| Instead, the woman would rather have many little things done for her on a regular basis, because women like to think their men are thinking of them and care for them more constantly | The "wave" is a term Gray uses to describe a natural dynamic centered around a woman's ability to give to other people |
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| " The woman should be satisfied with his performance and give him credit for it | The two sexes are different, but are not so different that we cannot understand each other |
In their "caves", men writes Gray are not necessarily focused on the problem at hand.
| When women become unduly stressed, their natural reaction is to talk with someone close about it even if talking doesn't provide a solution to the problem at hand | This sets up a natural dynamic where the man retreats as the woman tries to get closer, which becomes a major source of conflict between them |
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| Retrieved March 11, 2018 — via | This is a time when only communication can help to bring the relationship back into balance |
, a professor of at , makes the assertion that men and women are not fundamentally different, contrary to what Gray suggests in his book.
18| Gray holds that male retreat into the cave has historically been hard for women to understand | Summary of results [ ] Gray writes how men and women each monitor the amount of give and take in relationships |
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| The man tends to think he can do one Big Thing for her scoring 50 points and not do much else, assuming he has "banked" points and can afford to "coast | Burt, page 696, New England Publishing Associates 2004,• Gray clarifies how these two perceptions of "strokes" cause conflict |
The book has sold more than 15 million copies and, according to a report, it was the "highest ranked work of non-fiction" of the 1990s, spending 121 weeks on the bestseller list.