The Many Levels of Mars and Venus

John Gray

John Gray, Ph.D., is the author of 15 best-selling books, including Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, the number one best-selling book of the last decade. In the past ten years, over 30 million Mars and Venus books have been sold in over 40 languages throughout the world. He is arguably the most popular writer on relationship in the world today.

Written by Colin Bigelow

John and Ken begin the dialogue by taking a look at the havoc wreaked upon romance by a postmodern approach to intimate relationship. In a noble attempt to show how many of our ideas about sex and gender are culturally created, postmodernism went a step too far and declared that all gender differences were therefore inherently oppressive and to be discarded immediately—and for over thirty years, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Today, we have the freedom to choose who we will be and how we will live, unfettered by gender-specific social norms. Women can be CEOs, men can be full-time dads, and in the liberal mainstream, that’s perfectly normal. But for many who have enjoyed this freedom, there has been the nagging sense that something in their intimate lives was lost along the way... something they miss.

As John explains, "Independence and equality exist, yet if you want to have romance in your life, and less stress, then you play out the masculine and feminine roles in areas of your life that you choose in order to create the romance, and then in other areas of your life you can choose not to play out the roles…. But particularly when it comes to romance, if you don’t have the roles, the romance will die." Sexual attraction exists between the polarity of masculine and feminine, and in a postmodern world, polarity is outlawed. Even if shared between a loving couple, without polarity, sex can be a somewhat tepid, unsatisfying affair. To really generate a passionate charge between lovers, someone has to step into the directional, masculine mode of loving, and someone has to step into the receptive, feminine mode of loving.

Men or women can play either role, but part of what determines whether one has a more naturally masculine or feminine disposition is rooted in the different hormonal composition of men and women. Biology isn't destiny, but that doesn't mean that biology has nothing to tell us. Historically, the way these different chemicals stimulated our bodies was essential to the survival of the species. Estrogen and oxytocin, produced mainly in women’s bodies, help physiologically prepare one to care for a newborn. Testosterone and androgen, produced mainly in men's bodies, helps physiologically prepare one to go kill a mammoth. The mammoths are gone, but the chemical differences in men's and women's bodies remain with us today, the effects of which we would do well to take into account while engaging our work, our families, and our lovers.

A more integral approach to sex and gender honors the truths of psychological, cultural, societal, and biological influences, without being limited to any of them. In contrast with the androgynous, sexless ideal of postmodernism, an integral person might become more masculine or more feminine as they continue to grow and develop. As John and Ken discuss, such people have fundamentally made friends with both the masculine and feminine elements within them, and then chosen to express themselves in the mode that comes most naturally to them.

Postmodernism gave us the freedom to step out of the gender roles that for millennia were unconsciously imbedded in our understanding of what it meant to be male or female. Integral gives us the freedom to inhabit our gender consciously, so that we can give the gift of who we are as human beings in a way that shines through the gendered, sexual aspects of our lives. Integral does not tell you how you should shine as a man or a woman; it shows you the many ways you could possibly shine more fully through the unique prism of a male or female body.

John and Ken go on to discuss how a more integral approach can benefit spirituality, nutrition, addiction recovery, and medicine.

We hope you enjoy this zesty, insightful dialogue about how, after three decades of freeing our minds, we can liberate the deep passion of a sexuality unafraid to energize the gap between masculine and feminine....