I Finally Read "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" (And Then I Lived It)
I Finally Read "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" (And Then I Lived It)
I found the book in my building's little free library, the shelf where people leave what they are done with. A used copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, underlined in pen by some stranger. I love that. You can see exactly what mattered to whoever held it before you.
I had avoided it for years. Honestly, I assumed it was a men's book, the kind that quietly tells women to sit down and be small. Then I sat down to read it, because I wrote a whole book about the same thing, and I was wrong. It is one of the most equal things I have ever read.
Men build, women talk
The night before, Master and I were at Friends Quarters here in Vancouver, setting up a podcast interview with our friend Dean. I was the only woman in the room, surrounded by guys running cables, buying gear, problem-solving. And it went so smoothly.
"A man does not give help to another man unless the other man wants help." — Marian
That is straight out of the book, and I watched it happen live. Men have what John Gray calls uniforms, their skill sets, their rank. They bond by building things together, not by talking about their feelings. You let the man flip the burger.
"You don't touch. You just stay there. You look and you talk." — Master
Then a guy looks over and offers, "you want to flip the burger?" and the other says thank you, and that is the whole friendship. Meanwhile, that same day, I had a two and a half hour lunch with a girlfriend where we talked about nails, family, and my boots. Mars and Venus. I saw both in one day.
The man cave is real
Here is the line that the stranger had underlined, and that Master read out loud:
"A woman under stress is not immediately concerned with finding a solution to her problem." — Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
A man under stress retreats. He goes to his cave, watches something, tinkers, goes quiet, and the solution appears to him later. A woman under stress does the opposite. She needs to talk about it, positive or negative, it does not matter.
"Most of the solution for a woman is just talking about it." — Marian
I have tested this on Master. If I am upset and he just listens, really listens, I am already better. He does not have to fix it. He just has to hear me. Guys, write that one down.
The bear thing has to stop
There is this trend online where women say that, alone in the woods, they would rather meet a bear than a man. I cannot do it. I cannot let that one go.
"You have more chance of survival with a guy than with a bear. So why would you put yourself in this situation?" — Marian
Have you seen what a bear does to a body? This is not feminism, it is just not factually true. And I say this as a woman who has traveled alone, walked the Camino across Spain by myself.
"I have no bad experience from being with men. None." — Marian
The whole idea that all men are dangerous comes from ignorance, and ignorance is where hate lives. If we refuse to even acknowledge half the planet, there is no way to build trust. And trust is the entire thing.
The line between submission and abuse is money
This is the part I most want women to hear, because it is the question we get constantly: how do you know it is not abuse?
For me, the answer is independence. When Master and I started, I had almost nothing. The first thing he did was make sure I had things in my own name. My own credit card, my own credit score, my own way out.
"If you give the girl the money, she can run away really fast. When you restrain a woman with no money, with nothing, then it's abusing." — Master
That is the whole distinction. If a woman cannot leave, it is not submission, it is a cage.
"It's not conscious submission anymore. She has no other means." — Marian
Master built my independence on purpose, so that every day I stay is a choice and not a trap. That is what makes it conscious. A man who is leading you toward something, who is sometimes hard on you for a shared goal, is not the same as a man who keeps you with nothing so you cannot go. One is mentorship. The other is sex trafficking with nicer purses.
So no, the book did not make me angry the way it made the second wave feminists angry in 1992. It made me feel seen. A healthy relationship needs a captain, and in mine, that is Master, and I chose it with my eyes open and my own bank account. That is the whole argument of my book, just without the PhD.
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