How the Most Popular Relationship Book of All Time Fueled Divorce

This book sold over 15 million copies — and its author had no real credentials

I am reposting this from a post written on Medium on December 30, 2025, by Maria Cassano.(https://medium.com/the-virago)

Written by John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was published in 1992; the same year I was born.

CNN called it the “highest-ranked work of non-fiction” of the decade, and depending on who you ask, it sold between 15 and 50 million copies worldwide. (Compare that to The Five Love Languages, which sold about 20 million copies, and Attached, which clocks in at around 3 million.)

And one self-help book seriously poisoned the well

The book’s thesis — men and women are so fundamentally different that they might as well come from different planets — permeated everything.

By the mid 90s, this book had spent 121 weeks on the bestseller list and would go on to spawn spin-off books, a TV sitcom, a Broadway show, and weekend seminars that taught couples how to follow the principles outlined in the book.

But here’s the rub: John Gray had no business telling anyone (man or woman) how to navigate their relationships, because John Gray was not a therapist, a psychologist, a neuroscientist, a sociologist, or a scholar in gender studies.

Actually…

John Gray didn’t have any relevant credentials at all

In 2023, the podcast If Books Could Kill (hosted by journalist Michael Hobbes and lawyer Peter Shamshiri) investigated the book and found that Gray was merely a “yoga instructor with a distance-learning Ph.D.” — and that Ph.D. was iffy:

“[John] says that he attained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the ‘science of creative intelligence’ at something called Maharishi International University […] People have reached out to the university, and they don’t appear to have any record of John Gray ever attending, so it’s not clear that he ever got his bachelor’s or master’s.

He also has never been a licensed couples counselor. In the paperback edition of Men Are From Mars, he said that he’s a member of The National Academy for Certified Therapists, which does not appear to exist. He also says that he’s a member of the American Counseling Association, which offers memberships for $189 on their website, so anyone can be a member of that.”

Hobbes goes on to explain that decades ago, there was a “weird loophole” in California law that allowed anyone to offer counseling, no license required, as long as they were a “religious instructor.”

Gray marketed himself as a yogi/meditation guru and started counseling couples on their relationships — but in actuality, he was a grifter with no therapy qualifications.

In fact, after listening to several excerpts from the book, Shamshiri concluded, “John needs therapy more than anyone I have ever met in my life.”

I read this self-help hunk of shit so you don’t have to

And what I saw nauseated me. Here are several real quotes from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus:

“One of the biggest differences between men and women is how they cope with stress. Men become increasingly focused and withdrawn while women become increasingly overwhelmed and emotionally involved. […] It is a mistake to expect a man to always be in touch with his loving feelings just as it is a mistake to expect a woman’s feelings to always be rational and logical.”

Translation: Men are rational and women are hysterical.

“To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesn’t know what to do or that he can’t do it on his own. Men are very touchy about this, because the issue of competence is so very important to them. […] When a woman tries to improve a man, he feels she is trying to fix him. He receives the message that he is broken. She doesn’t realize her caring attempts to help him may humiliate him.”

Translation: Women shouldn’t vocalize their needs because men will take it as criticism, and criticism is humiliating.

“When a woman is overwhelmed she finds relief through talking in great detail about her various problems […] After talking about one topic she will pause and then move on to the next. […] These topics need not be in any order and tend to be logically unrelated. If she feels she is not being understood, her awareness may expand even further, and she may become upset about more problems.”

Translation: Women never shut the fuck up. Trying to understand their illogical, never-ending rants is a lost cause — but if you don’t try to understand her, she’ll get even more hysterical.

“To fully express their feelings, women assume poetic license and use various superlatives, metaphors, and generalizations. Men mistakenly take these expressions literally. […] When a woman says ‘I want more romance,’ a man may hear, ‘You don’t satisfy me anymore. I am not turned on to you. Your romantic skills are definitely inadequate. You have never really fulfilled me. I wish you were more like other men I have been with.’”

Translation: Women are too dramatic to speak honestly. Men are simultaneously too logical to understand figurative language, and also so insecure that they assume “I want more romance” means “My ex had a bigger penis than you.”

“To a certain extent, a man loses himself through connecting with his partner. […] Even when a man loves a woman, periodically he needs to pull away before he can get closer. Men instinctively feel this urge to pull away. It is not a decision or choice. It just happens. […] It is a natural cycle. […] A man pulls away to fulfill his need for independence or autonomy. [If a man cannot pull away, he will become] increasingly irritable, passive, moody, and temperamental.”

Translation: All men act like avoidant, unstable teenagers who can’t handle constant intimacy. It’s natural, and women need to accept that.

“When a Martian gets upset, he never talks about what is bothering him. […] Instead he becomes very quiet and goes to his private cave to think about his problem. […] If he can’t find a solution, then he does something to forget his problems, like reading the news, playing a game, [or watching sports…] If his stress is really great, it takes getting involved with something even more challenging, like racing his car, competing in a contest, or climbing a mountain. At such times, he is incapable of giving a woman the attention and feeling that she normally receives.”

Translation: Men are incapable of communication and can only cope with their problems by isolating and distracting themselves in their man caves, sometimes for days on end. Emotional neglect is normal male behavior. He may also need to climb a mountain.

“Every time their favorite Martian went into his cave, [Venusians] would go shopping or out on some other pleasing excursion. Venusians love to shop. My wife, Bonnie, sometimes uses this technique. When she sees I am in my cave, she goes shopping. I never feel like I have to apologize for my Martian side.”

Translation: Women should cope with emotional neglect by going shopping.

“A woman is like a wave. When she feels loved her self-­esteem rises and falls in a wave motion. When she is feeling really good, she will reach a peak, but then suddenly her mood may change and her wave crashes down. This crash is temporary. After she reaches bottom suddenly her mood will shift and she will again feel good about herself. […When a woman’s wave crashes,] it is not a manʹs fault or his failure.”

Translation: Women are hormonal creatures whose moods make very little rational sense outside of their menstrual cycles and psychological trauma. Men can’t do much about it.

Where the hell do these claims come from?

The short answer: Gray was projecting.

Hobbes points out that throughout the book, Gray is “very clearly talking about his wife.” These behaviors are “not remotely universal to women at all,” yet Gray uses his own self-help book as a sort of diary, complaining about his relationship and subconsciously revealing his own shortcomings as a husband. Then he applies his “weirdly specific advice” to all couples.

The long answer: These ideas are patriarchal bullshit.

Whether you’ve read this book or not, you’ve heard these stereotypes. Women are dramatic, chatty, and hormonal, while men are logical, independent, and literal — but stereotypes aren’t universal truths, and these stereotypes don’t have any research to back them up.

Scientific studies show that women are no more emotional than men, men talk just as much as women, and the vast majority of gender differences are due to cultural conditioning rather than biology. (They sure as hell aren’t because we come from different planets.)

Vulnerability and communication are also not indicative of female hysteria. Actually, they’re signs of an emotionally intelligent adult. On the other hand, traditionally “masculine” traits (like stoicism, isolation, and an inability to express emotions) lead to depression, addiction, and suicidal ideation.

Unfortunately, millions of readers in the 1990s did not get the memo.

This book convinced an entire generation of men that their avoidant, selfish, emotionally immature behaviors are normal, and their wives’ complaints were nothing to be concerned about.

35 years later, the gender divide is wider than ever

Among Baby Boomers, divorce rates have doubled since the 1990s. This phenomenon is called gray divorce (no pun intended), and while I can’t confirm how many marriages Gray doomed with his shitty advice, we can certainly connect the dots.

Women now initiate nearly 70% of divorces due to “lower levels of relationship quality than married men.” They often feel emotionally neglected, chronically undervalued, and downright exhausted from carrying the bulk of the invisible labor.

Y’know, the way you’d feel if your husband disappeared into his man cave every time life got stressful.

Among younger generations, things aren’t much better.

Politicians and pundits warn of a “male loneliness epidemic” in which young men can’t find women who want to date them. They watched their fathers and learned that “real men shut down.” They frequent YouTube channels and Reddit forums that parrot Gray’s advice with a new, dangerous twist: “Men and women are inherently different, and women are the reason we’re suffering.”

Surprise, surprise: Gray also believes modern women are the problem.

In 2014, AFP News interviewed John Gray about his plummeting book sales in America:

“Wherever feminism has a strong hold, there’s resistance to the idea that men and women are different. […] The reason why there’s so much divorce is that feminism promotes independence in women. I’m very happy for women to find greater independence, but when you go too far in that direction, then who’s at home?”

Great question, John Gray.

Women are at home — in the houses we bought with the money we made from the jobs we have, despite handling everything else in our households. But now, we get to choose whether we want to share said homes with emotionally stunted manchildren who can’t handle basic conversations.

Copyright 2025 Maria Cassano.

Writer, Editor, Journalist, and Author – as seen in HuffPost, Bustle, CNN, NBC, Food & Wine, The Daily Beast, YourTango, and Medium. Debut memoir (Numb, Party of One) hits shelves in February 2027.

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