Building fulfilling relationships is always easier said than done. To pull this off in the most enriching way, one must gain a deep understanding of the connection between men and women. In this episode, American relationship counselor, lecturer, and author John Gray explores different perspectives on love and relationships. Having written the famous bestseller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, he shares his research-backed advice on improving communication and building stronger emotional connections with your partner. He emphasizes the importance of listening, understanding, and compromising to create a lasting and fulfilling relationship. Gary also shares sneak peeks on his new book, Beyond Mars and Venus, and provides real-world examples of couples who have achieved long-lasting love connections by navigating their differences – including his own love story.

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Making Love Work: Understanding Men And Women In Fulfilling Relationships With John Gray

In this episode, we are going to light your attitude up. We have the leading relationship coach in the world. He wrote the book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. His new book out is called Beyond Mars and Venus. Since you’re reading this, you are going to be able to access a free class from this legendary leader on relationships at MarsVenus.com. It is a great honor to introduce John Gray, an American relationship counselor, lecturer, and author.

In 1969, he began a 9-year association with the Maharishi Yogi before beginning his career as an author and professional relationship counselor. In 1992, he wrote the bestselling book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I believe it sold over 50 million copies or something unreal, which became a long-term bestseller. His books have sold literally millions of copies. Ladies and gentlemen, he is here. John Gray, welcome to the show.

Glenn, thank you so much. We all need good attitudes. It’s contagious.

There is no question about that. We always love to start our show by asking our guests, what is your definition of attitude, and who was your first great attitude coach?

My attitude is how you approach the world. It’s what you feel. Are you projecting optimism? Are you putting appreciation, respect, and enthusiasm? Are you glum in a big black cloud over you? That’s what we want to avoid. We want to feel motivated to move ahead. We need to feel there’s something upfront of us that we’re moving towards, and the support we have is from our back. That’s a great attitude. I’d summarize my attitude that I come back to again and again is, “I’m needed in the world and what a great attitude. I feel supported.” Who gave me the best attitude? My mother. My mother taught me, and by her attitude, and occasionally she’s said, “You always have what you need in life. If you feel you’re suffering, you’re looking in the wrong direction. It’s right over there.”

It’s learning how to pivot from negativity to positivity. Pivoting too much attention on your relationship to your own personal self, or from your own personal self to being with others, friendship, work, children, gardening, and the planet. All these things we have to pivot. It’s that ability to flow back and forth. In a sense, I’m a master of pivoting, because if anything starts to become a little bit boring for me or stressful for me, I know that the solution is shift gears to something else, which is our emotional needs. In one of my books, I talk about ten primary emotional needs. If you’re just focusing on one, it’ll never be enough. When you’re empty, it feels good. You’re looking for love, it fills you up.

You can’t get everything in a relationship with a woman or a man. That’s a romantic relationship. That’s one vitamin. You have to have a relationship with yourself, with people who are like you, with a higher power, and with people who know more than you so you’re learning things. All these relationships, like work relationships where you’re serving others and they’re serving you back and reciprocal relationships that make a difference in the world. My major thing is I want to bring forth what I’ve spent my life doing 28 books and all that I’ve done. I love doing that, but I have to make sure I take care of all the other needs.

I just want to go back to mom real quick. What was her name? Was she at home or did she have a job?

My mother had seven children. It was her dream. She’s a very happy woman. If you could imagine six boys, I saw a really happy woman. I was very entrepreneurial as a teenager. I had my own paper out. I remember her coming to me one day after my little brother was finally out of the home. She said, “Now, the children are growing up. I’m going to start a business. How do you feel about that?” You had to realize she had a husband who supported her and everything like that, but she said, “I’m going to start my own business.” She had such a big library of personal growth and spiritual books that she would lend out to people.

Finally, everybody wanted to buy the books, so she would order the books for people. She bought another house and she had the biggest spiritual bookstore in the country. She had to build wings onto the house, and she never advertised except the little bookstore sign in the front yard, which said the Aquarian Age Bookshelf. She was somebody who was very fortunate and had a connection. She’s an example of grace. We hear in spiritual terms grace. Grace means that at all times, you’re being taken care of. If you can experience that, then the suffering and stress go away. Her secret to it was that many places in her life brought her fulfillment. A higher power was one.

As we interview highly successful people like yourself, we love to ask and it’s quite common that mom and dad are usually one of the very first attitude coaches. Oftentimes, we find that the real gold is in the generation before. I’m wondering if you were fortunate enough to have a relationship with any one of the four of your grandparents. If you were, what was their name, their story, and the attitude lesson you garnered from your grandparents?

I was pretty young before my grandparents died. I never met my grandparents on my mother’s side, but I met my grandfather. These things come through the genes as well. Grandpa was a Texas oil man. He was one of the first Texas oil man at an oil company. We had a ranch with oil wells and the whole thing. All my brothers were into oil, I went into personal growth. I have a fondness towards them. Particularly now, with the oil shortages, what people don’t know and a big secret is we’ve got more oil in Texas than in Saudi Arabia. They don’t want to advertise that because you got to keep the oil prices up.

If you knew how much oil was there, people would pay pennies for it. There’s a lot of manipulation in the oil business. Even right now, my brothers are all making tons of money because of the oil shortage. It costs more to get that oil. My brothers have shifted from becoming Republicans to Democrats. They love the Democrats. It’s a very funny story.

I would say that your books, although they may not be oil, are in fact gold and are worth so much. You’re such a blessing to America, in my opinion. I love your opinions, thoughts, and candor. I love listening to your interviews, and that’s why I’m so excited to interview you. Real quickly, you were 1 of 7. What number were you?

I’m number five.

I’m number five, too.

High five.

High five, brother. Let’s get into this thing called Relationships. We all have two things in common, problems and relationships. Most of our relationships are causing most of our problems. Number one, what I want to know is, do you believe relationships have transcended from when you wrote the book in 1992 throughout the next 30 years? Is it tougher to be in a relationship now than it was back then? Let’s talk about it. Tell me the difference between, “When I wrote the book, this is what it’s like,” and what is the madness now that you’re seeing and the solution to help people?

There’s the book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and that helped back a couple of years ago. Relationships are more traditional. In a traditional relationship, the man is primarily the provider of safety and security, and the woman is the provider of love and family. You can buy a house, but it’s not a home until you put a woman in it. She has to feel loved. In the old days, if women didn’t have jobs, they were dependent on a man for all the outside support, like protection, providing money, and support. If you got boys, he’s got to discipline those boys. What she needed, my father had. When my father provided that, and he was able to, he didn’t need all these romantic and communication skills that I teach.

My mother is a happy woman. When women are happy, men are amazing. When women are not happy with men, that’s where the problems come up. It’s just like a man out of work. If a man has got a good job, he feels happy. He’s being rewarded for what he does, even if it’s hard work. Writing books is hard work, but I never resisted and resented it because I got paid for it, and people were benefiting from it. In my parents’ marriage, that’s traditional. I’m writing about that primarily in Men Are from Mars. Even back then, some women would say, “I feel like I’m from Mars.” That’s because they were doing things in the day that men traditionally did. Therefore, their challenges are going to be the challenges the things I described are like men and feel they’re men.

Most men do not admit that they’re like women, but their wives will say, “I feel like my husband is from Venus. He’s always one that complains, talks, and shares.” Around the time of Men Are from Mars, it’s starting to happen role reversal. Now we see it’s complete. It’s out there. The basis of it is hormones. I evolve with many books on relationships, helping solve the new problems. If I can summarize it, the latest edition of that is Beyond Mars and Venus. We’re no longer having the traditional Mars-Venus roles. We’re beyond the Mars-Venus roles, but we’re still men and women. Biologically, we are hugely different.

Particularly the biology of happiness is completely different in men than women. Our communication skills now can help women and men be happier as well, but we’ve got to have a whole new set of communication skills. It was enough in the past for a man and a woman to fulfill their roles, and they got along quite well. Now, when women are more on their male side, they’re making male hormones throughout the day and they need a new kind of help to bring them back to producing female hormones. If they’re not producing female hormones, they’re stressed, unhappy, and not feeling enough. Many women now, you probably hear them say, “I’m so overwhelmed. There’s so much to do, and there’s not enough time.”

Now on a practical level, it used to be women had all day long to take care of a home, their children, and their family. Imagine that plight of the modern woman now who’s doing a man’s job throughout the day, and then coming home to have children, a family, and a home. I don’t know the latest research, but I know many years ago there was a big study done on stress levels in men and women. What they found in the workplace, women’s stress levels were twice as high as men’s. When she returned home, her stress level doubled. There’s a nurturing aspect of a woman and the home, children, family, and relationship. This is key thing that helps produce female hormones, which is estrogen. Estrogen goes up and women need ten times more than men to be happy.

Men need ten times more testosterone. Some men need 20 or 30 times more testosterone, depending on their body type. Testosterone gets produced by doing things in the outer world to achieve success. Basically, you set a goal, you achieve that goal, and you make testosterone. Women need testosterone as we need more as men, but women need ten times more estrogen. If they want to have romance, and so many women enjoy romance, those good feelings we have in the beginning until we become jaded, those good feelings that put you at a top of a mountain.

John, what you’re saying is something that is pretty simple. Women’s estrogen levels produce more when they’re may be doing more traditional tasks and chores. Men’s also increased. Both need to increase as they do more traditional tasks, chores, set a goal, and move on, which totally makes sense. The problem now is in this society, neither of them is doing anything. What is your advice for men, women, or couples, if they were to come to you and say, “We don’t know what we’re doing. Things are bad?” Tell us what do you try to do with those people to help them in their relationship.

You pointed out the problem so clearly. It comes down to simple terms. If our hormones are out of balance, meaning women are making more male hormones and not enough female hormones, which is very common now, and men are making more female hormones than male hormones. Addiction, for example. When men’s female hormones are greater, their tendency to addicted is greater, procrastinate, and lose motivation. Women’s biggest complaint in relationships is men lose their motivation. It’s because their estrogen is too high. Have you ever noticed that in distance when you’re alone for a while and in a relationship?

I had this benefit in my marriage because I would travel to China, Russia, and all around the world, teaching these ideas. I’m gone a week or four days, I was so horny when I got back. I was so attentive and interested. It’s always brought the passion back. Distance makes a man’s heart grow fonder. Whenever you feel, “I’m alone. I’m doing my thing and I’m not depending on anybody, primarily me,” what happens is testosterone will go up if you feel successful. That’s why you have to have a positive attitude. Even when I would have disasters happen, I didn’t have all this gold fall on me. There are a whole lot of disasters. You expect to have a big audience and a little audience. You expect some interviews to go really great, and it doesn’t go great or one book doesn’t turn out.

For me, again, it’s all about attitude. I remember somebody taught me many years ago from a comedian. This is back when Johnny Carson was the main comedian interviewer. Everybody wanted to get on Johnny Carson Show. You’d do your little funnies bit and sometimes, Johnny would pull you over. Other times, he says, “Thank you so much.” Comedy guys, it’s a tough job to make people laugh. It’s a huge pressure. You’re up there, and you don’t care what the response is because every job you do is simply practice until you get on Johnny Carson. The way I looked at it, I said, “If nobody comes and nobody knows, that’s good.” It’s always practice, and it’d be good, then not good.

You have to have that attitude that I’m just learning to get better and better until the day comes when I get on the Johnny Carson Show, and that day will come. That’s having trust in yourself. When you get knocked down, you pull yourself up. That’s what builds testosterone. It’s like when I lift heavy weights. You push the weight up, you push until you get to the edge where you have to collapse. Once you collapse, you have a recovery period. The recovery period builds your testosterone again. Let’s say you push your muscles every day and you don’t grow muscles. You have to have recovery time. That’s the same thing in relationships for men. You have to have action, and then recovery time.

That’s what the concept of the cave is. Every man’s got his man cave. That came from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. It came from this cycle inside of men to build testosterone, sustain testosterone of action, and putting forth hard work and effort. This is not easy. The workplace is not always easy. Solving problems, doing things, setting goals, doing what you can to achieve those goals, and getting messages of success is an attitude that says, “I’m still learning. I’m growing.” Whatever it is, you have to feel that you’re meeting your goals. Afterwards, you become exhausted and you need to rest. You take cave time, which is activities that don’t produce a lot of estrogen. That’s the key.

Testosterone will rebuild. It used to be all men had hobbies. It was even on your resume. You’re a golfer or you like tennis. You got to have a hobby, which means, “I’ve got things I can do that are primarily testosterone stimulating, but they don’t stress my body in any way.” That’s where you pulled up your testosterone. That was the Mars solution. It’s still true, except now in modern relationships, often, men don’t feel the need to do that. They sit passively and watch TV. They’ll just sit down and not do much. They go to their cave, which is, “I’m going to do something for me. Now it feels good,” but then they get stuck because they’re not rebuilding. They have too much estrogen.

Now, for women, it’s the opposite. Women with estrogen, whenever you’re feeling, “I have support, a home, money, love, friends, and my children,” these are all activities where she can nurture. When she’s nurturing, estrogen goes up. Estrogen only goes up nurturing when she feels, “I have support.” That’s why man is so important to a woman. Now women don’t have men anymore. The thought of trying to raise a child. They want their children. Many of them still, and get IVF. We push men out of the picture. Women can do it all themselves. Women will say to me sometimes, “What do I need a man for? You can even have a baby without a man. You can order the sperm.”

What’s happening is she’s doing it alone. Whenever you do anything alone without help and support, you produce testosterone. When you feel, “I don’t have to do that I have support to do what I like to do, and I can depend on others to help me to do what I like to do, what I enjoy doing, or things feeling love. It’s not because I have to get something back, but because I naturally want to do it.” There are two kinds of love. One is, “Look what you’ve done for me. I love you.” Another kind of love is, “I’m going to do this for you because I love you.”

When I do something for someone because I love them, that’s a testosterone producer. When somebody does something for me, the love that comes out of me is called appreciation, trust, acceptance, and receptivity. Those types of activities produce estrogen. A lot of women have those activities, but they’re neglecting that part of them by being so much on their male side. Without having to give up your work life, you can be in a relationship where the man provides a new kind of communication, never done before, that will help her come back to her female hormones. That’s what therapy is really about.

I’ve been doing therapy for decades. When women walk into my office, they can be upset about things. I get them to talk. I say, “Tell me more. What else? Let’s look at this differently. What else do you want? What would you like?” Helping her express her personal feelings, wishes, and needs. Whenever she can go inside and somebody is listening to her with empathy, that’s called penetrating her. Male energy is penetrating. If I’m a good listener to my partner, and my partner is a good person to share, women have a hard time sharing. Many men will read my book and say, “Honey, we’re supposed to be talking.” She says, “I’m too busy to talk. I can’t talk to you. You just don’t understand.”

Women have to understand how to communicate their vulnerability to a man in a way that makes them want to listen. These are all new skills. Men have to learn how to listen in a way that makes it safe for women to share what’s inside. Ninety percent of the people who go to a therapist, which is primarily them talking and I’m listening, are women. Men do have a female side sometimes when they need to do that. What men have to do more is analyze, solve problems, and fix things. That’s what Freud did. In the beginning of psychotherapy, it was Freud, mostly rich male clients. If anybody gets rich, suddenly they’re unhappy because they have the actual experience that money doesn’t make you happy.

When you need money, it makes you happy, but when you no longer need money, it doesn’t make you happy. You got to find another source of happiness. This is what happened to women. When they needed men, men were wonderful. They built statues for us, loved us, accepted us, and thought we were great. They don’t need us financially and for protection now. When they don’t need us, you have no foundation to produce estrogen. If you’re hungry and I feed you, your estrogen goes up and you’ll never forget it. You’re so grateful.

Gratitude, appreciation, trusting, forgiving, accepting, and not demanding perfection are all qualities of the female side, and they’re missing in many women now. They can’t fall in love with a man. They come to me and say, “He’s good material, but not enough. It just doesn’t do it for me.” I said, “No man can ever do it for you until you do it for him, which means you have to find the feminine energy inside of you. You have to open up for him to enter in, or he needs to learn skills to help you open up, and then you’ll let him in.” This is a new kind of communication that’s never been taught before on the planet because it wasn’t needed.

It’s like my mother depending on my dad for money, living in a safe neighborhood, and fulfilling her dreams was enough to produce huge amounts of estrogen. That means she doesn’t complain about anything. Complaining only comes from low estrogen because unfortunately, complaining produces estrogen for a while. Women feel better complaining. Their mind doesn’t stop. This thing for men is pornography, for example, feels good to men’s brains because it produces testosterone, but then it goes right back down. It goes down a little lower. Part of why males now are their testosterone levels are slowly descending.

There are also environmental pollutants that are causing it. Another one is with low testosterone, you don’t feel past the man. You don’t have that alive feeling and masculine energy. All you have to do is do porn for a few minutes, and you’ll feel that for a little bit of time. Men are hungry to feel their masculinity, but doing that lowers their masculinity in the long run. As for women, when they don’t feel the power to get what they need, they go out and get it themselves, but then their ability to receive diminishes over time. That’s what’s been going on now. We’ve been going in the wrong direction, which is temporarily okay. If women go to their male side, they just need to learn how to come back to their female side.

If men have addictions or they lose their motivation, aliveness, or commitment, meaning commitment is a very powerful masculine thing. In marriage, you commit to your partner. As soon as you can’t regulate your sexual energy, and now you’re releasing it in other places, it also weakens your masculinity. There’s such amazing research now that we just didn’t have before. There’s bad information out there that having sex with many people is very natural for males. He has so much sperm. He can make babies every day. What’s the deal with monogamy? That’s the way that the brain is designed. In the unconscious, the monkey brain can make babies whenever. That’s the monkey brain.

We’re not monkeys. We have monkey software, but we want to elevate it into human and love. My amygdala back here is violent. I’m a violent person. I’ve never expressed violence in my life because I also use my prefrontal cortex. The amygdala, every man is violent, but what you want to do is tame that, transform that, and let it serve you through assertiveness and motivation. That’s your juice. You don’t have to be violent to have juice. The power, we want elevated power. We want power with love. The only way for men to have power with love ultimately is to be with a woman. It is very hard to find love unless you’ve got a being in front of you whose body is designed to make high levels of estrogen, which raise men’s testosterone.

Men’s testosterone, when it goes up in the presence of a woman raises her estrogen. That’s called romance. All these romantic skills that I teach also, you’ve got communication skills, romantic skills, and making love skills. That’s a real big one if you want to sustain a passion for a lifetime. Now is 2023, I’m 71 years old. I have sex every other day, sometimes twice a day. None of my friends have that because they don’t have the communication, romantic, and sex skills that will sustain that connection. Also, that’s just relationship skills. You also have to have balance in your life. You have to have a job, work hard, and feel good about your job. You have to overcome your procrastination.

There are a lot of things to being masculine and being feminine. Women have to learn how to be accepting, forgive, let go, and process their emotions. Whenever you’re emotional, estrogen is going up. For a minute, when your estrogen goes up, you’re not being acknowledged and appreciated because women do not appreciate men who procrastinate, get mad and upset. You’re not getting any appreciation so your testosterone tends to go down. As men talk more about their problems, women become less interested in their husbands. Yet, those same women will say, “Tell me about your day.” He’ll start telling you about his day and start talking.

Whenever you talk about what’s inside of you on an emotional level, your estrogen goes up. When men’s estrogen goes up, it’s not attractive to women. They just can’t get turned onto you. Women get turned on when a man’s testosterone goes up. Testosterone goes up when you detach. You have to be detached from my reactiveness, but then that can also be emotional in response to her emotions like empathy. If somebody is feeling happy, I’m happy for them, that’s a form of empathy. If somebody is excited, I’m excited with them, that’s connection. If they’re sad or disappointed, I connect with that, and I feel what they’re feeling. This is a new skill for men to feel empathy, but not to be emotional.

This doesn’t make sense to most people because this is all new information. This is why twice as many men are not getting married, relationships are a disaster, passion is gone, and monogamy is disappearing. It’s thousands of years, since they finally figured the monogamy thing out, and we realize this is really powerful. People don’t realize the power of it. We now have science proving it. I remember Alan Watts, a brilliant philosopher. When he was like my age, he said, “Finally the dragon is dead.” What was the dragon? His sex drive. He wanted to get rid of his sex drive. He could never be satisfied as opposed to having a dragon, which is totally satisfied with your spouse.

It turns out that there’s a monogamy hormone. When you are committed to a woman and you provide excess estrogen for her and she raises your testosterone, that’s called marriage commitment. They did studies on married couples versus single men and masturbation. What they found is that a single man having sex does not make the hormone prolactin. A married man, when he has a relationship, loves her and is committed to her, his body will make prolactin. Prolactin inhibits his desire for sex with other women. If he doesn’t have good communication skills, it will inhibit his desire to have sex with her as well.

A lot of my friends in the 70s don’t care about sex anymore. Their testosterone levels have gone down so far. You need to be making prolactin, which frees you from lusting after any woman. They’re all just pretty girls. To me, I got the jewel at home. The attraction never goes away if you have plenty of prolactin and good communication skills that will raise your testosterone.

Let me ask you this because everybody is going, “Communication skills. Let’s go ahead and do a course. Go ahead and give us the gold.” What are the three best questions guys can ask girls and the three best questions girls can ask guys to get the communication skills started?

Now, we get to some practical things people can walk away from this interview, and try it out and see. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s the easiest thing.

We’re going to get to that sexual thing that you said later. Don’t you worry.

When it comes to man’s testosterone, every woman can practice this, and you’ll see. When a man is talking and he pauses for a moment then say, “That makes sense,” as soon as he said, “That makes sense,” he does it with a feminine tone in his voice. I can say to a man, “That makes sense,” it’s going to bump his testosterone up a little bit. How many times does a married man after his wife say things like, “That makes sense?” Barely do we hear it. We’re hungry for it. We want a female to go, “That makes sense.” That’s one phrase.

Another one is, “What a good idea.” Show a little enthusiasm and emotion. They will just eat it up. You’ll watch his posture change. Blood will go to his face, and he doesn’t even know you’re doing it. You can do this twenty times a day. Whenever he’s talking about anything, and if you feel inside he’s right, then put a little femininity and go, “You’re right. That’s so amazing.” This is what juices men up. Keep giving and pouring it on. Now, there’s other thing, but I just want to give you three, “You’re right. Good idea. That makes sense.” That’s it. Only if you feel it, but amp it up a little bit.

You know what I do in my seminars is I have ten men come on stage and have them pretend that they just won the world championship of that local area’s team, like a soccer team or football team. Imagine these guys coming on stage and I have them played around. Let’s give them a big round of applause. Everybody stands up, claps for them, and gets all excited for them. These guys are pumping testosterone. It never felt so good. Everybody in the audience never felt so good either. I then tell them to double it and triple it. You got to pump it up.

You have to do this sometimes because we get sedentary. It’s like going to the gym for people who are sedentary. You got to use some resistance to overcome your resistance. Women, you got to overcome your resistance to making men heroes. If he’s White, you can’t say anything to him. He’s a White supremacist. This is so terrible. Every man deserves to be acknowledged, appreciated, and trusted to do his best. This is what we need, and we need to earn it, so he has to say something or do something, and you go, “That makes sense. That’s a good idea.” Now, if he does something, your response to his doing will raise his testosterone a lot, which is why we have traditions like for a man, you pay for the meal.

Why do you pay for the meal? She can basically go, “Thank you. I received something from you.” Many women now, they’ll just go, “Let’s split the meal.” There’s no connection there. What she doesn’t know is that her allowing him to do something for her and then appreciating him is the key. Appreciation means nothing if he doesn’t do something, and it doesn’t last that long. He has to keep doing little things. That’s the idea of the new romantic skills. We can get into those practical details as well.

The guys want to know what are the three things guys can say.

There are things to say, but more importantly, it’s to ask.

What are the three questions we need to ask?

Women, you don’t have to ask questions. We don’t need too many questions. I wrote a whole book, Mars and Venus in the Workplace. The biggest complaint men had was women asked too many questions. Stop interviewing men instead, what a man can do for a woman. She’s talking. Now you’ve got this impulse to interrupt. Don’t interrupt. You’ve got this impulse to get to the point. What do you want me to do? Why are you telling me? That’s that impulse. You got to stop that impulse. Don’t speak. After many years of teaching this stuff, I have a little sticker that says, “Don’t speak. Remind.” I’m a big speaker. Imagine what I am with my wife. She could say anything. I could talk for an hour.

Don’t speak. Ask questions. She’s talking, and even if you’re not interested in the beginning, pretend. That’s what I’m saying to women, amp it up, just pretend. You have to have the words to express it. When it works, anything you do that works, you’re going to do it more. You don’t have to pretend after a while. The first thing is you have to know what to do. Don’t interrupt her. Know this is going to take longer. In your mind, look at the clock and go, if it’s your wife, “I’m going to give her ten minutes. That’s all I need to do. She’ll be happy in ten minutes.” You have to give yourself a time.

When women start talking, if you were to just sit there and listen, you don’t know how long it’s going to go, so your energy drops. Also, then you say something that tells her you don’t understand, and now it starts all over. You do have these times where your wife has talked all this long distance. Men, remember that. We’re going to get an argument. You got to put it all into the past by having a new strategy. This strategy is first question. If she’s talking, your mindset is going to be ten minutes. I’m not going to talk about me at all. She’ll trip you up on this because she’s going to start asking you questions because she hasn’t taken my class.

When she asks you a question, you say, “Let me think about that. First, I want to understand you.” Always, she’s the priority. She needs to talk, not you. Although she thinks you do, they all think you need to talk. You don’t need to talk. Talking just makes estrogen. What she does is she needs to talk. Sometimes, she even says, “I need you to talk first.” If she asks you a question, you give a real quick answer. My daughter who teaches classes for women calls it The Lunch Menu. If they say, “What’s going on inside of you,” you say, “I had lunch today and I was just thinking about the salad I had. I had a meeting with so and so, I was just thinking about what he said, it went so well.”

Never go down. You’re not here to share your therapeutic feelings. Have a coach and a buddy, and have a beer and drink about it. With her, you talk a little bit, and then that makes her feel safe to open up. Now she’s talking. What are the three things you can do when a woman is talking? Anytime she says something, she pauses, “Help me understand that better.” Invite her. You say, “Tell me more.” She tells you more. There’ll then be a pause. It’s amazing, there is always more. Men, you don’t get it.

Once a woman feels safe, there’s so much more. There’s no point. There are many points. There are spirals. You want to make it safe for her to talk more. I know some men will think, “She talks so much.” She only talks so much because you keep interrupting with advice. You tell her, “Don’t worry about that. Why would you say that? You’re getting upset about nothing.” Those things are terrible. They just make her start over. She’s like, “He doesn’t understand.”

Primarily, women need to feel you care about them. That’s called empathy. You understand what they’re going through. You disagree with it. My wife always complained about the traffic. I could easily say, “We moved here because you wanted to move here. Everybody has traffic, so you don’t complain about it after a while. That’s what life is.” One of the funniest things I have to share is we were going on a little romantic getaway when I was young and didn’t have a lot of money. It was a big deal for me to pay for the hotel to go there. It’s a big expense.

We’re getting in the car to go, and she didn’t seem happy. I said, “You don’t seem happy. What’s the matter?” She goes, “I don’t know. It’s so much trouble to get everything together to plan this vacation. I had to get babysitters. I had to get this. Now I’d have somebody to look at the house.” I’m thinking, “Let’s just stay home. Why spend all this money, it’s not going to make you happy.” I practiced saying, “Help me understand that better. Tell me more.” It went on for a good ten minutes. I couldn’t believe how she had so many objections going on this trip.

The final one is the only one I can remember now several years later. She said, “Even if we had a good time and we get home, there’s still all the mail.” I so much wanted to say, “Everybody has mail when they go on vacations.” I just said, “Help me understand that better. Tell me more. What else?” That’s when the male thing came out. I’m listening to this and I’m ready to die. My energy is going down. This woman has so many problems. Literally, my posture is bent over because I don’t feel very successful at all. I want to be happy. My testosterone is dropping. I watched her as I went down. She stood up, took a deep breath and said, “It’s all worth it. I’m excited to go.”

At that moment when she says, “I’m excited to go,” then immediately, my posture changed. I’m like, “Yes. Let’s go,” because I got the feedback that this was a good thing I was providing, but she needed to unwind a bit on all that stress of, “I got to take care of the kids, this and that.” Women have to process out loud. We don’t do that. If we do it, we should stop unless we’re talking to a friend, a coach, or a buddy, not to your wife. Don’t process stuff out loud with them, otherwise, they’re now going to be there for you. When you’re listening to someone their pain, frustrations, disappointments, concerns, worries, and the things they feel bad about, anytime somebody is sharing that stuff, the other person who’s listening, if I’m just listening, I’m now penetrating in. I’m going in.

I’m on my male side, and the person who’s sharing is on the female side. If a man goes over there, he’s now opening up to receive her penetrating him. I have to make my favorite joke. When women penetrate into men, we’re not women, so you get an asshole. Nobody will ever forget that one. Women, stop penetrating into men. She wants to connect. If you’re over here and she’s feeling over here, she wants to go in. That connection is good, but now he’s the female and she’s the male. When women said, “I need to get in there,” really, you need him to get in you. What you do is practice willpower. All of our tendencies are wrong. If you’re not having a happy relationship, you have to look at yourself and realize something is wrong with what I’m doing.

If I’m not feeling healthy in my body, I have to say I’m not exercising enough. If my muscles are shrinking, I’m not taking care of myself. I have to overcome that resistance to do that. We all have places in our lives if we’re not fully grounded, happy, fulfilled, and motivated. I am most of the time. When I’m not, I do something that’s hard for me to do. I said, “I have to overcome some resistance, and I feel better again.” I gave too much information, but help me understand that better. Tell me more. When it seems like she’s done, what else? Just pause. It’s this pregnant pause, which allows her to come up with more. In your mind, as a man, think ten minutes. Ten minutes is going to do it.

How do you finish it off? There are so many good lines I have for men. It’s not fake. In the beginning, you might have to fake it, but as it works, it becomes a part of you because it’s true. The truth is always inside of us. After she’s shared, you want to solve her problem. Instead, you have to realize her problem is she needs someone to validate what she’s feeling. You can’t always agree with what she’s feeling, but you can validate her frustration, disappointments, and worries. I understand that. I have worries and concerns, too.

If you’re validating, how do you give the message that I validate? What easy way to do it is not to give a solution, but instead, take a deep breath, and then look at her and say, “Honey, you do so much for so many people. I want to give you a hug.” When I do that, women swoon in my workshop and go, “I would love for my husband to say that to me.” The thing is, men, do it not once, but do it again and again. It’s like saying thank you. Listen and then give her a hug.

You guys got to understand, Dr. Gray has a free class for you on MarsVenus.com if you like the 1, 2, 3. This is so awesome. I could interview you for ten hours, there’s no doubt about this. I want to offer that free class. If you want to go and learn and you love what he’s saying, it’s good. John, I got a couple of other quick questions. You have been interviewed by Oprah, Phil Donahue, and some of the biggest people. Can you share with us your experience? What was it like to be interviewed by Oprah? Were you face-to-face? Were you on her show? What was your attitude going into that thing for you?

I did eighteen shows with Oprah, and I coached her during the ‘90s. I taught her meditation as well. She’s a lovely and very independent woman. What’s it like? When you’re sitting in front of Oprah, she gives you your full attention. I remember the third show I did with her. I had somebody tell me this once. If you’re on somebody’s show and they’re popular, make sure they talk more than you. It’s the secret. People often want to share their stuff, but if you’ve got a host and she’s talking, let her keep talking because people listen to her, not so much to you.

I remember the third one, she called me up at my house and said, “John, I want to do a show. Normally, I have producers. I’m producing this one. I just want to sit with you and tell me, what is the most important thing we can teach people? I want them to have that gift.” We sat at the table and she said, “Let’s go through the book.” There I was sitting, she had the book in her hands and she was reading it. She talked about it. She asked me a question and I give short answers so that she could say more so she would relate. What Oprah would do is she was like teaching, “Women, you got to do this and this.”

I have to say she’s a big part of my big success and that particular show. At the end of that show, she stood up there and said, “Everybody, I promote books and everything. If I was to promote one book in my whole life, the only book you should read if you don’t read that many books is this book.” It was so great. The producers, when they actually aired it, they took it out because they said it was too much of a commercial if you can imagine that.

They couldn’t put that part, but she really supported me a lot. I appreciate it. Who I appreciate even more because of what happened to me was Phil Donahue. It’s an amazing story. In every success story, there are so many obstacles. For six years, my book was the number one bestseller. Five of those years, number one. It was amazing. Every week, I never received a positive print interview the whole time. Video, people see me, people love me, and I’m fun to be on TV. I was on every TV show. I’m charismatic, playful, fun, informative, helpful, and all that good stuff. Print interview? Never a positive one. Always a pissing match. They only want to criticize me in print.

Anyway, that was hard. Even to get to the best bestseller list, it took a year of negative articles, but a lot of TV to get me there. It was Phil Donahue who gave me my break. Phil, he’s a man. Men relate to my material. In the Phil Donahue Show, the producers are mainly women, and they were against me. They actually had three experts against me. They had couples who didn’t like my message. I didn’t know. I found out in the makeup room that people didn’t like me. It was a hit piece. We were about to go out, I didn’t mind, I was used to it. This was controversial stuff then and still is.

That was the day the first time the World Trade Center had an explosion. It was 1992. At the base, there was an explosion. It was the first big terrorist attack so they canceled my show. I said, “No, you can’t cancel it.” Phil said, “We’re doing a live show.” I said, “After the live show, let’s do another show. I got to do it.” He says, “We’ll postpone it to another time.” I said, “No, we got to do it.” I persisted. I don’t know how I convinced him. He said, “John, you don’t want to do this. I can’t get you another audience in time. This audience is terrified women. They’re upset. This is a terrorist attack.” I said, “It doesn’t matter. We got to do this show.”

In my heart, I knew the answer. This was my big breakthrough to have this very antagonistic audience against me and anybody saying good stuff in a sense. Phil has this thing. He go around and put the microphone in front of people, “What do you think about this?” Not one woman liked me in that audience. Not one expert liked me. Here I was putting some of my ideas out there, and it was like an explosion. It was like that building blew up. It was a breakthrough for me. Everybody was upset. I knew this is good because Phil was a man and an equalizer. Phil Donahue always take both sides. He’s a Libra as well.

If somebody is really attacking me, what’s Phil going to do? He’s a man. He’s going to have to defend. He would say, “This young man has an idea here. Doesn’t he describe your husband in certain ways?” “Yes he does, and my husband shouldn’t be that way.” He said, “Maybe your husband is that way, and we can just accept our differences and then learn how to get together and get our needs back.” Phil literally defended me over and over.

Is that on YouTube? We can still probably get that, I would think.

That’d be fantastic. I’d like to see that show, too. It’s an amazing show. It was the best. What people don’t know is my book got to the bottom 23 of the bestseller list, and then went to 11 after 6 months. It went to 10, stayed at 10, and then disappeared. It was like my publishers gave up. What I didn’t know was for 6 months, my book was out of print. I kept looking. Where’s my book? What the publisher decided to do is made a bestseller in paperback in January. They didn’t bring it out for nine years after this because I told him, “ I got Phil Donahue coming for Valentine’s Day, and you owe me hardback books. I’m not taking it. You owe me 25,000 hardback books in the front of bookstores. I’m not allowing you to release those paperbacks.” They had 200,000 paperbacks. I did the Phil Donahue Show.

Now Valentine’s Day came, the books were in the store, and they canceled the show, and the book sold out. The same thing happened the next month. They said they’re going to play it again. I got 25,000 more books on the front. They canceled the show. The third time, the show aired. We sold out all the books. It took two months after that. I don’t know why. I don’t think somebody liked me very much to be number one because we sold out 25,000 books right away.

Normally, that means you’re a best seller if you can sell that many right away. It kept going on and on after that. I stayed in hardback for eight years, because the sales were always number one going up there so high. Finally, when it went to paperback, it was the worst decision ever for a publisher because they make more money on hardbacks. It didn’t change the sales at all. People were buying that book because they had friends that told them that was a great book. It was all word of mouth.

How did you come up with the title?

That’s another gift from God. You have to realize, I pray. My class was called Men, Women, and Relationships. I taught it for many years before I wrote that book. Long before I wrote the book, I was trying to make a fun way of looking at differences. People didn’t like saying men and women are different. Even now, they hate it even more. Men and women are different. Many people loved it, but there’s always somebody. I’d give these talks and people would get mad at me, yell and scream. Sometimes have signs that I’m a sexist and no good. They were doing it to me back then. The people have hit pieces. People wouldn’t write things bad about me.

It’s awful when you’re having a fun talk like this, and somebody yells and screams and gets mad at you as sexist. It disturbs the whole nice energy in the room. I kept thinking, “I’ve got to make a nice, fun way of saying men and women are different.” In two years, I was like, “I got to find something. I need to find my hook and my angle that’s playful.” I then was given a talk on differences between men and women. At a certain point, I think this woman was drunk in the audience. I was talking about men and men were different. I said, “Women, I want you to imagine this. Remember the movie ET? We’ve all seen the movie ET. Now in the movie ET, the extraterrestrial needed Reese’s candies.” The kids were saying, “Don’t tell mom that we’re feeding it,” but he needed different nutrition than humans needed.

I was making the point to women. Imagine your husband is ET. Before I could finish that whole example, all the women started laughing when I said, “Imagine your husband is ET. We’ve seen the movie.” This woman said, “Where’s my husband from?” That’s the moment I said, “He’s from Mars.” I had the hair stand up in my arms. The whole room started laughing. It was so funny. Men are from Mars. I then had to figure out where are women from. That came a little later. Women are from Venus. I talked about how we’re different on our different planets. I’m so grateful that happened at that moment. It was intention. Everything happens in success is strong intention and patience.

The thing that resounds with me is, whenever tough times come, you have that attitude of resilience and as you said, pivoting. What I’m going to do because I want to respect your time is we close all of our interviews with something called Knowledge Through The Decades. I hope you’ll play with me and have fun with me as we do this. I like to walk people through their life and ask them the attitude lessons as each ten-year birthday hits.

If it’s okay, I’d love to just do that with you. We’ll start with childbirth. You probably don’t know or remember being born, but you’ve had kids and probably grandkids. When you think about childbirth or being born, you being born into this world, look at the ripple effect you’ve had, what do you think the attitude lesson of being born or childbirth is?

I used to teach rebirthing many years ago, so I had the memory of my birth, the kinesthetic experience of that. I was an induced baby. I think birth is like a fingerprint of so many lessons you have on your journey here. My mother, I’m number five baby, had no problem with babies. She went early because she didn’t want the baby to pop out in the taxi. She’s waiting in the hospital, and the doctor said, “Come on, let’s do it now,” and gave an inducement. She said no. Pitocin is to induce a birth. She no three times, and he did it anyway. I as a baby wasn’t ready to come out, but I survived.

The lesson I’ve learned from that is when I feel I’m not ready, everything is going to be okay. That was an important big thing for me in my life. It took a long time to learn that lesson. I have youthful parents when I give a talk at nineteen years old on meditation. I was a transcendental meditation teacher at that time. People would think, “This looks like my child. How can he teach us anything of wisdom?” It was always like, “Even though I’m not ready, everything is going to work out fine.”

It’s something that, like you said, tapped back into, and it’s probably a recurring theme for you. Let’s go to 3rd and 4th grade. Do you remember who your teacher was and what school it was? Was there something that occurred in 3rd or 4th grade? What’s your attitude lesson at 10 years old?

When I was in third grade, my brothers had Playboy magazines. In those days, there were women wearing underwear. I didn’t want to get caught with the Playboy, but I don’t know why, I just liked looking at the girls in their underwear. The natural thing for a little boy is curiosity. I didn’t want to get caught with it, so I ended up tracing these women’s body. I became an expert at drawing a naked woman’s body. I used to sit in third grade watching Mrs. Delk drawing her naked. They were better than anything I could do now. It was amazing. That’s third grade. In fourth grade, I remember giving an award to my teacher, a little statue as the best teacher in the world. I remember going shopping with my mother. One is sex.

The next one was I love my fourth-grade teacher. She’s the most wonderful person in the world. I had this love of guru thing, someone really amazing, but full of love. In fifth grade, I started to meet my challenges of not being recognized. I was a little guy, and everybody was introducing themselves. I’m listening to everybody talking, but nobody is putting their voice out there. Put it out with strength and wait until I get up there. As soon as I got up front, the teacher said, “Little Johnny, I know you’ve got it in you. Put that out there.”

I was so mad because I could do that without her help. Part of my journey is I’m more of a rebel. I’m very autonomous and self-sufficient. Part of my strength is self-sufficiency. I think that’s one of the keys in my message now, which is, “Whenever your partner is not giving you what you want, you need to pivot and give yourself what you need in a healthy way, and then you have more to give.”

Obviously, you went to college. Do you remember your 20th or 21st birthday? What was your attitude lesson when you turned twenty or somewhere around there?

I don’t remember the birthday itself, but I do remember a painful moment. I had become a TM teacher, Transcendental Meditation teacher. One of my friends had become his personal assistant. That was the greatest thing in the world for people when you’re following a guru. It was amazing. He could be so close to him. This was a friend of mine, and I wanted that job. I told the guru that I wanted that job, and I can do this like my friend. He told me, “You’re a really smart kid. You need to go back to college.” I was in college at that time. I was devastated. I felt like I’m never going to achieve my goal. I felt it was a part of me to become his assistant.

I had tears coming up, “What’s going to happen? I know it’s in my destiny to be with him.” Basically, I had a catharsis and said, “I’ll figure out a way to get back.” I did. I was at the University of Texas, and I got credits for going to be with the Maharishi and writing a thesis on Transcendental Meditation and research. I was able to go back, but I had to figure out a way to do it. I got completely knocked down, and then I hook myself back up. I became a personal assistant. I became his number one guy. I developed and taught his teacher training programs in the 20s. That was my 21. I felt like I don’t know if my dream can come true, and then I overcame it.

That is so awesome. Let’s go to 30. Do you remember being 30? What was going on in your life at 30 and what was happening? What was the attitude lesson? What did you learn?

Around 28 or 29 years old, it was time for me to leave the Maharishi. I don’t know why. I just woke up one day and realized I don’t need to be here anymore. You have to realize, for me, being his number one student, I really was, and my picture was in all the TM centers, 3,600 centers around the world. I taught these teachers to be teachers. I was his guy. I traveled with him. I was also pure celibate. That means no masturbation, sex, and girls. I loved it because I meditated a lot. They did brain research on me because I was a dedicated meditator. He liked that because his technique was working really well. They could prove it with my brain. This is back in the ‘70s.

I’m now moving through that time. One morning, I woke up, people could say enlightenment experience, because there are so many experiences, but at that time, it was time to go. I didn’t know where I was going to go. I just got on a plane. I also had a dream about a woman having sex. I thought, “This is new.” I then met that woman when I was in California. She was not that interested in me. Eventually, I convinced her, and that’s when I first started having sex. The moment there, 30 years old, I hadn’t had sex. I had sex when I was a young guy, but now a celibate and everything. It turns out that I no longer needed a guru anymore. She also had left some other female famous guru.

She gave me the attention I was looking for. I said, “What do you do?” She’s a massage therapist. She said, “You want a massage?” I said, “Sure.” She told me to take off all my clothes. That was the day I stopped being celibate. I remember lying on my stomach. She said, “Why are you still celibate?” I said, “I don’t know.” That became my journey and exploration in sexuality. At 30, when I was traveling, I was traveling around with many girlfriends. It was easy for me because I was famous in the TM movement, and they were all TM teachers and students. I had big credentials in a sense.

They had a lot of estrogens and you had a lot of testosterone.

Since I had the monk status and high status for them, I would say, “It’s been a while since I’ve had sex, and so I’m trying to learn. What are the best things to do for you? Tell me about your body, and what makes you happy in sex.” We had to talk about it first. Most couples don’t talk about it or anything. Women expect men to know, and they don’t want to talk about it. They were happy to share everything because of my monk status. We did examine the clitoris, vagina, G-spot, kissing, touching, and what they like. I didn’t know any of this stuff.

I interviewed these different women, and then I thought, “I have learned so much as a 30-year-old about sex. Now, I can teach sex.” It’s ironic. Here as a celibate monk, no longer a celibate monk, teaching sex because I realize so many people don’t talk about sex. Women often don’t know what other women know about their bodies. Men certainly don’t know about that. Women don’t know about what men want. I thought, “Let’s get people together called Making Love Work. That was the workshop and talk about what makes sex great for different people.” Having a conversation help people a lot about that subject.

He’s only at 30, Jason, and I just want to be this guy. Forty years old. Now, the testosterone might be backing off a little bit. Tell me what you remember about turning 40 or what your attitude lesson was at 40.

This is tricky getting to the birthday, but I know what happened at 40. After all those girls, one of those girls left her husband for me, and I ended up marrying her. It was a mistake but that was a lovely relationship. That’s where I learned men and women are different. I left that woman and found my wife Bonnie. Bonnie was one of the women I was traveling with but she wouldn’t marry me. This other woman wanted to marry me, so I married her. In my 30s, I’m married to Bonnie. Bonnie and I have a baby. We lived in LA for a year, then we moved up to Northern California. Now I’m 40 years old.

What happened at that time was I took care of our baby and my wife during the day. Throughout the night, I wrote my second book called Men, Women, and Relationships. It’s a big thick book. It’s everything I’d learned teaching about relationships for ten years. It’s like my opus, and I put that book out there. I self-published it basically, got it out there, and it did really well. The original version was twice as big. I interviewed people and they never finished it. It was so dense. I thought I wanted to write another book. At 40 years old, an agent called me. Prior to that, no agents would take me. I was a nobody. I had to do everything myself.

This one agent, finally, “He’s so great. You should see this guy. You can sell his book. People love him.” She called me and says, “I’m retired. I don’t want to do this. My friend said I need to do it, but I’m not going to do it.” I said, “Okay.” She called me back, “I have to do it. Something in me says I have to do it. I can sell your book to New York.” She went to New York. She could sell Men, Women and Relationships. A little friend of mine had a little publishing house. I went to him and said, “Great news. New York wants the book.”

He said, “This happens every time we have a good book. New York buys it off of us. We can do just as good as New York. Give us a chance.” I remember the moment, give you a chance. It was very heartfelt. I said, “Okay. You keep the book.” My agent and my wife were there. She’s like, “What do you mean? You’re going to sell the book to New York. You’re not going to do that?” I said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” I knew I had to do the right thing.

At 40 years old, I remember exactly this moment where I’m in the elevator and the agent says to me, “New York wants you. If you’re going to keep the book here, what are you going to do?” Right in that moment, my heart spoke to me and said, “I’ll write another book.” She said, “You can write another book on it?” “I’ll do a better book.” It came to me, “I’ll write the same book, but very short, simple, and easy to understand,” because that was too dense, and that became Men are From Mars, Women Are from Venus. It was right there in my heart.

That’s the gift of loyalty and karma, maybe, that you did that?

It’s totally a gift. There’s more to that story. When the president of the company was saying, “Give us a chance,” my younger brother committed suicide. When somebody does that, you feel like, “I could have done more. I should have done more.” Every emotional thing happens to me, I try to learn a lesson. The lesson I learned from that, and this is many years before this moment, is Jimmy always looked up to me because I was a little guy, and Jimmy always made me the big brother. I realized, “Nobody ever made him the big brother,” and I felt very guilty about that.

I made a pledge that in my life, the people that helped me become bigger. I’m never going to forget and I’ll always be loyal to them. At that meeting, I felt the spirit of Jimmy come through this guy when I said, “I won’t forget you. You have this book, and I’ll pivot.” That was very touching. I had tears in my eyes at this moment where I could help somebody who had helped me.

Do you call that the Jimmy principle in one of your books yet?

I should. I’ve got a lot of those principles. That’s why I got all those books.

That’s so beautiful. At 30 and 40, very powerful stories. Let’s see if he can outdo it. Let’s talk about the big 50. You’re a Libra. When is your birthday?

December 28th. When I turned 50, my book went off to bestseller. There’s a price you pay when you’re literally having millions of people thinking about you all the time. Most movie stars become addicted. It’s energy coming at you, and you have to let the energy flow through. If you look at a very gifted person like Michael Jackson, he was never happy in his life. The only time he’s happy is when he is dancing on stage. That’s because the energy that comes at him, he’s like a channel, and it flows out. If it’s flowing, there’s no resistance. He didn’t have the family, the relationship skills, and the love to have the energy channel in other directions. That was his only channel.

At 50, it was good and not good. What used to happen for me is, in the night, around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, all the people dreaming and thinking. This is my interpretation of it. It’s called Aka Chords in Hawaiian mysticism. If you think about somebody, energy connects to them. If you forget about them, it dissipates. These are actual energy interactions. Around 3:00 in the morning in my power center in my belly, all this energy would come and wake me up. It woke me up and it was painful for about two hours. I would meditate and transcend energy back to them. It was hard work. My wife couldn’t do that, so she had to go into another bedroom to sleep many times. It was just too much electricity in the room.

Most people, when they’re super famous, they deal with that by taking drugs. Drugs burn off energy or they have big arguments and fights. I was grounded in my ability to meditate, feel the energy, and love energy coming back, gratitude, and giving the energy back. Literally, I’m laying on hands healer as well. I’m sending the energy back out to everybody. That would give me peace. Having to do that for 2 to 3 hours is a lot of work in the middle of the night. Finally, these little voices speak to me sometimes. Every year, while I was on the bestseller list getting so much energy, they would say to me, “Is it enough?” I said, “No.”

When I turned 50, around 49, they said, “Is it enough?” I said, “It’s enough.” The next week, it went off the bestseller list. It was magical, maybe a coincidence, or whatever. At the same time at 50, 6 months later, I was then diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s. That was a big change in my life. I’m always a self-reliant person in figuring things out. I figured out a special natural solution to Parkinson’s. It’s in the family. If you take therapeutic drugs for Parkinson’s, symptomatic relief, but the condition gets worse and it’s an awful death. I didn’t want to take therapeutic drugs. I wanted to provide my body what it was missing.

I developed these very unique minerals that were discovered by a doctor in Germany, Dr. Hans Nieper. There’s a brain mineral called Lithium. Lithium is something they give to bipolar people. It heals the brain, but doctors would give 500 times the dose, so it’s toxic. Anything that’s too big of a dose is toxic to the system. I realized I needed to rebuild my brain. Lithium regenerates brain cells. It’s proven to do that. Ifyou put it in a petri dish, the brain cells duplicate. Normally, they’re all dying as we get older and lithium regenerates them.

Dr. Nieper found that if you bond lithium in a special process with orotic acid, it will rebuild your brain.  Orotic acid is a substance in the mother’s milk. I did that and healed my Parkinson’s. Still now, several years later, I have my super minerals, I call them, lithium orotate, magnesium orotate, calcium orotate, and potassium orotate. Orotic acid is something nobody knows about in the field, and yet there’s research showing it is the most powerful delivery system to regenerate cells. It makes the baby’s brain. It’s in mother’s milk. Combine it with the minerals necessary to process the production of dopamine and serotonin.

I wrote books on brain differences between men and women and brain solutions and supplements. It created a healing center at 50 years old. I bought a ranch and decided to create alternative healing for people for longevity, brain problems, Parkinson’s, ADD, and all these kinds of conditions, like depression and anxiety. In that decade in the ranch, I’m bringing in all the world’s experts to teach there. I learned from them and had them listen to me making sure I wasn’t teaching the wrong things. I became an expert on health and wellness, ADD and Parkinson’s particularly, depression and anxiety. You can have the right attitude, but it can also burn you up.

Anytime you’re really high all the time, which I was throughout the whole decade of number one bestseller, I’ve spoken to every big venue in the world. Thousands of people are clapping and standing ovations. That’s a lot of energy and travel. Overstimulated brain receptor sites and then they will start to shrink. That’s Parkinson’s. I then had to rebuild them, and I did. I taught nutrition. I start to open a health food store online. It’s multimillion dollars. I closed that and said, “I don’t need to do that anymore.” That’s my decade.

Is the ranch still open or no? the ranch is done?

It’s done.

I need some of those drugs for my ADD.

Read my book called Staying Focused In A Hyper World. The most powerful thing for ADD that I’ve seen is the super minerals combined with twice as much of Vitamin C and grape seed extract. The super minerals now have a few extra things in them, like rhodiola rosea, ashwagandha, bacopa, and various things. I’ve been to India 23 times. One of the most amazing things there they did in the freezing cold up in the mountains in the springtime called Shilajit. It’s a fulvic acid that they called the Destroyer of Weakness.

It’s very powerful. You can get it, but you don’t know if it’s clean or not, or if it’s poisonous. I was able to find another version of that, which is made in America, not India. It’s got the fulvic acid in it. It’s got all the 72 minerals in it. That’s also in my super mineral product. Literally, everybody who takes it feels better. You need to also have good relationship skills.

I love it. We’re closing in, but I appreciate you sticking with us. Let’s go to 60 years old. What’s your attitude lesson at 60?

I don’t have that one mapped out so good. I can’t remember my 60th birthday. I think my memory became a little less around that time. In my 60s, I can’t eat that out of me. I’m sorry. My big one was in my 70s. At 69, my wife died, Bonnie. That’s been the biggest transformational experience of my life. I think that overshadows what I would say about my 60s. It’s not coming to mind. It stopped everything. It’s a huge loss. Now you have to realize I’ve written books on healing after breakups and death. I’m an expert on all that stuff. I’m counseling a loss. I had the skills that I could go through this deep depression, which healed me tremendously.

I was so attached to her. I loved her so much. We had such a beautiful family, such everything together. She’s the center of the family and my life. Great sex. I went through the grieving process, and it was a good two years of grieving. When you grieve, you go to your deepest levels of attachment. Somebody said to me, “Why are you so sad? Why are you grieving so much? Why do you have so much going out?” I said, “Attachment.” They said, “You know she’s in heaven and happy now.” I go, “I know that. I know she’s in heaven. I communicate with her, but there’s something in the brain called attachment.”

Freud was the first person to explain this, and that is what I know of. What he said is called need integrate. If I need love and you give me love, my brain starts to think, “I don’t need love anymore. I just need you. If you’re gone, I’ll never get what I need.” There’s a rip that you have to let that tear happen where you begin to experience. In the past, I needed her, but now, I don’t have her, so I need love, and I can get love. You have to now pivot to all these other places. That’s Mars and Venus are starting over. All these other places fill your heart and gradually you can let go.

After two years, I met another woman who I’m deeply in love with. Even for those two years of going deep into my grief, knowing how to keep letting it go, the world became more beautiful to me. Suddenly, the trees were amazingly beautiful. We’re talking in awe. I felt in awe of nature. In a sense, that was my wife’s experience. She wasn’t a public speaker like me or anything, but she was in awe of life and nature. It’s like you feel little. It’s like when you go to the Grand Canyon, you just feel, “It’s so big.” The healing result of healing with my wife Bonnie, the loss, and coming back to feeling more and more love, opened me up to feel this huge world, another spiritual experience, basically. My 70s is having that.

Being in a new relationship, able to have learned all my lessons of the past that I wish I knew then what I eventually learned. When you have a problem, you learn a lesson, and you move on. Now I had a new relationship and I could apply all of those lessons so you don’t have any of those problems. That’s why I’m now in my 70s just in heaven again, being able to apply everything that I’ve learned in my marriage with Bonnie in my new relationship.

John Gray, you are super fantastic, and you’ve been a blessing to the show. We always like to end our show that if there’s somebody walking on a beach, sitting in a car tuning into this that maybe is down and saying, “How do I bridge the gap from where I am to where I want to be, and from who I am to who I want to become?” I always love to ask our guests to give a message of hope. If you could talk to that person who’s tuned in this to find the answers, to transcend and bridge the gaps in their lives, relationships, or problems, what would your message be to them? We’ll then go ahead and conclude the interview.

You’re not alone. The most important thing is we’re never alone. There are resources that we can reach out to, and we can’t do it ourselves. The only reason you’re in that dark place now is that you feel not alone. You’re not feeling the connection. There is a connection. There’s a place in your life right now where you can go and get the support that you need. It could be needing to talk to somebody, get a coach, get a therapist, or read a good book. You have to shift the gears from where you are now to another source of love and support. It could be just reading books or listening to a podcast right now. Continue listening to those podcasts or get a pet.

That’s very important that you have a place where you’re giving to someone that appreciates what you have to give because we’re here in this world for a reason, and we’re never alone. Our suffering comes from thinking that we’re not needed and that we don’t have what we need. We have to pivot to get what we need. We need to find someone that needs what we have to offer, someone who has less, and you have more of something. That can bring you back to why you’re here in this world. The other side of this is learning to express your emotions. If you could journal, journaling is one of the most powerful tools.

I meditate. I think learning to meditate is fantastic. Everybody should learn to do it. Meditation brings up the suppressed programming inside of us. You just write out what I’m feeling. I have a simple thing I’ll describe. Write out what you’re angry about, sad about, afraid of, and feel sorry about. Write out what you want, what you’re grateful for, and what you understand. When you write this letter, a wisdom and a knowing will come. The answer is within you. Sometimes you have to unblock. You have to become aware of all these negative emotions to get in touch with what you want. Freely express, “What I want, what I’m grateful for, and what I understand.”

Basically, you will have a realization. What I know now is, and then you confirm. At the very bottom of the letter, you say, “Right now in my life, I’m in the process of,” whatever goals you have. Say my goal is finding a good job. “Right now in my life, I’m in the process of finding a good job.” You can be more spiritual. “Right now in my life, I’m in my soul’s journey.” This is one of the downs that will eventually take me up. I’ve been down before and I got up before. “Right now in my life, I am in the process of,” and write out some of those things that you said you wanted. You will feel better and you will reach out. You’ll see the answers will come, but you have to put that goal out there, and your mind will start looking for it.

Dr. John Gray, we love you. That was a killer show. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful for you. We wish you nothing but the best. You got nothing but a positive attitude. Vibes coming your way from our studio. Again, we thank you. GAPers, we will talk to you on the next episode.

Important Links

• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
• Beyond Mars and Venus
• MarsVenus.com
• Mars and Venus in the Workplace
• Men, Women, and Relationships
• Staying Focused In A Hyper World

About John Gray

John Gray is an American relationship counselor, lecturer and author. In 1969, he began a nine-year association with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before beginning his career as an author and personal relationship counselor.