John Gray, “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”

From the seventies to the nineties it was a flourishing of American self-help manuals: how to strengthen self-esteem, how to understand yourself, how to improve your social performance and relationships with others.

There is no lady who has not read “Women who love too much”, by Robin Norwood (in pure seventies awareness style), identifying herself in the pathetic figure hanging on the wire of a phone that does not ring. We have all had at least a look at “Your erroneous areas”, by Wayne Dyer (1977) or “Emotional Intelligence”, by Daniel Goleman. But there is a text that has beaten all the others and that has remained in the ranking 121 weeks and has sold 50 million copies: “Men come from Mars, Women from Venus”, written in 1993 by John Gray, a psychologist specialized in the study of couple problems.

Personally Ifeel a certain annoyance towards those who think they have the “remedy for everything”, towards those who believe that it is enough to modify their behavior a little to make everything change around them. In my opinion, there is no pill of happiness or magic wand capable of transforming an unsatisfactory relationship into a rewarding one. I must however recognize this text, despite the annoying simplification of the problems and their solutions, the merit of having focused on some points that cause misunderstandings in the couple and, I add, also in friendships and social relations in general.