Episode 75 - John Gray Part 2 – Consciously Evolving our Relationships: Understanding How the Sexes’ Biological, Chemical, and Social Patterns Illuminate “Why Mars and Venus Collide”

Transcript

“Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.” – Amit Kapadiya

In furtherance of creating and maintaining the planetary dialogues now required in the 21st century, I featured a special series of dialogues with myself and other elders in the weeks leading up to and including the 2008 Olympics hosted by China and the U.S. 2008 elections. Those dialogues can be listened to separately on this site or as gathered as a series on my website www.livingdialogues.com under the collective title “Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogues”. They address various specific political aspects of our planetary crisis, with its dangers and opportunities for a visionary and evolutionary shift. (We remember that the Chinese character for “crisis” is often described as meaning both “danger” when visioned from a fear perspective, and “opportunity” when visioned from a wisdom perspective.)

In all my Living Dialogues from their inception I talk in various ways about the need to generate dialogues across generational, ethnic, gender, and national boundaries -- building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place.

This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative solutions together, to engage our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.

And that is what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.

SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN, SOBONFU SOME. TED SORENSEN, ROBERT THURMAN, DAVID MARANISS, DAVID BOREN, GEORGE LAKOFF, TOM HAYDEN, JAY INSLEE, BRACKEN HENDRICKS, BOB GOUGH, VAN JONES, BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, LESTER BROWN, DAVID MENDELL, DEBORAH TANNEN, AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program.

All the best, Duncan.

P.S. As a way of further acknowledging and appreciating your part in these dialogues, and since I cannot personally answer all of them, I have begun to publish from time to time in these pages some of the numerous (unsolicited) appreciations received from you.

 

Host:  You’re about to listen to Part 2 of Duncan Campbell’s dialogue with John Gray, author most recently of ‘Why Mars and Venus Collide’.  Right after the introduction of John in the dialogue, we pick up where we left off at the end of Part 1. 

John Gray:  This is a fantastic interview.  Like you said, this would be an exploration of discovery process and throughout this interview I’ve been challenged to expand my awareness and think in a more enriched way.  And I, one: am appreciative that you created platform for me to share many of the ideas, two, is, you really do your homework, and I appreciate that, and three, you enrich the whole interview by bringing forth your wealth of knowledge as a sharing together, so thank you very much. 

Duncan Campbell (Introduction to Living Dialogues):  From time immemorial, beginning with indigenous councils and ancient wisdom traditions, through the work of Western visionaries such as Plato, Galileo and quantum physicist David Bohm, mutually participatory dialogue has been seen as the key to evolving and transforming consciousness, evoking a flow of meaning, a dia (flow) of logos (meaning), beyond what any one individual can bring through alone.  So join us now, as together with you, the active deep listener, we evoke and engage in living dialogues.

Duncan Campbell:  Welcome to Living Dialogues, I’m your host Duncan Campbell, and with me for this particular dialogue I’m truly delighted to have as my guest John Gray, author most recently of the New York Times bestseller ‘Why Mars and Venus Collide’.  An internally recognized expert in the fields of communication and relationships, and the author of fifteen books, John Gray was a certified family therapist for over fifteen years, and has been conducting personal growth seminars for over thirty years.  His watershed book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ was recognized by USA Today as the bestselling book of the 1990s.  Translated into more than 40 languages, this phenomenal book has helped millions of men and women transform their relationships.  He has appeared on ‘Oprah’, ‘The Today Show’, CBS’ ‘Morning Show’,  ‘Good Morning America’, ‘The View‘, ‘Politically Incorrect’ and ‘Larry King’, and has been profiled in ‘Newsweek’, ‘Time’, ‘Forbes’, ‘USA Today’, ‘People’ magazine, among others.  His ‘Mars Venus’ advice weekly syndicated column for Tribune Media Services has appeared in more than 100 media outlets, and he also has a thriving website and an ongoing newsletter with thousands of subscribers - www.marsvenus/colide.com, and www.marsvenuswellness.com.  And so John, what a delight to have you here on Living Dialogues. 

John Gray:  It’s a real pleasure for me to be here.

Duncan Campbell:  You say one of the problems women have is accurately interpreting a man’s feelings - for example, he looks frustrated, and she thinks he’s not interested in what she’s saying.  In truth, he’s simply trying to make sense of what she is saying in this other language so that he can be of help, and help her solve her problem.  She is correct in noticing his frustration but her interpretation can be completely off the mark. 

John Gray:  That’s exactly right.  The whole key is, she may feel his feeling, she may know what he’s feeling, but why he’s feeling that she can be completely off the mark.  And quite often is, because we have such different perspectives on life.

Duncan Campbell:  You say that much like Deborah Tannen, in her wonderful books ‘You Just Don’t Understand’, men and women, she says, speak a different language.  They might as well, as you put it, be on Mars and Venus.  And so your book is really this wonderful bridging ability to have fun learning another language.  So let’s talk now about how men can get hip to what women really want.  You know, here’s Freud, the great 19th Century genius discovery of psychoanalysis and so on and he says ‘finally, love and work, that’s what motivates us, but what do women want?’

John Gray:  Yeah, he had no clue. 

Duncan Campbell:  He never found out, in his life.

John Gray:  A lot of men have no clue, I mean usually you’ll find a guy around three years in a marriage - at the beginning he thinks he knows, but around three years in at some point  he goes, ‘I can’t make sense of it, I don’t know, what is it?’  And one of my ways, many ways, to explain that, is one of them, when I talk about the biological way would be to look at testosterone and oxytocin, and so when a man achieves something big, like you do something really big, that’s going to create a lot of wellbeing in his body -

Duncan Campbell:  He’s just finished a big project at work -

John Gray:  Exactly, he’s just overcome a challenge, accomplished something, done something, he’s going to feel on top of the world because it’s stimulated testosterone.  Use something big, you feel really good.  So a guy will do something really big for his wife - say, plan a vacation, and that’s really big.  Or, let’s say I want to create romance, and I bring her a dozen roses, that’s really big.  To me, it translates into a scoring system - that’s worth 30 points, or 24 roses, 24 points.  But in terms of producing oxytocin - not talking testosterone, we’re talking about oxytocin - that way that oxytocin hormone works, is that every act of love every gift of love scores equal to every other gift of love.  Because it’s kind of like back when my mother said it’s not the present that counts, it’s the intention behind it.  And you know, if you have a loving intent, that’s what stimulates oxytocin - not so much how expensive it was, or how big it is, or how long lasting it is, it’s that you had that intent to be of service and cared and were considerate.  So you can bring two dozen roses - that’s 24 points in a man’s mind - but what you’ll find out is that it’s really just one or two on her planet.  So if you want to get all those points and you’re on a budget, then bring her one rose every week, and you’ll get those 24 points.  If you think you can suddenly just do a big thing, you know that will last for months, it doesn’t work that way.  And this helps men understand it because so many times I would counsel men and they would say to me ‘look, no matter what I do it’s never enough to make her happy’, and what they’re meaning is ‘I do the big stuff and it’s not enough to make her happy’.  When, the big stuff is a part of it, but it’s the little stuff that actually lowers the stress for women, when you’re consistently showing little acts of affection - a hug here, a compliment there, a planner date there, all the little things that often men don’t do.  Men don’t do them because when women do it for us, it’s not a big deal.  Case in point, you’ll read in a lot of the romance books, you know how to create romance, ‘leave little notes that say ‘I love you’’.  Okay, if my wife leaves a little note that says ‘I love you’ that’s very sweet, but it’s not, like, gonna blow me out.  But if I leave a little note on my wife’s pillow, and I leave and she looks at it and she goes ‘Oh, that’s so wonderful!’  That’s what creates the oxytocin that keep her stress levels down.  So a lot of the things that women do for men are the things that women would like men to do for women.  And when women do it for men, men have the experience of ‘that’s not so important’, so then men don’t naturally, men don’t reciprocate because that’s not what’s important to men.

Duncan Campbell:  A man feels like he has to make a difference, and he’s been educated in school to think that making a difference means doing something big.  It is a big deal.

John Gray:  That’s our culture, and that is a neurosis in our culture -

Duncan Campbell:  It is.  Yeah.

John Gray:  It is, and women’s love can help transform that.

Duncan Campbell:  Yeah, and here’s where I think it’s sort of great on this, you say ‘a married man gets one point in the woman’s scoring system for going to work, he gets one point for returning, and one point for being faithful.  These are the three golden points.  Without these, he gets no other points.  These three points give him the keys to her heart, but it is doing the little things that open the door.’  And oftentimes the guy thinks that he does these three things, that’s a big deal.  You know, ‘I go to work, I come home, I’m faithful, you got these other guys out there they don’t come home, they’re running around - I mean hey, you know -

John Gray: Look at what you got here -

Duncan Campbell:  Yeah, exactly, ‘I think you should really be appreciate of who I am, and I love you, and of course the matter of fact I do these three things means that I really love you and I’m committed.  So I take it for granted I don’t really need to say it.’  But then you say , when you saw the difference of the importance of the little things, to do with the oxytocin, as opposed to the big things for the testosterone, you said ‘when I discovered this scoring system I began giving my wife four hugs a day.  One, I see her in the morning the first thing, I give her a hug.  When I say goodbye, I give her a hug.  I give her another one when I return and one before bed.  By finding her to give the hugs, I get an extra point each time for finding her, so I score eight points just by giving her four hugs.  By showing some interest and asking some questions about her day I can easily earn another ten points.  Every time I ask about something with an awareness of what she is doing I score a point.  A man gets more points when his questions are specific, rather than saying ‘how is your day?’ he asks ‘did you get what you wanted at the marketing meeting?’  That shows real involvement.  Every time you listen - simply listen and don’t interrupt - to try to solve what you think is the problem she wants you to solve, rather than just, that she wants you to listen to her, you score another raft of points.  So, you know, when you get on to the scoring system, you say, you see how easy it is for both parties to actually express this deep love and appreciation that they feel for the other but sometimes don’t express, because they withdraw because they either feel alone or unappreciated or not seen, and it’s just because they haven’t really seen that they both respond to stress in a different way, both hormonally and in terms of brain chemistry, and that gives birth to certain habits of how we deal with stress and it’s just, it’s like a totally remarkable set of discoveries that you’ve made here that we think we know these things, but actually, we can learn new tricks even if we’re old dogs. 

For full transcript, please contact Duncan Campbell