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John Gray, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading relationship experts, and an authority on improving communication styles for couples, companies, and communities. His many books have sold more than fifty million copies in fifty different languages worldwide. John lives with his wife and children in northern California.

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Starting over after a painful breakup, a divorce, or the loss of a loved one can be the most challenging experience of a lifetime. Drawing on insights derived from twenty-eight years of counseling thousands of men and women in making wise choices in the process of healing their hearts, John Gray has once again written a groundbreaking book--one that abundantly provides guidance and comfort to those who find themselves single again. With the processes John Gray has developed in counseling and leading workshops, Mars & Venus Starting Over opens the door to finding a rich and fulfilling lifetime of love once again.

The first section of the book addresses the part of the healing process that is basically the same for men and women. Dealing with the pain of a breakup or loss is not easy, and John Gray makes it clear that although the pain of loss is an inevitable part of life, suffering is not. He explains that the heart often lags behind the mind, that we must experience our grief in order to become whole again. He compassionately shows us how to find forgiveness and explains how good endings make good beginnings.

Although the healing process is fundamentally the same, starting over on Venus is often different from starting over on Mars. Women tend to push love away to avoid getting hurt again. On the other hand, men often get involved right away, but have trouble committing. Part two, "Starting Over on Venus," explores the twenty-three common challenges women face, which include the new pressures of dating, glorifying our past, staying stuck in grief, overromanticizing, women who do too much, fear of intimacy, and putting children first. Part three, "Starting Over on Mars," deals with sex on the rebound, work, money, and love, living out fantasies, holding back, being in a hurry, bigger is better, and self-destructive tendencies--to name a few of the land mines men face on the road to healing.

Mars & Venus Starting Over will inspire you to rise to the challenge of healing your heart and to move on to find an even greater love. You will fulfill your soul's deepest purpose--to love and to be loved.

John Gray has helped millions of men and women develop better relationships with his phenomenal New York Times bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Now he turns his attention to the millions of people who find themselves single again and compassionately presents a process for healing a broken heart. Here are just some of the issues and challenges John Gray covers in this supportive and practical guide to becoming whole again:

• Emotiontal Lag Time

• Grieving the Loss of Love

• Getting Unstuck

• Good Endings Make Good Beginnings

• The Feeling Better Exercise

• Finding Forgiveness

• Saying Good-bye with Love

• The 90-10 Principle

• Processing Our Hot Spots

• 101 Ways to Heal Our Hearts

• Date Around, but don't Sleep Around

• Glorifying Our Past

• Overromanticizing

• Focusing on the Negative

• Who Needs a Man?

• Women Who Do Too Much

• Fear of Intimacy

• My Children Need Me

• All or Noting

• Sex on the Rebound

• Work, Money, and Love

• Positive Addictions

• We Don't Have to Stop Loving

• Soul Mates Are Not Perfect

• Can't Live With Them and Can't Live Without Them

• Holding Back

• Bigger is Better

• Self-Destructive Tendencies

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Mars and Venus Starting Over

HarperCollins Publishers

Mars and Venus Starting Over

When single again, men and women face different challenges. Just as we think, feel, and communicate differently, we also respond differently to the loss of love. During a crisis of the heart, a woman's instinctive and automatic reactions are not the same as a man's. Her issues are different as well as her mistakes. What is good for her is not necessarily good for him. In a variety of ways, their needs are worlds apart. It is as if men were from Mars and women were from Venus.

Although we cope differently, both men and women can experience equally agonizing feelings. Starting over after a divorce, a painful breakup, or the death of a loved one can be the most challenging experience of a lifetime. For most people devastated by the loss of love, it is beyond anything we could have expected, predicted, or imagined.

Starting over after a divorce, a painful breakup, or the death of a loved one can be the most challenging experience of a lifetime.

Our hearts ache as they cry out in loneliness and confusion. We are stunned by our helplessness. We fight inside with our inability to change what has happened. We become distraught as we sink into the depths of despair and hopelessness. We feel lost and abandoned in a sea of emptiness and darkness. Time slows down and the passing of each moment seems like eternity.

After a loss, we fight inside ourselves with our inability to change what has happened.

It is a struggle simply to fill each empty moment and get through the day. At times the bittersweet pain of loss is replaced by a dull numbness, but then something reminds us of our loss, and once again we long to feel and love again. Never before have we experienced our need for love and connection so agonizingly. As we are forced to face and feel the raw pain in our hearts, we realize our lives will never again be the same.

Eventually, when the healing process is complete, we fully let go. In our minds and hearts, we surrender and accept that we can't change what has happened. Being single again, we start to rebuild our lives. Once more, we begin to reach out to give and receive love. Although we could not have imagined it, our lives come back to a sense of normalcy. After the darkness of despair, the warm, comforting, and soothing sunshine of love reveals itself once again. Although this happy ending is possible, it is not guaranteed.

Understanding the Healing Process

To heal a broken heart, we must be able to complete the healing process.This requires new insight and understanding, but most people are not aware of what is necessary. We are not taught how to heal a broken heart in school,nor is it something with which we have a lot of practice. Being in the dark and vulnerable, we either blindly follow the advice of friends and family, or we simply follow our own instincts. We make decisions and choices that may sound reasonable but quite often are counterproductive. Though we find temporary relief, in the long run we do not nurture or complete the healing process.

We are not taught how to heal a broken heart in school.

After the loss of love, some people do thrive again. Many are not so successful. After spiraling down to the depths of despair, they never make it out to the other side. To various degrees and in different ways, they continue to suffer their loss. Aware of the pain of losing love, they hold back from fully opening their hearts again.

Others, who appear to have let go, sometimes really haven't. They believe they have successfully moved on, but have done so at the cost of closing the door to their hearts. To avoid feeling their pain, they have moved on too quickly. As a result they have numbed their ability to fully feel. Without realizing it or recognizing how they did it, they have closed up. They carry on in their lives unable to feel the love in their hearts. Their ability to grow in love and happiness is stunted.

Becoming single again is definitely a crisis. Like any crisis, it is a time of danger and a time of opportunity. The opportunity is the possibility of healing and strengthening your heart and mind so that you will move on healthy and whole. The danger is that you do not complete the healing process. Time alone does not heal all wounds. How we cope with the loss of love determines the rest of our lives.

How the Heart Heals

To ensure that we complete the healing process, it is important that we understand the basics of how the heart heals. This process is most easily understood and visualized by considering how a broken bone heals. An emotional wound is abstract, but a broken bone is very tangible and concrete. Recognizing the various steps in healing a broken bone can assist us in acknowledging and respecting the needs of our broken heart.

When a bone breaks, our body already contains the natural healing power to correct the problem. It hurts, but eventually the pain goes away. As long as we don't interfere, the body heals itself automatically, in a predictable time period. When this automatic healing process is allowed and nurtured, the bone will actually grow back stronger than before. In a similar way, if you are able to nurture the healing of a broken heart, it also will grow back stronger. The pain and despair will pass, and you will find love and joy again.

When a broken heart heals it actually grows back stronger.

When a bone is broken, it must be reset and then be protected in a cast to allow the body's automatic and natural healing processes to occur. If the bone is not reset straight, then...

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Excerpted from Mars and Venus Starting Overby John Gray Copyright ©1998 by John Gray. Excerpted by permission.
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