Mars and Venus in the Bedroom reached number 4 on the Wall Street Journal best seller list.

Ray Olson in Booklist wrote "Gray's a plain, even pedestrian, writer, capable of talking about sex in a manner neither lubricious nor clinical".

[4] The Publishers Weekly reviewer criticized the book for failing to discuss safe sex.

[5] Valerie Peterson, PhD, in the Women and Language journal, identifies the book as "polarized and conservative", observing that it fit into the 1990s movement "to restore sexual and social norms of bygone days".

Peterson predicts, "Gray's ideas will lose sway either because its scripts and metaphors can no longer adequately address a situation characterized by a relative increase in the power of women, or because some different understanding of sexuality will appear and usurp the cultural imaginary.