Author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus"

USWest presents

February 14, 2000

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Aussiechick: How do you use technology to keep long-distance friendships alive?

John Gray: Email has strengthened so many relationships. When your friends send you a message, it only takes a couple of moments to send a response, and they don't have to pick it up, or be available at any particular tim e. This is like a miracle. I can be out of town for a few days, come home, and in five minutes read emails and respond to all these people. This is so much faster and efficient than listening to messages on a message mach ine. Not that that's a problem, but when we have lots of friends, and we have less time, email can certainly speed things up, and then, it's our choice, who we want to talk to over the phone, and have more of a personal I nteraction, instead of just writing. However, another good thing about email, is that people tend to be more efficient in the way they communicate what they want to say. They have a chance to put more thought into their s elf-expression. This is beneficial to both the sender and the receiver.

Curious: How do you feel about Internet romances?

John Gray: Many people have told me they met someone over the Internet, and it turned into a wonderful relationship, in some cases, they actually got married. This is a huge gift the Internet provides. More access to more people who may have the same values as we do. However, there are also a lot of disappointed people, who start a romance over the Internet. While conversation by email is stimulating, when actually meeting the person, if the physical chemistry isn't there, then quite quickly there is a letdown, and generally someone gets hurt. Often, it's the woman who feels the hurt, because women, by nature, slowly grow in their romantic attractions. Th is doesn't mean that you couldn't be attracted right away, it just means, that if she wasn't attracted right away, she might feel that over time the attraction could develop. Many happily married couples will report that in the beginning they were just friends and often the woman will say, I wasn't even sexually attracted. Men, however, tend to be different, although they were just friends, they felt that chemistry right from the beginnin g. Many men sense, if I don't feel the chemistry right away, it's never going to happen, and in many cases they are right. So often a man, after meeting a woman in the physical, will sense that she's not right for him. An d the woman will feel hurt and rejected because she will mistakenly assume it's just what she looks like, and that's not necessarily the case. It's just simple chemistry. Some people, when you are with them, create more a ttraction; others don't. In my own experience, when I first met my wife, she wasn't the physical body type that I had always thought I was attracted to, and had been sold by magazines and TV. I was quite amazed, and taken back, by how attracted I was, even still. I know many men who say "Well, looks are important, but everything else is important as well" and even MORE important is the automatic chemistry that you feel with someone. Most men have had the experience of being with a woman who immediately turned him on by her body presentation but after a few minutes of getting to know her that attraction quickly dissipates. This is another evidence of how m en feel the chemistry right away, and if in getting to know the woman, she's not right for him, the chemistry dissipates. The big missing element in an Internet romance is physical contact, so when that contact is made, g enerally most men know immediately whether there is chemistry or not.

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