a feeling of anticipation that I can get what I need. You need to have hope. [43:30]
Most of us just don’t know better. See your mistakes without feeling guilt. [45:36]
A good exercise is to write a letter to yourself as if the other person is writing it to you. [49:50]
Rather than “I’m sorry if…….’, it’s better to say “I’m sorry. I understand that you were hurt.” [53:10]
For men, learning to be apologetic is a skill you can practice. Fake it ‘til you make it! [57:56]
Women need to know they are appreciated. Many times, the man thinks he is showing that, but it doesn’t feel that way to her. [58:36]
If one person makes a change, there will be a change in the relationship. The letter writing exercise works wonders. [01:06:45]
Women actually have 10 times more power to make a relationship better than a man does. [01:10:24]
It is really important for men to learn loving behaviors. [01:15:12]
LINKS:
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad (00:04:19):
Greetings listeners. I’m so excited to bring to you for the third time my main man, Dr. John Gray author of Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus, Beyond Mars and Venus and a whole franchise of books. That’s made him the number one bestselling relationship author of all time. And this show is yet again, off the charts. You wind up this man. And he goes, he’s such a pleasure to connect with, Oh my gosh, you’re going to have a ton of amazing insights. Life-changing insights in many cases, as I’ve shared with you before, after my first show with Dr. John Gray proposing to my girl, Mia Moore, the very next day. And as usual, we go off in a lot of different directions, all of them related to being the best that you can be and bringing your relationships to the next level. And especially, I try to get into the topic of when you’re in a rift when, you’ve lost some of the magic and you’re in a rut and how to heal that because he promised at one of the shows with the throwaway comment that you could heal relationship rifts in a few months, starting with laughing at your own mistakes.
Brad (00:05:34):
And then we trailed off onto other topics from there. But this time I brought that back and said, Hey, what do you mean by laughing at your own mistakes? And how do you heal these relationship rifts and bring back the magic and the connection that you once had. And he gave us a step by step precise approach to do so, but the show starts out with this wonderful insight about his 80/20 rule for, and that is that you want to have the self love as a baseline, the self sufficiency, such that you’re 80% happy already. And you’re looking to the relationship to add that 20% to make you happier. And if you have that void coming into the relationship, that’s going to play out poorly. If you’re feeling anxious and emotionally disturbed right now, maybe the quarantine and the changes of life that we’ve had to endure in 2020s have got you, edgy, stressed. He has a wonder supplement for you. It’s called Lithium Orotate not the same lithium, that’s the prescription. However, this one is highly effective and has a 500 times less potent dose that doesn’t have all the side effects. So he’s into the supplement thing. You should look up MarsVenus.com and see some of his stuff. Then we talk about how to heal a broken relationship where you’ve lost hope. And that is really the, the demise. The, the worst thing that can possibly happen is to lose hope. Remember my show with Mark Manson, where he’s talking about that in general life as well, that we have to have hope to give our lives, purpose and meaning, and have a chance at happiness. So when the relationship has lost hope, you’re just going through the motions, no bueno, but you can bring it back.
Brad (00:07:11):
And the first thing we want to do is to gain some, self-awareness see our mistakes and our flawed approach clearly. And John says a great way to do that is to read a book together. He recommends his book, of course. One of them Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, dealing with the topic of rekindling, the sexual spark. But if you’re just reading, Men are from Mars,Women are from Venus or Beyond Mars and Venus together. You kind of create this distance between the back and forth and the blame game and where your ego’s involved, because you’re getting criticized. And you can be more open to the idea that maybe you’re trying really hard. You’re a good person. Each of you are good people, but you’re just applying a flawed approach. Quick example: women, don’t be questioning men. They don’t like it. It raises their estrogen, gets them agitated.
Brad (00:08:00):
Men ask more questions of your women. Seek to understand. Women want to be understood. It’s okay. You be the interrogator. She’d be the talker. Aha right? And once you realize that you’ve tried really hard, but using the wrong skills, then you can gain hope the relationship has a chance. And then he describes this amazing, uh, complicated exercise where you write a letter to yourself coming from the voice of your partner, right? So you pretend your partner’s writing you the letter. And he talks about that in detail. This is a fabulous show. If you’re struggling with your relationship right now, or you think it can be a step better, it’s going to be a life changer. And for all of us to understand the inner workings of the romantic partnership, this is your guy, John Gray. Here he goes. Boom. One of my favorite podcast guests here for the third time, John Gray. Thank you So much.
John Gray (00:08:57):
A real pleasure. Real pleasure.
Brad (00:08:59):
Tell me your Facebook live efforts. You’re going on there all the time.
John Gray (00:09:03):
Yeah, every day I go on at Pacific time. 10 o’clock I do like about a 20 minute little talk and then question answers with all my comments from people for about an hour after that, it’s really fun for me
Brad (00:09:17):
You are just a Powerhouse, man. How do you, uh, how do you keep it up?
John Gray (00:09:21):
Uh I’m it gives me life force energy on Mondays. I teach meditation Tuesdays. I teach relationships, Wednesdays. I teach healing the heart Thursdays. I teach success, making your dreams come true. And Fridays I teach sex and single life and romance and all that
Brad (00:09:37):
You mean, is this on, on Facebook? Every
John Gray (00:09:40):
Yeah. Yeah, it does the topics. There’s the topic for each day, every week for six weeks, I’ll do it. And then I’ll start again. All right.
Brad (00:09:49):
And the, the, uh, engagement, how does it go over? How are people doing these days?
John Gray (00:09:53):
We’re just starting a, you know, but we’re up to a thousand, so that’s fun. Uh, and it’s just, it’s building every day. You know, people, I really have been kind of out of commission for two years. My, uh, my wife died two years ago and really I was broken. I just, uh, had to go through this grieving process and I I’m greatly through it. Now, you know, the, the I’m able to see when you go through grief, you lose someone, you feel pain when you see memories of them or you see pictures of them. And many people will avoid that. I do just the opposite. I increase it, allow it to go around, to trigger me, to then look at what are the emotions that go with that. And, uh, in the beginning stages of grief, it’s, uh, for me, and for many people, you, you reflect back on everything that you could have been better.
John Gray (00:10:44):
You know, that’s the whole thing. It’s I could have been a better husband. Then I could have handled that differently. I could have said that differently. And literally for a year, every night I woke, I couldn’t sleep at night. And I remember times when I could have been better, I could have been better. And there’s this part of me just longs to act out, learn from that wisdom. I mean, I’ve learned so much and reflecting, you know, all my ideas of Men are from Mars, for example, are due to reflections. After we had some upset, we didn’t have an easy relationship in the beginning. You know, we overcame these challenges that I talk about and, uh, but we did, but now I’ve overcome them even more. It all comes back again. And, uh, I’m, I’m I’m back. Okay. So it’s, uh, it’s really very, very nice.
John Gray (00:11:30):
Um, I’ve been to the healing process many times. I thought it was like a nine month process. You know, my brother committed suicide. My mother died in an accident. My father died by murder. Somebody robbed him and left him in the trunk of his car. Uh, was, you know, I’ve had some rough things, a brother that died in a car accident, a head-on when somebody was passing in his lane. So big shocks, big, big, uh, you know, when Bonnie and I got married, it’s like, we went to a funeral every year. So, you know, we, we really went through it and I got good at it. So I thought I was pretty good at it. But, boy, it threw me for a loop it’s two years and I still feel some pain. But the thing about it is that if you learn how to process emotions, you more quickly and more quickly go from that moment of pain, into remembering the love and the remembering the gratitude.
John Gray (00:12:21):
And literally I can see my brain just go to a different part of the brain, which is happy and fulfilled with her. Every time I start to feel the pain that I also, my brain just goes right over to all the wonderful times we had together and feeling grateful for that. And you know, this is a science of grieving that people historically didn’t know. And still today, without the knowledge of how to do it, people don’t know what they would do is they give you 12 days, you know, some cultures, 12 days to grieve. And then, then don’t think about it, you know, ignore it. Don’t entertain it. But what happens if you embrace it? And just as it comes up, don’t encourage it. But when it comes up, you process it, you feel it. And you, you learn from it. You give words to the emotions.
John Gray (00:13:08):
Then you finally get to the place where you realize that 90% of the pain you’re feeling is accumulation of pain from childhood. For me. Now I’m able to very clearly see when the pain is there. I can easily link it back to one of my big traumatic moments was at like six years old, somewhere around there. I was, I was lost. I got lost for a week from my mother. And didn’t know if I’d ever see her again, or my family. And that was very traumatic to a child and.
Brad (00:13:35):
week a week. Yeah.
John Gray (00:13:37):
Seven days with strangers boy
Brad (00:13:39):
Today, if the kid gets lost for 90 minutes, it’s a tragedy. John Gray was out there for a week. People. Come on.
John Gray (00:13:48):
Okay. Anyway, well, you know, when I was young, when I started teaching, I started teaching in 19 years old, transcendental meditation. I was the youngest TM teacher and I learned my stuff. I had learned my lecture. I gave I’m good meditator, but I had massive anxiety before giving a talk. You know, my like butterflies in my stomach to nth degree where I even fainted my first talk, my knees shook and I fell on the ground. People thought I was dead. That’s how much anxiety I had. And that anxiety when I finally got rid of all anxiety in my life, was finding the root cause of that. And it was that abandonment experience. Okay. So I was able to relive that in therapy, and then it all went away that it’s like a party. And he was still frozen. Is that child who felt powerless in life, because when you’re cut off from your parents, it’s a trauma because you feel like I don’t have any power.
John Gray (00:14:38):
And that creates fear and anxiety, the unknown. And I was able to heal that. And when I did learn emotional processing, uh, I haven’t had anxiety since I did that since I learned that he did the healing. I did the healing when I was in my thirties. Uh, when I learned about emotional processing. Meditation, ironically, didn’t solve that problem for me. Meditation is great. I’m good at meditating. But what happens is you still have these emotional issues. You know, some people just are chronically like depressed. You know, they’re just not happy. You can look in their brains and you can see that blood flows to the, to the right side of the prefrontal cortex, which makes them pessimists everything. Is there always, we have a bias towards negativity of their brain just always goes to what’s the worst. What’s the worst of person. What’s the worst that can happen.
John Gray (00:15:25):
And then they can go into the emotions of the past accumulate as opposed to a bias on the left side of the brain. You have prefrontal cortex, you have a bias towards positivity. And you know, some people are there, you know, they’re happier people. They’re set point when they’re happy and fulfilled. It just stays with them all the time. And what’s interesting about this grieving. I’ve been going through my set point for happiness has now jumped massively, uh, since two years of processing my wife’s death. Uh, I mean, I just nature is strikingly beautiful for me much more so than before. Uh, you know, what’s interesting is I used to say to Bonnie that, uh, before I met her, I feel like my life was black and white. I didn’t really see the color. You know, women often will see, uh, more colors. They actually do see more colors, but we would go on walks and she’d see flowers and she see trees and she’d see a garden.
John Gray (00:16:24):
She’d be really happy looking at those things. And the children, the way things she would say about the kids. It would just open my heart to see the world through her eyes. It’s kind of like what happens when, uh, we’re we’re we grew up as an adults. We love to be with little children cause to see the world through their eyes. Those are really, it’s still like a little child inside. And I’m like kind of forming this idea right now, as I’m talking to you, because I’ve been wondering, why am I like so enamored by trees? It’s suddenly these trees, they all seem like cathedrals to me. I live in a really beautiful place where they have Redwood trees. They’re really tall. I said, okay, when I first saw them, it was great, but that’s about it. And, but my wife was massively enamored by those. And as I’ve been processing, it’s literally like she’s inside of me now. And I just want to ask in an hour, just walking through the forest, looking at it, freeze, it was just the most amazing thing, never before have I had that experience. And yet that was like my wife’s experience.
John Gray (00:17:23):
So ya know When we love someone is because they have qualities that are buried deep in ourselves and by all of this grieving and letting her go on the outside, I’ve found her on the inside is as bizarre as that might sound to some people. But, uh, you know, my whole thing that I’ve talked to you about as men and women, we both have a male and a female side. And you know, for men it’s testosterone for when you’re on your male side, your testosterone literally is 30 times higher than a woman’s. And if you’re on your female side, a woman typically has ,10 to 20 times more estrogen than a man. If a woman is unhappy, her estrogen levels are very low, like a man’s. And if a man is angry or depressed or stressed, his estrogen levels become like a woman and his testosterone levels go down. It’s very interesting. Isn’t it?
Brad (00:18:13):
Well, that’s the centerpiece, the starting point for getting a fighting chance at relationship success. And I love how you brought that out. I mean, you’ve been writing for a long time dating back to the first book in the nineties, but this Beyond Mars and Venus, where you throw in that relate, the hormonal underpinnings was a great revelation for me, because I don’t know if this is quoting from you or I, I pulled this out, but it’s like, if you don’t have those hormones optimized, why even start working on relationship skills? Because you’re, if you’re an angry, stressed, man, with low testosterone, you’re going to be, you’re going to be a jerk, no matter what. Even if you’ve read the book, 10 times
John Gray (00:18:54):
Nicely said, nicely said, you know, it’s, it’s really, you know, it’s a, it’s like a cliche, old, old understanding. You can’t love somebody else that you love yourself. But that’s kind of an abstract concept of it. Does loving yourself mean I look in the mirror and I go, Hey, I got great muscles? It means a lot more than that. It means having a sense of self sufficiency so that when our partner is not able to be like the perfect, beautiful person that day, cause they’re in a bad mood, it doesn’t shake us to our core. You basically, there’s a, there’s a solidity to it. I have wellbeing and my partner can make me happier, but they don’t have the power to bring me down. Now having said that that’s the ideal because I have a life that’s not dependent on her. But my thing is the 80/20 rule, which is 80% of my happiness comes not dependent on my partner. 20% comes from them and only to take me happier, my partner can take me to happier, but they can’t make me happy. I have to be, have lots of different activities in my life that make me happy. And you know, here’s the interesting thought, you know, I like to flesh these things out. What does it mean to be 80% happy? Well, I get up in the morning. Sometimes I’m tired. I don’t really want to get up, but I cope with that. I don’t blame anybody for that. I go, okay, I’m going to stretch. I’ll take a shower and I feel good. You see what I just did is I went through something I didn’t like, and I solved the problem, not blaming anybody. Then I go and get my car and I’m in a traffic jam. And basically I go, okay, I’m late. And I have to say to myself, all right, I’ll get there on time.
John Gray (00:20:29):
It’s going to be okay. And then I calmed down again and then I get to the airport and then there’s a big line or something. And, and, and I’m waiting there and I said, Oh, I have to wait in this line. And this what’s the big deal. Where else are you going to go? You got plenty of times. You’re going to get on the plane. So I’m giving an examples. There we go through this all the time. We’re constantly dealing with stress and solving that problem without blaming somebody. And sometimes even when we do blame somebody we’ll come back and go, okay, there’s nothing I can do about it. So we’re constantly coming back to finding our happiness on our own. Then suddenly we get in a relationship. We start blaming our partner and the tendency to blame your partner will become less, if you found that set point and you actually were able to come back to happiness, as opposed to coming home going, the world’s awful.
John Gray (00:21:16):
People are awful. They’re no good. Then you’re set. Your set point is much lower. It’s very hard for somebody to make you happy. Maybe a little bit. And the newness is a little trick to this. Is that when the relationship is new, just the fact that there’s newness to it will stimulate the pleasure hormone in the brain, dopamine levels go up. But then when the newness goes away, it’s really up to you to have your set point up. So your partner doesn’t have to do a lot or be perfect to bring you to a higher level,
Brad (00:21:44):
Or ideally before you start even engaging before you, you signed up for the app, you have a good 80% baseline going where you have some resiliency. I suppose, if you don’t have that, then you have such a high risk because you’re, you’re, you’re pouring your heart and your emotions out there into a relationship. And so you’re really fragile and vulnerable anyway. And then if you, if you don’t have that 80% locked in, Oh my gosh, your day could get ruined by a simple, a wayward comment or a minor argument.
John Gray (00:22:14):
You know, you hit it right on the nail. If we could all just sort of stand back and analyze ourselves and realize that we can let our partner make one comment and it can ruin our day. Uh, and I want to throw in a little thing, you know, in my, at my website, MarsVenus dot com. I do have a whole section on wellness and I recommend different supplements, but there’s one supplement and I think it’s relevant because people are in COVID right now. And it’s really hard to get your 80% away from your partner. Uh, so you feel a lot of stress. What happens in the brain when our hormones are at, when we’re stressed, our hormones go out of balance, but also the brain goes out of balance. And so that one little phrase your partner says, your brain will start to loop on that.
John Gray (00:22:55):
It just keeps going back to it. You know, you start to feel, I want to be kind and loving and boom, you remember they said that, or they did that, or that happened. And it just keeps looping and looping and looping. And what I have found in the last 25 years, and I’ve been promoting this idea about the share. There’s a memorable, which will stop that looping grow quite a bit. And it’s, it’s miraculous, you know, here, I’m with all my little internal mindsets to not loop, but boy, Bonnie could say one thing, she could actually look at me a certain way. She would just say, you know, you forgot to turn out the light again and just look at me like I’m this failing. And ironically men are more effected by a woman’s negative reaction. If it’s a little thing he did wrong, rather than some big thing, you know, when I was two hours late for dinner, she’s upset with me.
John Gray (00:23:45):
I can understand it. That makes sense. I was a bad boy. Okay. I’m so sorry that it was ruined I’m bad. And then let it go. But if they get upset over something little that really triggers us to, to go into looping. And the same thing with women is if we do something little, or we don’t do something little that they’re expecting us to do, or we say something that was a loop on that as well. So the mineral, and this is something you can’t buy in health, food stores. Uh, and, and there’s no knowledge of this, cause there’s no profit in absolutely no profit. This is the cheapest supplement somebody could buy. And it’s called lithium orotate. Lithium is what they give to bipolar people when their moods are extreme, but they don’t have a, they don’t have a, uh, a good way of delivering it.
John Gray (00:24:32):
They just take it right out of the ground. And it’s called lithium carbonate and lithium carbonate will stop the looping, but it’s 500 times the dose of lithium that you need because it doesn’t get into the brain. It’s a salt. So imagine taking 500 times a dose of salt, there’s going to be side effects. So literally we’ve gone away from giving people lithium carbonate because of the side effects to make it effective. They’d have to be side effects. So you can’t like buy it easily, whatever. And some in countries it’s illegal because they can’t discern the difference between lithium 500 times the dose and lithium and little tiny doses. And that’s all you need is a little tiny dose, but you’ve got to get it into the brain. And so a German doctor figured out that if you take a substance and mother’s milk or attic acid, and you bind it with lithium, you take a tiny bit and it will go right into your brain and your brain stops looping.
John Gray (00:25:25):
It’s amazing. Also helps with headaches as well, but it is it’s the mineral that helps to regulate the production of dopamine and serotonin brain. You take lithium orotate. You only do like four and a half milligrams. That’s a tiny, tiny little bit as opposed to a huge amount that would cause a damage to your thyroid. And so then your metabolism slows down and people feel sluggish, but they’re not depressed. And they’re not bipolar. The bipolar is dysregulation between dopamine and serotonin and the brain. So if you regulate the right balance of those things, you can be relaxed and motivated and pleasure motivated, which is pleasure in the brain, Oh, I will get something. If I go there and feeling relaxed that everything’s okay now. That’s your ideal state of restful alertness of motivation from a place of happiness, rather than motivation from a place of fear. So when we can have that nice balance of dopamine and serotonin, that’s also what happens at the time of climax. Okay. We go into, you know, that’s really arousal when it comes to sexual arousalss, we’re in that flow state, that flow state.
Brad (00:26:34):
So striving to keep that dopamine and serotonin balanced with, for example, good relationship skills where you don’t start arguing And complaining as a male and messing with your hormone balance.
John Gray (00:26:49):
Yeah. Well, what they, what the research shows is that your, the, the balance of brain chemicals in your brain affects your hormones, but your hormones affect your brain chemistry. So they go, they go hand in hand. And I wrote a book back in 19, uh, in 2000, uh, actually called the Mars and Venus Diet and Exercise Solution. It was talking about how, how you can, um, you don’t have to worry about diet and exercise. You can be healthy if you just balance your brain chemistry. So it should have been optimal brain function, the name of the book. But anyway, having said that, I talked about all of the brain differences between men and women. And then I got blowback from that book because all of these universities are saying there’s massive brain differences between men and women, but there’s some universities that are saying there’s no difference.
John Gray (00:27:38):
Okay. It’s just, you know, we all have, it’s just how you look at it. Okay. And I can go into long description of a bulletproof examples of real differences between men and women in the brain. But they started coming out with this phrase, Oh, that’s just junk science, junk science. People can just say that, Oh, that’s junk. Oh, that’s fake news. You know, it’s just, and, and research has, we’re actually doing that. So you’ve got some of the most reputable schools saying there’s major differences and other ones that were saying, no, they’re not significant. So after that book, I decided to find another way that nobody can disagree. You can’t say that hormone understanding is junk hormone knowledge. We all know it’s absolutely true. You can’t deny it. It’s simple hormone tests. It’s now common knowledge. You look on a test. If a woman does not have her estrogen levels, she will not orgasm.
John Gray (00:28:26):
She cannot fall in love. She will have high stress levels. If a man doesn’t have testosterone levels, he will not have an erection. He will not have good moods. And then you go deeper into the knowledge of hormones. You go counter to what everybody thought about hormones, which is that anger in men, is they have super high testosterone levels. So they’re, they’re really aggressive. And so they thought, Oh, that’s what caused it. But actually it’s when, when you have a lot of testosterone and you feel threatened and your testosterone turns into estrogen, there’s actually a shift in that the regulation of estrogen function increases. Testosterone goes down and.
Brad (00:29:11):
aromatase.
John Gray (00:29:12):
Aromatase. Aromatase. And there’s also is the thing about upregulation in downregulation of receptor sites. So same thing happens is your estrogen receptor sites, upregulate and your testosterone receptor sites. Downregulate. So you could actually have testosterone in some cases, but there’s been down-regulated and your estrogen levels are upregulated. Or it can also be your estrogen levels are high. You know, men who take a lot of testosterone, they have to be careful cause they get man boobs. Cause you get too much testosterone in your bloodstream your body will aromatase it into estrogen and they have road rage. You know, the whole phenomena is you got to watch it, you get this huge anger thing happening. It’s your testosterone and here’s the thinking too much testosterone turns to estrogen, and then you get the road rage.
Brad (00:30:00):
Ah, right. So the, the common, uh, connection between the, the crazy bodybuilder that, uh, you know, uh, smashes into parked cars because his testosterone is too high. It’s really that he, he took too much artificially and it got converted and he’s in a high estrogen, especially with the mood swings and the instability that we call roid rage. I never, I never made that connection. It’s actually the, um, the, uh, the, the rise in estrogen
John Gray (00:30:28):
And, and it’s the actual trigger. First of all, too much testosterone automatically goes into estrogen. But the trigger that makes it go in there is lack of confidence. Ooh, okay. So it’s, whenever you,
Brad (00:30:41):
Sorry to break it to you, listeners out, just lack of confidence is going to cause your testosterone to convert to estrogen. That’s the connection. Yes.
John Gray (00:30:49):
If you feel threatened, if you feel like you’re being disrespected, you’re being disrespected. You’re not getting what you want, but a big key to that is, you know, the whole thing. And if you, historically, you look at, uh, old fashioned relationship information is that women were taught you need to respect men because if a man doesn’t feel respected, his testosterone levels turn into estrogen. It’s like low self esteem means you better treat me like I’m a King. If you actually feel high self esteem, you don’t get all bent out of shape. If somebody mistreats you, like you’re not a King, you say it’s all your lack of self esteem. Lack of confidence makes you more needy, more demanding, more controlling. And I do say this for women. It’s if ever you are in the presence of an angry man and you feel threatened the best way is to get out of there.
John Gray (00:31:37):
But, but you have to say something. And the thing to say is, I think you’re right and I’m wrong. If you say to a man you’re right and I’m wrong, his testosterone levels will start to come back up again. But it’s not a good attitude to always have to say, you’re right and I’m wrong when you’re not wrong. But it is a protective mechanism. If you, you know, some women are with these really hostile kind of guys sometimes. And what they, what they tend to want to do is ask questions. And then she gets plugged in. And now they’re arguing with each other back and forth. The most important thing is to get out of that room and don’t look them in the eyes. Okay? Never look a guy in the eyes when he’s angry. You know, we know that it’s common sense. When you got two big guys are mad at each other.
John Gray (00:32:21):
You point them in a different direction and say, Hey, forget it. Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. He’s an asshole. He said, you want to get them looking somewhere else. Literally eye contact is dangerous. If somebody’s angry, cause they’ll just get angrier and they lose control. That’s a key thing. So women don’t look them in the eyes and that’s what women will tend do because they know that if you want to comfort somebody, you look them in the eyes, but that’s when your heart is open. So when your heart is open, you awaken love inside of somebody. But if your heart is closed, because you’re out of balance, it pushes the other person out of balance. So a woman could, she wants to get out of the room. Sometimes women say, man, how do I get out of there? And he’s arguing with me, we’ll stop asking him questions.
John Gray (00:33:00):
As the first thing, when people tend to do, they try to engage a conversation, don’t ask questions, but whatever he’s saying, just pause and go. This isn’t the time to win this argument. This is a time for me to get out of the room without triggering him more. Because if you say, Oh, you’re being mean you’re, you’re heartless, you’re cruel. You’re angry. And that just, that just makes him wrong. So whenever a man feels right, he will calm down. Okay? So that’s why, that’s why he’s angry. He’s lost his competence.
John Gray (00:33:30):
It’s like you asked me today on my Facebook. Some guy said, what do I do in my wife’s on her period? Which I’m sure a lot of women didn’t want to hear. But the reality is we know that women can become overly emotional when they’re on their period, their hormones are way out of whack. At that time. It’s a time where they need to rest and relax more issues that are not resolved tend to just show up at that time. And so the sign that you don’t want to say anything to have an argument at these times, when a woman, she gives you the clues without her knowing it, she’ll say, you never do this. You always do this. I have to do everything. Nobody helps me. So these kinds of expressions literally mean her hormones are not in balance. Don’t have a logical conversation with her at that time,
John Gray (00:34:21):
The time to have a logical conversation, right? And if somebody is in a wheelchair, you don’t say, if you love me, you’ll walk you say, Oh, let me, let me bring you something. Let me help you. Okay. So if a woman is going to use those phrases and I’m not going to say they do it every time, but it’s quite common. And we all know that. And so it was very good to know when she’s having her period. It’s also good to know. The five days after her period is over. Cause that’s the time when you can have the best sex. That’s the time when you can have the biggest impact. That’s the time when little things that you do for her will have the biggest impact. You know, as women look for those little things, but particularly in those five days after her period, her body, the estrogen levels start to double.
John Gray (00:35:04):
And as they start to double, that means her need for love, increases her sensitivity and her need for love from you. And during her period, she needs safety. She needs just doesn’t need to, she doesn’t have to say, I need you at all. She just doesn’t need you to make it worse. Okay. That’s the thing is that we, we trigger them at that time, expecting them to be the way they were at another time. Uh, are they have emotional reaction to something and we make them wrong for it. We literally can drive her crazy. And that is true. I mean, guys do this all the time. They don’t know they do it. And more dysfunctional relationships. I was on a cruise one time and this woman beat up her husband and they had to take her off the cruise. Okay. So, and so this is a woman behaving badly.
John Gray (00:35:48):
I mean, she was hitting him and doing all this stuff and calling them names and everybody’s like, Whoa. And of course he’s a guy he’s going, Whoa, crazy woman, crazy woman. But the reality, if you could have seen what built up to that, it was his attitude, crazy woman, bitchy woman, no good woman that, that causes her to go further out of balance as she loses her logical side of her. Cause we can do that to each other, just as women can push a man into the violent part of him. You know, we always look at violent men as, as you know, all that, they’re always a hundred percent responsible. They are for their behavior. But prior to that, there was an argument where a woman was asking lots of questions and engaging him. And that’s the mistake. If women just understood, men are not like women.
John Gray (00:36:35):
If a woman is upset and I engage her, if I can, without getting angry and I can ask her questions, getting her to talk more will raise her estrogen. That will help calm her down. But getting a man to talk at a time when he’s starting to feel anger or emotion, negative emotion, getting him to talk, he will become more emotional. And if the emotion is anger, he will become aggressive. And he will say things that he doesn’t really mean. And then, then the big thing that happens at that point, I want to say this because this is happening a lot right now with COVID because people are not getting their needs met 80%, not from their partner. So they’re on edge. They’re annoyed They’re irritated. They feel bugged. The problems that would normally be, nothing are bigger. And so at that time they engage in arguments. And then at arguments, what happens is we become somebody that we’re not, they said, when you’re out of balance, you’re not you you’re somebody else. Okay? You become the opposite of who you really are. And then people say, Oh, he showed me his true colors. And then they freeze on that and think that’s who their partner is. That’s who their partner becomes when they’re not their true self. And that’s what we have to recognize is that people are a much better than we think if we hold them to how they behave when they’re out of balance and that’s what’s happening right now is that people are being pushed to the test.
John Gray (00:38:00):
For some, some people are thriving if they have enough money. And so they’re not freaked out about the money thing right now. And they have good communication skills. They’re actually having a great time. They’re growing closer and love. But so many people are not, uh, you know, we don’t have a lot of statistics, although I’ve heard the violence level’s going way up. And I’ve also, um, I know in China and Wuhan after they first came out of quarantine, divorces went from the average normally there was 12 a week to 300 a week and they’re still divorces everywhere. Cause people remembering those are, are those, those, those arguments and those fights. And they’re sort of paralyzed by that. There’s PTSD from that where they’re holding onto the anxiety. You know, if you’re, if you’re someone and someone’s driving you in a car and you feel very safe, cause you’ve never been in an accident. And then that driver does something irresponsible by mistake and you get an accident. Then now whenever you’re in the car with them, what are you going to do? You’re going to be afraid. They’re going to do that again. And so your brain becomes hypervigilant to go, Oh, is he doing this now? Is he doing it right now? Is he doing it right now? Is he doing that? Hypervigilance is PTSD. And so once you have one big fight, you’ve got now this hypervigilance, which takes a while to heal, but only by feeling that you can express your feelings about it and be heard, then you can come back into a balanced place.
Brad (00:39:28):
Wow. Yeah. I mean, you spoke about this in the last show and it made me want to pick up this because we were talking about the accumulation of these blocks in the relationship like repeated arguments, the patterns are playing out the woman’s questioning the man and getting him more agitated. The man is doing his thing with the woman and not keeping his cool. And so let’s say that we have these blocks built up. Uh, there’s a couple that’s been together for awhile. The passion is gone. The sex life is suffering. Uh, and you said you could heal these in a few months. That’s a John Gray quote, which is super positive and optimistic. I love it. Uh, and one thing you mentioned was, um, uh, laughing at your mistakes was one of the strategies. And then I think you were going to talk some more in a future show. So if we’re, if we’re maybe referencing a state of, of being blocked in the relationship and continually seeing someone who’s not the best they can be, I like that better than saying, this is your true self. No, it’s just me at my worst kind of thing. Um, what are some steps that a couple can take to healing besides listening to the show together? Of course,
John Gray (00:40:36):
Well, reading books together on relationships is a good thing. Just to know that is a good thing. Uh, reading my once the relationship gets better, I did write a book for this one, which was called Mars, Venus in the Bedroom. Just simply reading out loud. My book Mars and Venus in the bedroom has caused amazing great sex for couples because once you stop having sex, you’ve got to sort of delicately get warmed up back into that place. It’s a big jump once you’re out of the, you know, use it or lose it. And once you’ve lost it, it’s hard to make that transition back. It could be for both or it could be for one partner hard to make it better.
Brad (00:41:11):
Why is that? John
John Gray (00:41:13):
Sex is so difficult because it’s controlled by the unconscious mind. We don’t have a lot of control of our erections. Women don’t have a lot of control over their lubrication. Okay. So it’s just, we have little control, which is also why we’re so sensitive about rejection and sex. Why we don’t like to be told what to do and sex don’t want to be told what we did wrong in sex. You know, if it’s, we’re just more, we have no control over. So, and the last thing, when you make love, you’re being extremely vulnerable. You’re giving someone the power to make you happy. And if they don’t make you happy, then they have the power to make you feel really awful. So a lot of fear around sex and it’s no control. And so reading what happens when people read Mars, Venus in the Bedroom together, this is what I’ve been told is they can gently move into it because I say things in that book and you can see your partner smile, and they go, Oh, that’s good. As opposed to her saying, yeah, give me 18 minutes of clitoral stimulation. And I might be able to have an orgasm tonight. It doesn’t happen in two minutes, like a guy. Uh, so the book is saying that, so it’s not her telling him how to have sex because part of our manliness is that we should know, and we have no education in it and we don’t have a woman’s body. And we don’t realize that for women, sex is totally different experience than for men. Uh, it’s inside thing. We go, we’re eating out and they’re inviting a guest in. So, you know, you could on the fly, you can go eat out in a restaurant, but if you’re gonna have somebody come eat at your house, you know, you want to have it clean. You gotta, you gotta wash up. You gotta smell nice. They’re gonna come inside.
John Gray (00:42:50):
You know, what are you going to leave? You know, all that stuff, you know, what does it mean? And how are their attitudes is going to affect me? A woman has no defenses. When you open up, you’re letting somebody have power over you. And in the beginning we liked that because we think this person loves us so much. So we’re letting them have power over us. But as soon as they start behaving in a way where we don’t like they’re having power over us, like saying we’re not good enough complaining about us, ignoring us and whatever. Then we have to push away from that. So how to come back to the place where you can read that book, uh, here, here’s a really great technique for couples who have alienated themselves. Okay? Bad arguments and so forth.
John Gray (00:43:30):
The key to that is every relationship is based on a feeling of the anticipation that I can get what I need. Okay, we’re going to get the food. I’m going to get the food. So you already feel happy that you’re on your way to get the food. And then what happens is we didn’t get the food. And so then we stopped anticipating getting the food and one word for that. And not when you, when you don’t get the food and you don’t anticipate getting the food, you lose hope you’re ever going to get fed. That’s the killer in relationships is that we’re always going on God, she’s this way. She’s always going to be this way. I’ll never get what I need. Well, that you’re convinced. That’s who he is. I’ll never get what I need.
Brad (00:44:18):
You’re not even, you’re not even thinking this consciously. It’s just, it’s just floating in there and deep down, you’re not getting your needs met. And Oh my gosh, losing hope. I that’s really, um, yeah. That’s well said that pretty much it. And I think the same in life. I mean, that’s what Mark Manson’s book is all about. Um, is you know, that we need hope to have a purpose in life and to have a chance of being happy. So same with the relationship.
John Gray (00:44:43):
Same with relationship. It’s like so, so critical. So what happens? And I think this is why Men are from Mars. Women are from being struck a cord because what reading that book does, and even for one person starting to read that book and then changing, and then your partner will become interested. If you change based on it, they see the changes. Uh, you never want to push it on anybody, but couples who’ve read that book together have told me that it just created miracles because are they take a seminar? They’re listening to me on YouTube. And by the way, there’s a great talk I give. It’s my Ted talk on YouTube with the red shirt. The other talk I gave not so good, But the red shirt is a really good one. That’s in Oregon, I think, or someplace like that. A really, really funny, uh, funny, entertaining. And that’s what, how men need to hear it. Men need to hear it. Yeah. Let’s be light about it. Let’s have fun with it. You know?
John Gray (00:45:36):
Cause ultimately what it is is it’s we all make mistakes because we don’t understand the opposite sex. See we’re doing our very best. We’re loving good people. We do our very best, but because our partners are different from us. It doesn’t have the effect we think it should have. So ultimately it goes over some of the major fundamental mistakes couples make because they don’t know better. Now you’re off the hook. You don’t know better. So it’s that you feel safe saying, yeah, I do that. You know, the whole idea of, you know, I go to my cave. Well, you know, uh, that’s normal for guys. And she goes, Oh, I always feels like he doesn’t love me because of that. And now I can realize, I can accept that. Maybe he does love me. Even if he goes to his cave. And all this time, I’ve rejected him for that. But I didn’t know better. They’ll never want us to feel guilty. They want to go, they want to hold onto the position. Well, he shouldn’t do that. He shouldn’t do that. But if it’s in the context of, you just don’t know better. And because we don’t know, we make these mistakes. So that’s the first step is people can, can see their mistakes without having to feel guilty because they see, they really don’t know better. And that’s one,
New Speaker (00:46:53):
Two, when they can see their mistakes, then they go, well, then I can do this differently. And if I can do it differently, then I’ll get a different result. And that’s what gives hope is it I’ve been doing something that made it worse and I can make an easy change. And it is an easy change that I asked a great extent. It’s an easy change. Cause I’m never, you know, my books don’t focus on actually, you should love more and you should be more forgiving and you should. We know all those things, but I say, Hey, you keep going through the front door. But that back door doesn’t work. There’s a side door over here. Not going to go through that door and they go, Oh, I can easily walk through that door. I just didn’t know that door existed. So I don’t really require people to change a lot.
John Gray (00:47:42):
Now I do have books where you can change. Like I overcame anxiety. I books to help overcome depression. That’s self work. But when it comes to relationship, you want to feel that you can make these changes without feeling guilty because your partner’s looking at you like you’re guilty. If you go to your partner and say, Oh, I do the wrong thing. They go, yes, you do the wrong thing. But if you go to your partner and go, you know, I’ve been doing the wrong thing. I can’t believe it. I thought you were like a guy, but really you’re a woman. And I didn’t know it. You can freely admit my mistakes to somebody else because this is the world where we get defensive is when there’s another person playing that game. If you’re the weakest you can look at, okay, I gotta look in myself to get better.
John Gray (00:48:23):
If I have anxiety, I gotta look at myself. If I, if I have high blood pressure, I can do things for my high blood pressure. We can look at changing ourselves, but now we’re talking about a relationship. How do you create change in relationship? And the mindset is because there’s somebody else that affects me. I have to change them. And if I have to change me, then I’m somehow wrong. But this allows people to say, Hey, I got to change myself. I didn’t realize it. And I keep thinking that old way. And I’m going to take this new way. And there’s no shame. There’s no guilt. It’s all, it’s all easy. And it’s playful and it’s light. It’s a, it’s kind of like a comedy is. And really we can look at our problems like a comedy of just missing the boat on these things, as opposed to, uh, so serious and you know, he’s this way and she’s that way. And there’s no hope in this whole thing. So my wife’s on her period. Then I just basically duck and dodge, you know, I, you know, what are we? We’re all we’re guys. We’re warriors learned karate. Somebody punch it. You just don’t.
Brad (00:49:18):
right. It’s not about you, dude. Get over yourself. We know not to verbalize that comment. Oh, you must be on your period. But if we can just gain self knowledge and gain, gain knowledge about our partner, that’s why this comes back to your, um, your quip of laughing at your mistakes rather than internalizing them and feeling so bad and uh, you know, banging your head against the wall. Now you can see that all this good advice I had from my partner. She doesn’t really need it. She just wanted me to listen. Oh my gosh. That’s so funny.
John Gray (00:49:50):
Now, now that we’re going to go to a deeper level of the two month cure here. Okay? And so once you want to get that basic understanding where both couples or even one person can understand that at least they’re going to be non-defensive. Then the next thing is that person are both can do this. If they’re both getting the information that, Hey, we’re doing our best, we just blew it because we weren’t doing the right thing. And it brought out somebody that’s not really me. So the next thing is you write a letter to yourself as if it’s the other person writing it. You go to them and you say, cause you’re the one who had been studying. We mess up, you know? And cause in my book, Men are from Mars. I say, man, when you try to fix her, she will feel 12 different things.
John Gray (00:50:36):
They’re all written out there. The 12 different things. Women will feel, there’s all these charts and she feels this. She feels this. You feel it. So it gives you more intuition into what she’s probably going through, being married to you. So now I’m going to write a letter from her to me and say, you know, honey, I’m reading this book and I’m realizing all these mistakes and I understand how I’ve hurt you or misunderstood you and, and, and really must have caused a lot of anger and frustration in you. So I’m writing this letter. I wrote this letter to myself from you expressing what I imagine your feelings must be towards me and just rip yourself over the coals in this letter you see, when she goes, Oh my gosh. He wrote that as if he’s, this is how I feel about him. And there’s a format in all my books where I talk about is called the feeling letter technique.
John Gray (00:51:21):
And when you start out writing about what makes you angry with your partner, then what hurts or makes you sad about your partner and your relationship in your life and what you’re afraid of when it comes to your partner? Things like, you know, I’m afraid you don’t love me afraid. I will never get better afraid of spending my life with you and you don’t give me what I need. I’ll never get what I need. I’m afraid that I can’t be myself with you. You know, these, these are vulnerable things. And I write about those in the books, give you some hints on what you might be, feeling, anger, sadness, fear, and then guilt. What I’m sorry about. And then that’s where you really own responsibility. I’m sorry that time on the ship. When I yelled at you in front of all those people, I’m sorry with the kids when I made you wrong in front of them and yeah. And the time, I’m sorry, the time I forgot your birthday. And I know that’s really important to you, you must have felt like, you know, you, weren’t not even that important. I’m sorry, that time when I was giving all that attention to that other woman, I didn’t do ignored you completely. I was wrong of me. And don’t say, I’m sorry, if you felt, you say, I’m sorry, that must’ve felt okay. That’s one of the biggest cop outs when people,
Brad (00:52:21):
I’m sorry. You had such a problem with me flirting with the waitress. Yeah.
John Gray (00:52:26):
Alright. I’m sorry if that upset you. If that is, why are you saying, you’re sorry, if you’re not getting it must, it must have upset you so much and you go overboard in it so they could actually react the other way and say, well, it wasn’t that bad. You know, let them argue with you that say, well, I really don’t feel that angry with you. I feel more like this and you, whatever their reaction is, you make it okay for them to have it. What you want to do is just let them know and experience that you’re experiencing a new level of awareness of sensitivity than what they must be going through. Being married to you, being with you and you, you don’t just do these. Uh, you don’t feel loved by me. You must have not felt loved at all. When I said this to you and this too, it would be as if I don’t care about you.
John Gray (00:53:10):
And so the buzzwords in Men are from Mars and these are those ones. You, you get a whole chapter on this one is, uh, and also, and Beyond Mars and Venus it’s even elaborated more, but it’s the primary emotional needs. I try to categorize things. If I was to constantly express how my wife might be feeling, listening, having, living with me, it would be a bottom line. When I say, when I, you know, when I didn’t do that and I didn’t, I didn’t give you the room to buy the own car you wanted. I was really pushing for this color. And he really didn’t even know if you wanted that color. Just all of these little examples that could have been upset. It must’ve really sounded like I don’t care. And I feel ashamed. I feel afraid. I hurt your feelings. I’m so sorry, because you deserve to have what you want.
John Gray (00:53:57):
You know, caring, showing that you care is number one for women showing that you understand. I understand you must have felt this. I understand you must have been angry. Understand you must have not. I understand if you that’s such a, I’m sorry. If I upset, if I offended you, that is such a weak statement. There’s no accountability. I’m sorry. I must have offended you. It must have hurt. It must not felt good. It must’ve felt like I don’t recognize all the things you do. And I realized I haven’t seen it. I’ve been thinking about myself when it comes to men. A really good apologies. I wrote about this in one of my books called Mars, Venus on a Date. And I, you know, I wish I’d written book, just Mars, Venus for Romance. Cause it’s about everything, but it’s on dates, single people, how to hook up.
John Gray (00:54:42):
And, and, uh, there’s a way men can apologize. That has big impact to women bigger than you would think. What I just gave you is show apologize. Places where you weren’t caring, where you weren’t understanding, giving more understanding now and respect. I didn’t respect you when you know the Aretha Franklin song. RESPECT. That’s the big one for women. Women are wanting to been living on this planet with little respect. They need respect more than men. We re we need respectful course, but they need it more. And ironically, when you respect someone, you raise their estrogen levels. When you prioritize their wishes over your own happily, then they go, Oh, I feel so loved and so supported. I appreciate you more. And that’s of course, what men need the most is to feel appreciated, to feel accepted, to feel trusted. But right now I’m just doing the caring, understanding and the respect, a letter that communicates those feelings through the words that you’re using.
John Gray (00:55:38):
And here’s there really is. This is like such a power. This is your secret power men. When you apologize, as you say, you know, I realized that day when I was late for dinner, I was so selfish. Now you wouldn’t normally think of saying that if you’re a guy, but women go, Oh wow. He admitted that he was selfish. You know, and actually guys know we’re selfish. What’s the big deal. It’s easy. It’s actually easy for us to say generally speaking. And yet for women, it’s very hard. If they say, Oh, I was so selfish, it’s a big blow to their estrogen. So if you’re selfish, it’s not a big blow to your testosterone. If I’m a failure is a blow to your testosterone. But to say, I was so selfish, uh, you can say, Oh, so you can do this. And I really overreacted to that situation.
John Gray (00:56:28):
I should never ever have said that. I overreact another one is I’m so, so sorry. When I did this, I, I was, It must’ve felt this way to you. I was so insensitive to what you needed. Oh, women love hearing that. And what man cares about saying I was so insensitive. I mean, we’re talking guys, you know, but to them, if they were to say, Oh John, I’m so sorry. I said that I was so insensitive. That’s a blow to their ego. Not that they couldn’t say it, but it’s harder to say that to admit that it’s cause when you say I was insensitive, you’re saying my female side failed, but if you’re a man and you say my female side failed I’m a man. So, you know, count it up. As one of my mistakes, I’m working on it, I’m working on it. I need help. You know, but Hey, if you’re in danger, I’m the guy that will be insensitive and go take care of that guy so that he doesn’t bother you. You know, they don’t fall in love with us because we’re sensitive. They fall in love with us cause we’re insensitive and more sensitive to them. Okay. So that’s the key, but it’s who we are as masculinity. So I was so insensitive. I was so selfish. I completely overreacted. You know, when I realized what I said it was, and that decision I made, I was so inconsiderate inconsiderate of you see these score big points with her and you don’t even know that you have that power and it’s so easy to do.
Brad (00:57:56):
So could you say a fake it till you make it here? When the man is having trouble managing his own emotions and dealing with his own ego demands, uh, just to just put it into practice, even if you got your fingers crossed a little bit at the start because you’ll grow as a person and get to that point where you really mean it some day?
John Gray (00:58:17):
I really believe in fake it till you make it.
Brad (00:58:19):
Oh my gosh. Listen to this, listen to it.
John Gray (00:58:23):
And I believe it 10 times more for men than women who, okay. There’s certain things I would tell women to fake it until they make it, but for men.
Speaker 3 (00:58:32):
Orgasm? What? . What I mean?
John Gray (00:58:36):
Well, let me, let me get to that one. Okay. But you, but let me explain it from the man’s side. First, what happens with men is we’re our heart opens our heart opens when we are appreciated. See that’s the magic word. Women are always saying they don’t feel appreciated. They don’t feel appreciated. And they’re not getting the appreciation that make them feel really good. But if they don’t feel respect at first, you can appreciate them to the end of their life. And they will never feel appreciated. They can’t feel appreciated if they don’t feel respected. First, let me give me an example of that. And this was a, this, this is controversial idea. People still think, you know, don’t get this because so many women feel, you know, I don’t feel appreciated. I don’t feel appreciated, but the truth is, Hey, you’re the woman I married.
John Gray (00:59:19):
I go to work every day. Cause I’m with you. And even before the problem start, let’s just start there. Women will start feeling unappreciated cause they don’t feel the man sees what her needs are and offers to help. See she, she read yours. Does that registers that as you don’t appreciate me what I do, but actually I have to go back to my first awareness with Men are from Mars was long before I got married to Bonnie and whatever would I learn so much with her and an assistant. Her name was Helen and Helen was great. So here we are. We’re a team. You know, I’m writing books, I’m writing a book. I teach these seminars. I have a counseling practice. I work eight hours a day, listening to women talk about their problems. Okay? So I’m in my little room all day long. She handles the payments.
John Gray (01:00:07):
She handles the scheduling. She handles, the person has the reschedule she handles when I’m running late. I also taught seminar. She handled all of the enrollment. She handled getting the hotels. She handled getting the access. So this is like having your, your right arm. That does everything that you can’t do while you’re sitting in that room. Okay. Cause I can’t, I don’t have time to do all that. So she was amazing. And she worked for me, ended up working for me for 10 years. So she got a more expensive, more successful job. And she’s still a really good friend. But after about three years she said she wanted to quit. And I said, I said to her, why do you want to quit? And she says, well, you know, I think it’s time to move on. I said, well, why tell me what you’re feeling. She said, I just don’t feel appreciated.
John Gray (01:00:52):
Now what I just described is that a man not appreciating her. And when she said I don’t feel appreciated. And I said, well, why don’t you? Can you help me understand why you don’t feel appreciated? She says, well, I feel like you don’t even know what I do. And I laughed inside myself. I didn’t do it outside, but I left inside myself because that’s why I appreciate you so much is I don’t have to know what you do so much. That’s that’s the biggest gift you can give me is I don’t have to have anything to do with you. You’re doing all of that. And I do all of my side and the result is there and I appreciate the result. And I showed my appreciation by never giving her advice, never asking her questions, never getting upset with her if she didn’t do it right now, amazing guy to work with, it’s kind of go flow all the time.
John Gray (01:01:41):
Except I was missing this factor that she needed me to know what she does. And that’s it. I just needed to know and care about how she felt about those things. So I said to her, I said, well, Helen I hear what you’re saying. And I realized, I don’t know what you do. I didn’t tell her. And that’s why I appreciate you so much. I said, I realize, I don’t know what you do. Give me a few weeks before you quit. And this and then she worked for another seven years for me because the next two weeks, every day when I came in, I said, so what’s on the agenda today. And what are you doing with this person? And I’d hear a little bit about what she’s doing. Then the next day I would come in. I say, well, how did it go with that hotel?
John Gray (01:02:20):
Were you able to make the reservations? And she’d say, Oh no, you know, they turned around the charges too much and we didn’t get it or something like that. And I still don’t know what we’re going to do. So she got to complain a little bit about some of the frustrations. She had some of the disappointments she had and some of her concerns, those are emotions. And I got her to tell me what she did and a little bit of the angst that goes along with it. And suddenly she felt so appreciated. And she says,
Brad (01:02:48):
You probably just listened. You didn’t, you didn’t offer suggestions and advice. You just listened to that dang hotel that couldn’t get your reservation.
John Gray (01:02:54):
That’s right. And I would just not mind said bummer. You know, that’s awful. And what else? You know, I just, and I would, you get extra points when you actually on your own, you think, how did that go the next day when you call them or something? And it shows, I was thinking about her that I knew what she was going through that little, extra personal touch. But see, as a man, if we’re partners and you’re doing your job and I’m doing my well, I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what you’re going. I don’t need you to tell you that, Oh, I stayed up all night and it was,
Brad (01:03:24):
Oh yeah, I don’t even want to hear it, man
John Gray (01:03:26):
.And if I say it, I’m not. If I want to say it, I’ll make a joke about it. And I’m not going to wait for you to ask me questions. I’m not going to say, Hey, you didn’t ask me what I’m doing. You know? You know, so, so this is the dynamic. So caught and respecting is recognizing this is a woman’s need. And I needed to honor that and respect it. And men can’t give the women the respect because we don’t even know what they need. If we really understood it, they would see how much we do respect them. But if they actually get the attention on them, then they will appreciate him. And they will no longer have that complaint. He doesn’t appreciate me. He she’s getting so much so that, and I learned that in my own relationship in the beginning, because Bonnie would say, you know, I just don’t feel appreciated by you. And I said, what would it look like if I appreciated you? And she said, well, you’d notice when I’m tired and offer to help. That was it. But I’m over here appreciating the fact that I don’t have to help. I get to come home and sit in my cave and I’m was amazing. She doesn’t ask for anything.
John Gray (01:04:30):
So you have the thing in their mind. They think, Oh, if you valued me, you’d be offering help. But actually the reason I value her most is she’s self sufficient and doing it herself and I can relax. So it’s a very big disconnect there. So it’s learning how to communicate. The kind of level woman needs. Even though what she’s saying is I want you to appreciate me. And I remember I even did this test with her. I sat on the phone with my friend, Clifford and I started talking about my wife is amazing. She’s making me dinner right now. You know, she never asked me to help. She’ll do it for me. And I can ask her for a beer and she’ll bring it for me. It’s amazing. I can just sit here and relax. I said, honey, would you bring me a beer?
John Gray (01:05:09):
And I said, it’s so cool. I could actually say all I got is that kind of neck pain, honey. I got this pain over here would just give me a little massage. She says, sure, I’ll be doing that. And then I continue saying things like that, she’ll start becoming curious. You think I’m your slave? You think on your servant. And I said, don’t you get that? If you did all those things for me, how I would appreciate you more. Of course, I appreciate you. And that my appreciation for all these things you’re doing for me, does that make you feel better? No. It makes her feel like she’s not being respected, but they don’t have that terminology. You see, they don’t see it in their mind. They see if you’re not doing things for them to help them that you don’t appreciate them. But our experiences, we do appreciate them, but not in the way that they want it shown.
Brad (01:05:55):
Mismatch. I like that word bummer, John. I, I remember, um, uh, parenting, uh, advice that it’s a really good word to throw out there a lot when you’re establishing consequences and boundaries, rather than explaining or lecturing, you just say, Oh, it’s a bummer. You didn’t clean the kitchen. So you lost your privileges for the weekend. And you mentioned that with, um, just listening to your assistant complaining about the hotel and you just say bummer and nod your head and validate. But without that advice or solutions and corrective action.
John Gray (01:06:29):
that we’re solving is a good phrase. Also noises, or just got, Oh really? Huh? What else? Help me understand that better. Oh, that’s ridiculous. It’s awful. Awful.
Brad (01:06:43):
John Gray, grunting noises learn them all for you.
John Gray (01:06:45):
Learn all those different things. So anyway, back to this technique, you, you want us to read that this is the people who really lost it all and they want to bring it back. One person has to make the change. And then you write, you see how you have been making mistakes. Okay? Anybody who sits with me for 30 minutes and complains about their partner, I can tell them 50 things. They are doing wrong. It’s never one sided. So my books help people see their side of things. Then you write a letter to your partner as if you’re expressing their feelings to you. Then wait, they’re angry about, they’re sad about sad or hurt or disappointed, fearful, and a feeling. And don’t do guilt. Don’t do their guilt. They should just do anger, sadness, and fear from them. And then have them say what they wish and what they want and what they need.
John Gray (01:07:35):
Because see, when she reads that she’s going to go. I didn’t realize he knew all this he’s has like a whole revelation going on. And then, and then say a few nice loving things. I love you. I remember when you did this for me. I remember when you see remind them. And instead of indirect way of, I remember when we fell in love, we felt so good. Bring in some as if they have love for you too, and write some of those things as well. Then what you do is now you write your response to that. So I wrote a letter from you to me and I’m going to respond to that.
Brad (01:08:07):
The same person is writing.
John Gray (01:08:08):
a letter from my wife. She’s so upset with me. Now I’m putting on my psychic cat and I’m saying everything. She feels then the next thing I do and the letter. And now this is my letter in response to your feelings. I understand you feel this. I understand you feel this and you just go over it again. Repetition is good here. I understand you’re feeling this way. Why wouldn’t you feel that way? I’m so sorry. I wish that I had done this. I wish I had read this book. And I learned to do that. I wish I could have done this because now I know I can. See this is building hope. Apologies, build, hope that a person learning a lesson. Once you’ve done that you say, I wrote these two letters. I’d like you to read them out loud to me.
Brad (01:08:48):
Whew.
John Gray (01:08:49):
So they read it out loud. If they want, you can always read it to them, but it’s much more powerful for them to read it out loud. It literally goes through all their resistance and all of that truth goes into their body and that will be a step and that will help bring you closer together.
Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
And then the next thing is hopefully that they could read my book. You know, they’ll see that, Oh, this is really good. Let’s try reading this book together. Uh, that could be part of your apology. You apologize for this. And what I hope is that we can come back together and together we can make our relationship better. There should be absolutely no blame of them. And this letter never say, well, you know, I’m going to learn to be a better listener. And I hope you’ll be learned to share your feelings, but always nagging and complaining. You know?
Brad (01:09:34):
In conclusion…..
John Gray (01:09:37):
Exactly. So absolutely no blame. They’ll say they’re let’s trust it. They’ll see themselves and theirs. And I hope that, you know, the help me, you’d say, and to help me put this into practice more, I invite you. I hope that we can sit together and read this book, which has had such an impact on me where I’m learning so much and hearing your comments would help me even better. Help. So it’s always about help me. I’m wrong. You’re not, I’m going to have the problem. You never go at your partner, give up trying to change them. That’s such a relief. You’re looking at changing yourself and that can go either way. And when it comes to transformation, um, it can happen. But until she actually reads my book and not much is going to happen, you got to get her into that book for men.
John Gray (01:10:24):
It’s not so important. Women actually have 10 times more power to make a relationship better than a man does. And of course, I just say arbitrarily 10 times, it just means a lot more, a lot more power. And the reason for that is that we men are geared towards train me to be successful. You know, everything in our lives about being a man and it’s changing now more, but for a man, accountability is built into masculinity. Meaning that if we get a job, we know if we don’t perform well, we don’t get paid. So we’re constantly geared up towards have to be accountable, have to be accountable. Women get married and now they don’t have to be accountable. Nobody’s going to judge them. Society’s not going to judge them on losing their job. They can be anything. And they’re still, they may not get love, but they’re not going to lose the marriage.
John Gray (01:11:13):
Cause people didn’t use to get married. And, and there’s nobody judging her behavior. Are you loving? Are you not loving and so forth except her friends. And she’ll always tell her side of the story. So they don’t have that built in accountability. So, but men do, you can train men. So men are like dogs in a sense where if they, if misbehaving, you learn this in dog obedience training, and this is for any women listening and also for men to understand ourselves better. Is that the way you train a dog…..there’s two ways to train them. One is intimidation. Bad dog, bad dog, bad dog. And often that doesn’t work. But if you really hit them, they will become lifeless and obedient but you kill the spirit. So the new dog training, and this is 20 years ago, new dog training that I took the class is you want to train your dog with rewards.
John Gray (01:12:02):
You always have treats these trainers. They always have treats and they never yell. They never raised their voice because anytime you raise your voice, you’re out of control. You just gave power to that other gave power to the dog over here, you’re you have the power. So the way you train the dog is you have treats the dogs jumping up on you. You don’t, you just ignore the dog and turn around and then turn around with a treat and say, sit and the dog sits, and you give him a treat. And then next time they see you, they jump up and down, turn around. You just don’t give attention. Don’t give energy to negative behavior, but it’s dead. Ignore it. And then give energy to positive behavior. And you have a set of positive behaviors and you even have training zones. Okay? You, you make a signal.
John Gray (01:12:50):
This is the signal we have. Whenever we would do this finger to the forehead, that’s a training zone. They get a treat. And now they know for the next several minutes that they’re going to do behavior and get rewarded for it. So I now have a technique based on that, uh, which is it’s called “genie in the bottle” that we do “genie in the bottle.” The last time I, I don’t think so. Okay. So “genie and the bottle” is what we know that what men need most is testosterone, right? And that’s success. And what women need most is respect and feel like you care someone doing something for her. Whenever she can depend on someone, estrogen goes up when a woman can ask for help and anticipate getting it. Always their estrogen goes up when a man has a job to do and he anticipates success.
John Gray (01:13:37):
Yes, his testosterone goes up. So “genie in the bottle” is a 20 minute training session. We call it a game, but where she is going to rub the genie and he’s going to do whatever she requests. And so the way she rubs the genie, the bottle for the genie to come out is she has to ask him to do something. So for 20 minutes, she’s not allowed to do anything for herself, except ask him to do things for her and the objective is to do as many things possible in a 20 minute window, she doesn’t ask for anything that would go beyond that window. Like you should always remember to turn out the lights or you should always do this and you should never do that. It’s not, it’s something you can actually physically do for her in that 20 minute zone. So it’d be like, well, uh, so my genie, I like you to clean off that shelf or clean out that closet, or I’d like you to run upstairs and get the lavender oil and give me a foot massage.
John Gray (01:14:31):
And genie goes, absolutely so happy to do it. Your wish is my command. And you playfully do this. And this is where faking it is going to work really well for both. Okay. We’re back on the fake thing because when men do an action, even if they don’t feel like I want to do this action, if you do the action and somebody rewards you for it, then you go, yep. I did that. It Is that you get, you get your payment. And then you’re happy about what you did. You don’t complain about it. You let it go. So we actually open our hearts by doing things that would be loving, even if we don’t feel loving, but when somebody appreciates us, then we feel the love that will naturally inspire us to do that again.
New Speaker (01:15:12):
So to know loving behaviors is really, really important for men because when you do those things, you’re faking it till you make it. You’re actually faking it till you get a reward. If you don’t get a reward, you will, you will get worse. Okay. Now for women, if they fake it till they make it, if they, if they’re feeling not loved, they’ll do something for you and, and, and fake it like, okay, I love you. I care about you. I’m going to do this for you. And you go, Oh, thank you so much for doing that for me, her estrogen didn’t go up. Okay. What women need to fake until they make it is in the category of, Oh, that was so helpful. Oh, thank you. But then they need to ask for help. And even if they believe you’re not going to help them. Okay. Or they, even, if they believe you don’t really want to do this, or maybe she believes you’re only doing this because we’re playing this game, but you don’t really want to do this.
John Gray (01:16:04):
So you can still put that to the side and simply ask for help. And when you get help, the hormone estrogen will come up and then you don’t have to fake it anymore. And when men do those things, their testosterone goes up because they’re anticipating getting that appreciation for it. So literally it breaks through all the, the resistance that we have to opening ourselves up to our partner, simply by these actions of her asking and him providing her, asking and him providing things that he can easily do within that 20 minutes. And the skillfulness of this game is that recognize as many little requests that she makes, the more estrogen gets produced. If she just did one, like clean up the kitchen, I’m going to sit and watch TV. Would you turn on the TV? So he turns on the TV and she sits on the couch and he watches the dishes.
John Gray (01:16:53):
Well, he got one point of estrogen for turning on the TV and he got one point of estrogen for cleaning up the kitchen, as opposed to many, many little requests. Okay. Well, would you dry the dishes? Okay. Now, would you clean out that cabinet? Would you give me this? You know, couples have all their different wishes and needs, you know, it could be what you make me orange juice. Would you make me a salad? Would you cut the tomatoes for me? Now? This is like, now I would like you to do this, make a salad, you know, cut the tomatoes. Just tell them what to do. You get to, you get to be his boss. And he has no problem being bossed around because it’s only 20 minutes and everything he does is being acknowledged and appreciated. You see one of the reasons men don’t like being bossed around by women and feeling controlled is because women do it with an attitude of you should do that because I do so much for you.
John Gray (01:17:38):
That’s the whole thing is this whole thing. Well, she feels entitled to change you and get you to do things. Cause she’s constantly changing herself and doing things for you, which are both their bad behaviors. You know, she should do what she wants to do. And if she doesn’t do what she wants to do, she should recognize that I should only make sacrifices if I feel I’m getting enough to compensate for it. Not that I’m doing it, I’m going to get it in the future. Men, Ii’s okay, I’ll do this and I’ll get it in the future. That’s anticipation of getting my reward and that’s healthy for men. Women would see that as selfish. I mean, you’re doing this because you want my love. I got, yeah, I’m doing this because I want your love. But also I’m doing it because I love you. But when you give me love, then I’ll do it more because I need love too.
Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
I need appreciation. But if women do things to get appreciation, it doesn’t raise their estrogen. They’re usually what women need to do is give and do things because they’ve received because they appreciate what they received. Now give from the place of appreciation we give to get appreciation and that’s healthy. That’s testosterone producing. You know, I, I go on Facebook cause I want to help more people and have them write their little notes. And they’re saying everything that they like, Oh, it’s been really fun to have people all around the world, giving their comments. Because for me, I teach around the world, but I don’t always hear everybody’s little comments. You know, what they learn, what they got and so forth. That’s a really fun thing for me to get that feedback. It gives me so much energy. It’s amazing.
Brad (01:19:05):
Oh my gosh. That’s such a great service. So we got to totally plugged that. Get on there. Listeners, join John Gray on Facebook every day with a new, different topic. Yeah.
John Gray (01:19:15):
Right. Then write me notes.
Brad (01:19:17):
Is it the live, the live comments streaming down the side. Yeah. That’s a fun. You can respond to them and everything. Yeah.
John Gray (01:19:23):
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for floating that.
Brad (01:19:26):
Yeah. Thank you so much. It’s just always a pleasure. These, these insights are so memorable. Um, you know, I’m, I’m touched by that very first thing you said that, you know, going through that grieving process and reflecting on how you could have done better. And I think for all of us listening and everybody in, in real life right now, man, we got to take that and run with it because we, you know, we gotta do the best we can. Life is precious every single day. No excuses, no getting stuck..
John Gray (01:19:53):
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for having me on the show again, it’s, you know, you are just as inspiring to me as I’m sure I am to you. It’s just, it’s such a delight to be with you, your, your summaries, your comments. They, I walk away with them and they’ll be very helpful for me. I appreciate that a lot,
Brad (01:20:09):
John Gray, everybody. Thanks a lot. Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you appreciated John’s message as much as I did. I’ll tell you right out of the gate, I started to get emotional. It’s just so heavy when he’s talking about the grieving process after losing his wife and not being able to sleep well at night because he’s processing thinking of ways that he could have been better in the relationship. And now it’s gone forever. I mean, if we can’t take that forward and live that every single day in real time, I don’t know. It’s pretty powerful. And I know I’ll never forget it. So let’s be the best we can be. Bring our best selves to the table rather than bringing out the worst in ourselves. That happens so many times when we’re in conflict and go check out John on Facebook every single day, he’s cranking out content. He has a live seminar where you can ask him questions and he’s covering the different topics that he mentioned. So, Oh man, what a show? Thank you so much for listening and supporting good luck.
Brad (01:21:13):
Thank you for listening to the show, we would love your feedbac at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com. And we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to thanks for doing it.
