John Gray, bestselling author of Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus reveals that the key to creating and maintaining successful relationships between men and women lies in accepting our difference. By trying to make our partners over in our own likeness, Dr. Gray reminds us we destroy what we first found so appealing.

A great relationship requires work, but it also requires vacation. It shouldn't be all work. Both things are equally important. Women intuitively understand that to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. Men, on the other hand, are born with the knowledge that "at your job, that's where you work." You go to work, do your job and when you come home, that's your
vacation time. And we're experts at it. For thousands of years a man went out on his hunt, patiently waited and then with a burst of energy ran after the animal he was pursuing. The qualities that made a man a good hunter - waiting, watching, conserving energy - now look like hanging out and laziness. She doesn't understand this is his way of relaxing from the day. When a woman sees her man sitting in front of the TV, remote control in hand, she takes it personally and mistakenly assumes that he really doesn't care about the relationship.

Truly, we need a new job description for relationships. And I use the term job description particularly for men, because a man is conditioned to learn a job.

Historically, the way a man supported his family and showed love to the woman in his life, was to go away and bring something back. Today, that doesn't work as well, because in many cases she's out hunting too, and when you get back there's more work to do - relationship work. At one time it might have been enough for men to support their woman by supplying their
physical needs, but this is no longer true. Women now know that they are capable of providing for themselves in the material sense: they need their men to support them emotionally. That's the whole secret. Now, men want to be supportive and loving, but it is a process of adjustment. We are learning the art of communication that goes beyond the transfer of information to the
expression of love. Generally when a woman says we need to talk a man feels "Oh, oh, not talking, not that." It's the same reaction we had the first time we went on the hunt. "Oh, no, I have to kill that animal? I have to do it? What if it gets me?" So there was fear, apprehension, not knowing what to do. But we learned, and we still can learn what's required in a relationship - what's required for the new job description.

The problem in relationships today is not money, although sometimes we think it is. It's communication. Today's relationships are about nurturing each other's emotional needs - and a woman's emotional needs today are different then they were fifty years ago. A man's emotional needs are different today, too. We are a different generation of people. The world is a different place
now and expectations have totally changed.

To a man, real love is when you don't try to change anybody. When he meets the "right" person, often after lots of interviews, he will let his heart come out and love this woman just as she is. A man wants the same in return, but most women don't know that.

When a woman is shopping for her partner, she looks for a man who makes her feel good, whom she cares for and loves. But somewhere there's a feeling welling up inside. "He's got the potential; I see it. What I could do with him Love will overcome. I'll just love him. I'll just give to him and he will change." Unfortunately, men, there's nothing you can do to change that about women. That's the way they are, but women can learn to work with that, just as men can learn to accept that in women. A woman is going to want to change us. There is nothing bad about men or women, if we approach relationships positively and with a commitment to do our best to understand each other and to make things work. Ultimately, the objective I have in helping couples is for them to learn to respect each other's differences and become a little closer to each other as a result.

There's a fun way to look at our relationships. During those moments when you want to pull your hair out, when you wonder what's going wrong, why this isn't working out, and you think maybe we're not right for each other, maybe we're just too different, that's the time to remember that maybe your partner is from another planet. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus
and on these planets we have different customs. If you learn to honour and respect the customs of the different planets, then things go smoothly, but if you don't honour and respect the customs, you step on each other's toes.

I have found the secret to success in helping couples is to look for the easiest things to change, rather then the difficult things. I recall asking a couple to talk about their problems. Like a good Venusian, the woman remembered every detail of their problem. They don't forget. The man, on the other hand, appeared to shrink down in his chair, because Martians are known
for solving problems. What makes a man feel good on Mars is feeling competent and having other people recognize his ability. That is why men, as a rule, won't stop and ask for directions. "Look how competent I am, I can get us there." The last thing a Martian wants to hear from his partner is that he's lost. Remember, for thousands of years men were hunters and guides
and moved the tribe around. They had known where to go. Getting lost was not an option. So men have a very precise meaning around competence and women, if you want to recharge his batteries when he's feeling low, just give him some appreciation. Don't remind him that his batteries are low, or that he's been driving around the block for fifteen minutes. I promise you he knows.

There are some little things that a Venusian can change about a Martian, but there is one big thing that women need to recognize, because men won't ever change this trait: When a man has spent the whole day solving this problem and that problem and is feeling stress, he will come home and, like the healthy man that he is, he will go into his cave. All Martians have a cave and on it there's a sign written in Martian. I'll give you the translation: "Do not enter, fierce dragon inside." Every man knows that sign, but women don't - and a man doesn't understand that he has to explain this aspect of himself gently to women. There is another sign on the cave and it says, "Be back soon." It is very important to know that he will come out and that he's
not wasting time in there when he could be doing something meaningful to a Venusian, like talking.

For a Venusian, the way to feel better is to talk. So many women today, are putting on Martian suits working and not getting their emotional needs met during the day. Now, more then any time in history, women need to talk in order to find balance and wholeness.

The difficulty you and your partner face is that if you talk to him about your problems, his inherent nature is to give you solution. At that moment, getting solutions is not going to make a woman feel better. What she is looking for is empathy, someone to hear her.

When he comes out of his cave, you may be furious inside for having to wait so long to be with him. You may even walk off to build your own cave to punish him for not wanting to talk to you. When this happened in my marriage eight years ago, I was just learning about caves and my wife's needs.

I came out of my cave and my wife went off. I thought, "Great, I can just watch TV." I didn't know I was being punished. Days passed and we were hardly talking at all. I thought, "Now this is peaceful. It's like going on a fishing trip." A few days later when I approached her in a sexual way, I discovered that she had been silent because she was upset with me.

The gift we can give ourselves is to know that we are also human, that men and women sometimes forget these differences exist. We also need to remember that we don't change overnight. When people make mistakes, they just need another chance, particularly when you are dealing with the differences between the sexes. It is also important to know that you don't have to take everything your partner is saying personally!