John Gray – Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus Scanned by nova scanner: Canoscan D1250 U2f software: Omnipage Pro 9 Date: 28 August 2002 Proofed by

people. It is difficult truly to understand another person's point of view, especially when he or 
she is not saying what you want to hear. It is also hard to be respectful of another when your 
own feelings have been hurt. 
 
Many couples mistakenly think that their inability to communicate successfully and lovingly 
means they don't love each other enough. Certainly love has a lot to do with it, but 
communication skill is a much more important ingredient. Fortunately, it's a learnable skill. 
 
How We Learn to Communicate 
 
Successful communication would be second nature if we grew up in families that were already 
capable of honest and loving communication. But in previous generations, so-called loving 
communication generally meant avoiding negative feelings. It was often as if negative feelings 
were a shameful sickness and something to be locked away in the closet. 
 
In less "civilized" families what was considered loving communication might include acting 
out or rationalizing negative feelings through physical punishment, yelling, spanking, 
whipping, and all kinds of verbal abuse-all in the name of trying to help the children learn 
right from wrong. 
 
Had our parents learned to communicate lovingly, without suppressing negative feelings, we as 
children would have been safe to discover and explore our own negative reactions and feelings 
through trial and error. Through positive role models we would have learned successfully how 
to communicate-especially our difficult feelings. As a result of eighteen years of trial and error 
in expressing our feelings, we would have gradually learned to express our feelings 
respectfully and appropriately. If this had been the case, we would not need the Love Letter