she starts talking, he feels that his apology did no good. When
his apology doesn’t work, he does the next best thing he knows.
He tries to make her feel better by explaining why she doesn’t
need to be upset. On his planet, if you have a good explanation,
then the other person feels better right away.
If I am late for a meeting on Mars, I explain that there was
an accident on the bridge and I was stopped for forty-five
minutes. The other Martians feel better immediately. If I said
I was stopped for two hours in gridlock, they would feel even
better. If I said, “My daughter accidentally cut herself and I
had to rush her to the hospital,” they would not be upset with
me at all. On Mars, the better the explanation, the better the
person listening feels and the more forgiving he becomes.
EXPLANATIONS DON’T WORK ON VENUS
On Venus it is different. Explanations can make things worse.
When a man gives a good explanation, he assumes that it
should make a woman feel better right away. It has the oppos-
ite effect. She hears that he thinks she doesn’t have the right
to be upset. On Venus, before a woman feels better, she first
needs to feel that the man understands that she has a valid
right to be upset.
She cannot simply accept his explanation as a means of
making her feel better; she needs first to talk about how it made
her feel. She wants to be understood; then she is ready to do
the forgiving. She doesn’t even need a good explanation. She
just needs to feel that he truly understands why she is upset.
These are some examples of Martian explanations and how
Venusians may react:
118 / JOHN GRAY, PH.D.