I just wrapped up a great conversation with Melanie Curtin on her show Dear Men, digging into this question that comes up all the time: Is it easier for men or women to get into a relationship?
The short answer? It depends. On who, when, where, and what stage of life you're at. But we went way deeper than that.
We talked about the asymmetry of power in dating, how it shifts depending on context. At a bar, women might seem to hold all the cards. In conscious communities? Women are constantly asking, "Where are all the conscious men?" We explored how attachment patterns and nervous system wiring shape who we're attracted to, often pulling us toward partners who recreate familiar distances from childhood. I shared my own pattern of chasing emotionally unavailable women, how that was rooted in my early experiences, and what shifted when I started doing the work.
Melanie and I also got into the perception versus reality of who has to do more work. A lot of men feel like they have to prove themselves, build skills, and show up in ways that feel effortful. Meanwhile, women are doing their own deep work to attract and keep the kind of partner they want. The truth is, creating a conscious relationship takes vulnerability and responsibility from both sides. Neither partner controls it. You're building something together.
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Jason Lange: Men's work, much newer. You know, 10 years ago, if I talked about a men's group outside of Boulder, no one knew what that was. No one had any idea. I was like a weirdo now.
Melanie Curtin: Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Dear Men. I have my one of my favorite guests with me again. Jason, thank you so much for being here.
Jason Lange: Excited to be back. Hello, everybody.
Melanie Curtin: And today we're talking about is it easier to get into a relationship as a man or a woman? And all the things that sort of go along with that. And one of the things that we're going to be bringing into today's episode is survey responses. So I poll my listeners. Anyone who wants to join can join by emailing me@dearmen podcastmail.com just say, add me to the big Sexy data set. So I hit up my big sexy data set today and I asked them this question and I asked them a few other questions that we'll get into during the update. So I actually have some views to share with you. If you hear a quote on this podcast from a listener, it is because that person consented to a quote being pulled from their responses. And those responses are always kept anonymous on the podcast. So if you want to join the Big Sexy Data set, know that your information will always be kept confidential and it will be kept anonymous on the podcast if I'm, if I'm sharing it on podcast. So this will be me and Jason talking about this and also bringing in perspectives from you. So, yeah, so before we sort of get into that part, I think this is a really fun question. I mean, I think it gets at some really deep stuff, but it's also just a great, I feel like it's one of those great questions that reveals a lot about the person answering the question right, as well as sort of dynamics in our world. But if you ask this at a party or you ask it of like your group of friends, it's a pretty fun conversation starter. Is it easier for men to or women to get into relationships? And also just to name that, for the purpose of this podcast, we're mostly taking a heteronormative frame for this. So hetero men and hetero women or however a person identifies people that are in doing man, woman dynamic type things. So yeah. So I'm curious, Jason, just to hear your off the cuff response of what was your first like, what would your first answer be if someone were like, is it easier for men or women to get into relationships?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, my first response hearing this was like, it depends which isn't a black and white answer, but, you know, I think it just depends on who, when and like where and what stage of life. I think there's arguments, arguments to be made that it's actually extraordinarily hard for both sides depending on where they're at in life, and that it also, I think, just depends a lot on a person's personal history and experiences and the way we can often take our orientation to the world and kind of map it onto reality. Even though, you know, one thing I just want to name, for every, let's say, trend you and I might name today, we could probably find a dozen contradictions.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah.
Jason Lange: So no matter what anyone answers, we could hit your big sexy data set and find someone who totally contradicts that because relationships for both sides are incredibly complex, ever changing things, and it's just not the same. That said, we'll probably speak to a few patterns today that many people tend to experience. But you know, being a guy who works with men, what I tend to hear more is that women hold more power and that men have a harder time, particularly men that are attracted to working with me and you have a harder time getting into relationship. And most of them, not all of them, but most of them would probably say that.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. This is a quote from the research. This is a straight man in his 40s. I said, do you think it's easier for women or men to get into a committed relationship? And why? He said, women, because they can pick and choose who they date. Men can ask a hundred women out they find attractive and not get a single date. And I think that's sort of a like a common response or a popular, I guess, response what men say. But here's another man, a straight man in his 40s, and his answer was different. It was, I think that it's easier for men to get into a committed relationship because more women are willing to commit to a serious relationship compared to men. And that kind of came up. Both men and women had had a version of that, which is basically that more women, the perception is that more women want to be in a committed relationship. And so it's easier if you are a man willing to meet a woman there. It's going to be easier for you to get into a relationship. And I don't know if you ever watched Sex and the City, but there was this episode about a man being like a taxi and if his light is on, meaning, like if he's available for a committed relationship, he'll get snapped up really fast because most Men, like, they spend a lot of their time with their light off, and then once their light is on. And this was a perception by women, right, that once a man is ready. And that word ready came up a few times in the research, like, once a man is ready, it's easier for him. And I just thought that was an interesting trend that was seen, like, repeatedly. And when I took the survey, because I always take my own surveys to make sure that they flow and all that stuff, my answer was, it was that the question was, do you think it's easier for women or men to get into a committed relationship? And I put, I think it depends on attachment. I think it depends on attachment, your attachment, and the other person's attachment. Attachment style, you know, more so than. Than sex, totally.
Jason Lange: Which. Which in, you know, in my book also has to do with how much work you've then done around that attachment or that attachment style or those attachment issues. Because, you know, I think a lot of the pain I seem to see is, at least with, you know, in my experience, where this was painful is when I just kept chasing women that weren't available. And so if I did ever have perceptions of, oh, my God, it's so much easier for women, looking back, I got to take some heat for that because I kept chasing women that just were clear they weren't interested in having that experience with me.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, thanks for speaking to that. I think that's a really perceptive thing to say. And I just kind of want to highlight another thing you said at the beginning, which is we have a tendency as human beings to take our experience and project it as universal. So if I am a woman having trouble getting into a committed relationship because I keep attracting men who don't want to commit or are not, like, who I feel used by. For example, like, if I'm a woman and I keep attracting men where I have sex with a man and then he leaves and I feel used if I keep having that experience, I'm probably going to say something like, well, it's easier for men to get into a relationship because they just get to pick when they want to stay. And it's hard for women, you know, and I'm sort of universalizing my experience. If you're a man and you, like you said, you know, when you were in your 20s or whenever this was happening for you and someone asked you this question, you might have said, oh, women, like, it's easier for women to get into a relationship.
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally.
Melanie Curtin: So I do want to kind of speak to, like, you Said because I think, I do think that many of the men that we work with have. Have had a hard time getting into relationships in the past. Not all of the men, but. But many. And, and I think that there's this. There's like a. There's a certain felt sense of. That came. Came up in a couple of the survey responses, a sort of a sense of like bitterness or anger or some sort of like, women are the gatekeepers of sex or women are the gatekeepers of fill in the blank. There's like this gatekeeper thing of like, I'm knocking at the door, I'm trying, and I keep getting shut down, I keep getting rejected or I feel rejected all the time. And then when you can just speak to that a little bit in terms of have you, have you ever had that experience and what was that like? And then maybe like what your, you know, in the guys that we've worked with, what have you seen in this, in this sort of scenario?
Jason Lange: You know, I would say for me personally, the closest I came to that was the times I did use the apps, so to speak, kind of go into the online dating thing. And, you know, it just, It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of energy broadcasting and messaging and initiating and then oftentimes just not getting any kind of response. And, you know, probably early on, you know, that. That stung. I think I was pretty lucky because I had a couple women in my life who gave me some insight about the female experience in terms of just like, things. Just to put it short, I learned that things I was often taking personally weren't personal. Right. The fact that I wasn't getting message responses wasn't necessarily like. Because women read them and personally were like, oh, I don't want to be with this guy, or I don't. I'm not interested in this guy. It was just the kind of asymmetrical nature of. In the online space and the way the apps are set up. Oftentimes women tend to get more messages because the, you know, the trend of men kind of initiating that is part of our culture for various different reasons, other than a few apps that try to do it differently extends to that space. And then, yeah, I mean, a lot of men that I have worked with, you know, tend to get a little bit frustrated. You know, guys I've known in my life personally and a lot of guys I've worked with, their pain tends to be around what I would call the first phases in the sense of getting a date struggle. Right. Literally just getting Getting a woman to go out on a date with them is a challenge. And so frustration builds up there. Or if they do, getting past the first date in terms of not just having an endless string of first dates. And when that kind of sinks in repeatedly, for a lot of men, I've noticed there's one or two reactions. There's either kind of like a collapse and hopelessness or of like a genuine kind of frustration, like, this isn't fair in resentment. Sometimes that builds up of, like, why is this happening? I'm a good guy. I'm showing up, and no woman, you know is moving towards relationship with me.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I'm glad you spoke to that, because I would imagine if, you know, if I imagine being a man in that circumstance and I'm sending all these messages and I'm excited and I'm crafting messages and everything, and I'm getting nothing back, I would be annoyed. I feel like if I then had a perception on top of that that, like, women's inboxes are flooded with all of these men, and I just get to pick and choose, and I have all of the. Yeah, if I have all the choice. If I have that perception on top of that, I think I would build up resentment, too. I think it would feel really unfair and it wouldn't feel egalitarian at all. And I think I'd be angry and resentful. So I can empathize with that sort of experience. And I think it's interesting because the. Okay, so I'm going to tell a quick story. So, for example, one of my friends and I met these guys out, like, in real life, which is rare these days, but anyways, we met these guys out and we had a conversation. One of them got my friend's phone number and started texting her repeatedly. And she basically at some point said she wasn't interested him romantically. And he has kept texting her for, like, three months. And it's starting to feel a little threatening. And so there's like the. I think that the experience sometimes of being pursued as a woman can feel. Can feel threatening in the way that some men do it. And if that happens a few times, it's like, I think that there might be a perception on the men's side that, like, it's so great to be pursued, and sometimes it is, and sometimes it's scary. And I think that that is less of an experience that a lot of men have had. And so they think it's like, I don't know, like, all roses and unicorns. On this side, and it's really actually quite scary. And I myself have had an experience of a man exhibiting stalking behavior with me, and it was really scary. Like, I was afraid. I was afraid, genuinely afraid. And then there are a lot of women who have the fear of genuinely being hurt. Hurt. And I think that there's challenges, I guess, is what I'm saying, on both sides. And I think it's easy to edit out that as an experience because so few men have had those kinds of experiences of genuinely being afraid. And of course, there are men who have had those experiences. Like, I've talked to multiple men who've had women who've exhibited stalking behavior. And, you know, they happen on both sides. And if you look at the numbers, they happen more to women. And so there's just a sort of like, genuine fear response that I think sometimes is hard to. To hold onto as a man. I would imagine, like, I'm just feeling frustrated and resentful, and I intellectually grasp that, like, some women are having a hard time, but for me, I'm just like, well, fuck, I can't do anything right. I can't get a date. Like, women aren't responding to me. Like, I'm angry. I'm angry. I'm pissed. Really, I'm really pissed about it. And I think kind of like you said, if. If that happens again and again, it can be easy to kind of be like, well, this is reality, and I might as well, you know, give up, or I might as well, you know, not try anymore. And. And as. As you mentioned, some of your experience, for example, was it was actually partly about who. About the women you were attracting. It was about. About that as well. Like, your experience of women partly had to do with your level of consciousness and awareness and how much work you'd done on yourself. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to the shifts that happened when you started to become more conscious.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I'm really glad you brought this up, and I loved your distinction between. It's not exactly that you were choosing these women. It's almost like your nervous system was choosing for you. And I just want to slow that down because I think it's a confusing thing sometimes to hear, like, oh, you're choosing unavailable women. And I think there are a lot of men, they're like, what the fuck? I'm not choosing unavailable women. Like, I'm trying to be with women I find attractive. But if you're not conscious of your trauma wounds, if you're not conscious and you're not bringing those to the surface and basically dealing with them, then you're going to repeat the patterns that you've had, especially those with your primary caregivers. Right. So if you. Like, part of what you described was sort of like kind of an emotionally distant house and maybe even a physically distant house. Right. You grew up without a lot of. Without a lot of warmth and loving words. And, you know, it's just sort of like a distance, like, not. Not a lot. And we've heard that from a lot of our guys. I think a lot of our guys have grown up in similar kinds of homes. Then when you grow up as an adult, if you don't do the work to become conscious, then you unconsciously attract the same Kind of dynamics. There's just something about human beings where this is a thing that we do. If we haven't worked on ourselves and done consciousness work and done the work, then we tend to create the same similar patterns to those that we grew up with, even if it's not the same. You know, like. Like a good example for me is I was on an emotional roller coaster with my mom, and I was always trying to please my mom and have it be that she wasn't mad at me. Right. Like, that was like my. That was a big deal in my childhood. And so I totally recreated that in my first major romantic relationship. It wasn't the same, but the roller coaster felt the same. The roller coaster of like, oh, shit, did I do something wrong? Is he mad at me? How can I grovel to get his attention back? Because I don't want him to be mad at me. And like, it was really addictive. And I think a lot of us do that of recreating these patterns until we slow down and get conscious and do our work. And then we can actually sort of create something new and generate a healthy relationship, possibly for the first time. Right. If we didn't have that modeled in our family of origin, we might be the first person in our family tree to have a healthy relationship. And I think that's kind of one of the most inspiring parts of. I would say the work that we do with men is like, people in our program are breaking family patterns. Breaking patterns and creating healthy relationships where there wasn't necessarily one, you know, in their. In their past.
Jason Lange: Absolutely. Choosing to build a different future.
Melanie Curtin: Right.
Jason Lange: Because some of these nervous system patterns go back generations, you know, I would very much argue. And there's the research to show, and it does take this, like, willingness to kind of turn inside and, you know, as I like to put, say, you know, there's a certain taking responsibility. I didn't ask for the situation I was raised in. Right. But I'm responsible. I became responsible and chose to become responsible for dealing with it and the impact it had on me and how I was showing up, which impacted, you know, the experiences I was having with the opposite sex and with the same sex, for that matter. In that, you know, this is something that has to happen on both sides for men and women. And, you know, I think just tying it back to my story again, one of the things I had to take responsibility for learning was like, actually how to be in my body and flirt, as crazy as that sounds like I did. Like, you're right. There was Physical distance as well in my house. So for me there was this kind of like contradiction in that. Like I expected that if I told someone I liked them, that was like it. Like they know I like them, so that should be it. And I didn't understand.
Melanie Curtin: Do you mean like I told them I liked them, therefore they should date me.
Jason Lange: That, that, that should like be enough. Not necessarily that they should date me, but like that, oh, that's what I do. And then, yeah, like, why isn't this coming back? And one of the things I had to learn was just using my words like that in these kind of awkward pent up and then emotion comes out. Was very different from like being in my body and consciously connecting and learning how to actually show my interest in someone physically. Like that's like that simple, you know, it's kind of like actually having to learn the skill of showing my attraction to someone rather than just saying it.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah.
Jason Lange: If that makes sense. Like that's something I had to take responsibility for. And the pattern I kept getting in until then was, you know, going after these women that weren't quite available and expecting that if I just told them at some point someone would like me back when it like, well, nervous system to nervous system. I wasn't creating any kind of experience for them to connect with me, if that makes sense.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Another way of saying that is you were really in your head.
Jason Lange: Yes.
Melanie Curtin: Hard for women to feel you and to feel your actual interest, your actual sexual interest or availability because you were kind of stuck in your head.
Jason Lange: That's a great way to put it. Totally.
Jason Lange: I think that's so true. And, you know, not all men. Again, for every example I give here, there'll be contradictions, but I often hear more from men that, yeah, I want to date a woman younger than me and particularly older men, right. I want to. I'm looking for someone who's a little bit younger in case I still want to start a family. Like, that's a, that's a real thing. So, you know, that's one place where I think the power is really different. Right. You know, age is a big part of like, again, when are you dating? And who has the power in those situations?
Melanie Curtin: Yes. And who has the perceived power? Because I think, you know, that word came up a lot. And really when I was sort of crafting this survey, I was like, yeah, a lot of this is about perceived power. And again, you know, where. Where I feel powerless, where I feel helpless, versus where I feel powerful in myself, for me, has had a lot to do with me doing, doing my work. And it's actually not so much about the external circumstance, it's more about my experience of it. And when I have done therapy sessions or NLP sessions around feeling helpless, even in terms of, like, people aren't doing the dishes and I feel helpless because if I, if I do them, I feel resentful, and if I don't do them, I hate the dirty kitchen. Like, there's a feeling of powerlessness there. And when I really dug down, it has always been about childhood shit. Like, there's never been a circumstance when it hasn't been about that. And once I get in there and I do some work around it and I kind of hold myself right, like take care of myself and do self care, specifically of like, young parts of me, then I feel totally differently about the dishes. I end up feeling differently about the external circumstances. But I do. You know, all of these questions are multifaceted because there is an intersection of our personal experiences as human beings and our wider culture. So when we're talking about women and age, right, we're talking about real dynamics in our culture and those don't get erased by what I'm describing in terms of our personal circumstance. There's an interaction. It's alive. It's not one or the other. They're both happening at the same time. And I think that's sort of like a similar thing is if I as a woman go up to a. When I lived in New York City, there were a lot of parks, and some of them had the places where kids would play and they'd have a little gate, you know, and you couldn't go in if you didn't weren't accompanied by a child. If I as a woman, like, leaned on the fence and was like, you know, watching the kids play, nobody really gave a second thought to that. And, like, I'm smiling and I'm obviously enjoying the kids playing. If I were a single man doing that, I think the perception would be different. So there are dynamics around a man being seen as perverted or gross or creepy that I have that. That don't occur for me because I'm in the body that I'm in. And I think so anyways, that's just. It's happening on both sides. It's not one or the other. And it's like a layer that's on top of, you know, where I came from and my family dynamics and all the rest of it. I wanted to give this one a shout out. This is a straight woman in her 50s. Do you think it's easier for women or men to get into a committed relationship? She says, as a female, I have the harder time to be in a committed relationship. I really don't know why I'm wired this way. If I have to compare. Most of my female friends want to be in healthy, committed relationships. My male friends, not so much. And I also saw this answer a couple of times, which kind of goes back to what we were saying. This is a straight man in his 40s said, do you think it's easier for men or women to get into a committed relationship? He said, men, when they are ready.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I love.
Melanie Curtin: That's one thing I really enjoy about survey responses, that frequently the men will just put like one to three words, but they cut right at the heart of whatever the question is. Like, just like, here's my response, which I think is great, and just. Yeah, just seeing the differences. But then other men will write entire essays, so it's just cool to see. I love. Thank you to everyone, by the way, who responded, because I think a number of you will be listening to this, so I really appreciate it. I love. I always love hearing. Hearing from you. Okay. I wanted to. I think this will take us in an interesting direction. I asked more than just this one question. I also asked people, do you think it's easier for women or men to have casual sex? And then I put in parentheses, sex outside a committed relationship. And interestingly, I actually didn't specify what I meant by easy. And so I think there are two ways to interpret this question. And I sort of got to different kinds of answers. So some people were sort of like, so, okay, I'll just read this answer because I thought this was pretty good. This was a straight man in his late 20s. He said, I think it depends on how easier is defined. If we're talking about easier access women, if we're talking about easier to be emotionally unattached, to make it casual men. So I thought that was an interesting kind of, like, design flaw in the survey, is that I didn't specify whether I meant is it easier to actually physically have casual sex? Right. As a. As a woman or a man? Or is it easier emotionally to have it? Right. Is it, you know, easier on you to have it? Which points a little bit to what you were talking about, Jason, of when do challenges show up? Right? Like, you. You were mentioning this before we started recording. But just the. Is it easier? You know, for, like, a lot of men, the challenge is like, asking the woman out, getting a. Yes, you know, getting a second date, doing, you know, doing that part. Whereas for some women, the challenge is I can get. I can get a date. I can have sex. It might not necessarily be quality sex or good sex or nourishing sex for me, but I can have physical sex. But then what if I get left? Like, then I run the risk of feeling used. I run the risk of feeling like a slut. I run the risk of being called a slut, Right. Depending on where you are and age and all that. Age as in what I'm talking about is specifically school. Like, middle school, high school, college. Being labeled a slut is more. Feels important and still happens all the time. And that sense of, like, fear carries with us as women from beyond that time. So. So the challenge of, like, okay, yeah, I can physically have sex, but then what happens after that? Do I. Will I feel used? Will I, you know, will I actually, you know, be used? And this. I thought this survey response kind of got to that, to that. This was a man in his 30s. He said, this was in response to, do you think it's easier for women or men to have casual Sex. He says men, by default, sex requires a certain level of trust and risk. But men generally only have to trust that their sexual partner doesn't have an sti. Whereas women also have to trust that their partner will not compromise their safety, feelings or reputation.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I think that's a. You know, that's another way to. You know, one thing I've thought about is, you know, in terms of who has the power or perceived power, so to speak. Right. There's one way I was thinking about this is like, unconsciousness in the sense that, like, for most of us men, we tend to be able to kind of move through the world. Or dating a woman unconscious about our physical safety. Right. It's not like something I think about or a lot of men I have to, I know, think about, like, well, if I go meet this woman somewhere, is that going to be safe for me if there's no one else there? Like, we have the privilege of kind of being unconscious in that sense. And, you know, on the flip, I would say not quite a parallel, but there's like, you know, a space where for a lot of women, if they really just wanted to go out and have a man sleep with them, they could just kind of go out into certain environments and a man would pursue them, like, particularly at a bar or something like that without really having to think about it, that first part. Whereas, you know, a man kind of has to think about it and pursue and put all this energy into it. But, you know, this is one of those perceived power areas. I think a lot of men don't necessarily understand the safety thing. For one that, you know, you and I talk to our guys a lot about. About how big a deal safety is and how much we really need to think about it. And also that piece around what you mentioned of just like, you know, even you and I, we run in pretty conscious communities. And still underneath, I would say, more often than not, there's a generalization that, you know, if a man has had a lot of sexual partners, he's successful. If a woman has had a lot of successful partners, she's a slut. Right. Like, that seems to be something a belief our culture kind of holds. And so when that belief is underneath our culture, that's going to bubble up in a lot of areas. Because, you know, another place, you know, we've sometimes heard is like, why do I always have to pursue the woman, right, as the man? Like, I always have to be the one to walk up to her. In my mind, that's related to some of that you know, because there are judgments of, like, oh, if a woman pursued a man, what kind of woman would do that? Right. She is she just trying to get sex? And that's just one of those awful things in our culture that has repercussions in terms of perceptions of power, I think.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I definitely think it's kind of even in that we both have responsibility. So, you know, any relationship is created by two people. So it takes both people being willing to work on that, which I'm lucky to be in a marriage where that's true. You know, we're both willing to take responsibility for our traumas, so to speak, and the ways we show up in relationships so that the power feels pretty balanced there to me, honestly. And that feels really good in my relationship. And I think that's, you know, I would hope that's maybe more common in general, like people said in healthy relationships where both partners are doing their work, so to speak. You know, before I forget, there was just one other. In terms of like perceptions of power, in terms of timing as being a part of it, you know, one really kind of clear example I might just paint is like at the bar, right? Just at a bar full of regular people who aren't doing work on themselves. Right. This is just a big generalization. The perception of power there might be that any woman there could get laid that night if she wanted, and the men are pursuing her. That's one reality. Right. There's a totally different reality in terms of this world we're in, where to just kind of open the minds, I think, of some men out there. I'd like to just share that in the conscious communities. The thing I hear over and over and over and over and over and over and over from women is where are all the conscious men? Where are they? Where are they? Where are the men who are doing their work? And there's a difference there. I have seen in that. You know, I go to relationship workshops, I go to intimacy workshops, embodiment workshops, and there's a ton of women there. There's not a lot of men there. There's not a lot of men there. So there's a perception of power totally different there. Right. That is just another example. I wanted to put, you know, kind of point out there in terms of the timing, but that, you know, ideally, you know, when you do meet someone who's doing their work in those types of communities. Yeah, it is kind of even because you're co creating, it's not one person has all the power. It's a shared vision of what we're building together. Yeah.
Melanie Curtin: Thank you for speaking to that. Because I. That, you know, on a personal level, I would say that's been my experience is I'm like. I mean, yeah, I could go out and have bad sex anytime I want. I could do that. I have. I have the quote, unquote power. But, you know, there's this quote that says, for men, sex is scarce. For women, good sex is scarce. And there's a sense of that, too. Of, you know, I don't. First of all, I don't want to do that. Like, that's not what I want to do. And in terms of dating and relationships, I totally agree with you. I think I definitely have a scarcity mindset or have had one around. Like, there aren't that many choices if I want a conscious man. It feels like exactly what you said. There are fewer choices available to me if I want a man who's doing the work. Feels like there are just fewer of them. And so the pool is way smaller. And I think maybe for a lot of men, they're looking at it as, like, oh, women have this huge pool of people to choose from or of men to choose from. And, you know, while technically that's true, if I, as a woman want a conscious man who's doing his work, it feels to me like the pool is a whole lot smaller.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And I mean, I would maybe argue that it is.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah.
Jason Lange: For, again, for different reasons that, you know, the women's movement, so to speak, because it was so uneven for so long in terms of, you know, the patriarchy and dominating culture, you know, women kind of burst forth into a new way of being. Starting back in the, you know, 50s and 60s, really, men's work much newer. You know, 10 years ago, if I talked about a men's group outside of Boulder, no one knew what that was. No one had any idea I was like, a weirdo. Now it's like, really in my experience, you know, and I'm still in a bubble, but showing way more up in culture that, oh, yeah, men have to do internal work, and they get to go do this stuff with other men, and it's really valuable, and it causes all kinds of things. And I think there's just a timing mismatch there where there have been a lot of women who have been going to relationship workshops, been doing the different things for how do I create a conscious partnership? And that there haven't been as many men there. There have been men there, but there haven't been as many. So I would argue that, yeah, there's a perception there, and there's kind of a truth to some of that in that. That's, again, it's like, where you're looking and what kind of work have you done? If you're only looking at that surface level, yeah. You may think women have all the power, but if you look a little deeper, you may see, wow, it's actually much more complex in terms of how these things play out.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I think the good news here is that if you're a man who is willing to do the work and you are diving in, becoming more conscious, you know, the scales are going to tip in your favor, basically, right from what we're discussing and from what I've seen. And I would also just kind of mention, yeah, part of the reason that I, you know, haven't slept with guys that are less conscious is because I'm sort of like, well, you're not real. Like, I wouldn't feel safe. I don't feel safe letting you see my heart. There's a way that I don't feel like you can handle me showing my true emotional heart, because you're not there yet. Like, you're not emotionally aware and awake yet. And so it makes me less excited to sleep with you. Versus I recently dated a conscious man, and the experience was totally different. I was like, oh, yeah, you're doing your work. You're in a men's group. You would be in that men's group whether I was in your life or not. Like, you are. You are on your path. Separate from me. You are on your path. I found that very hot. And the experience of dating him was much smoother. And it's not that I didn't get my feelings hurt. I did. But we were able to actually talk about it, and I had the faith that he could meet me there. And it was a completely different experience. I was like, yes, this is why I want to date conscious men. Because it's fucking better. Fucking better experience for me. Way more held kind of the whole way through and was like, yes, this is the bar. I want to date men like this.
Jason Lange: And this. This brings up one last thing I want to name that I've sometimes worked with some of our clients with before is. And tying it back to some of the resentment or frustration of, like, why do I have to do work in order to get into a relationship? Right. Like, that's actually kind of a thing. Like, why do I have to. Why can't someone just, you know, be with me as is? I think that's like a perception of power that, you know, men in the masculine have to do a certain amount of work, which I actually argue, yes, we do. To be able to be in this kind of conscious relationship that There can be some frustration around, but I think it points to kind of what you were naming at like, for the majority of unconscious men, I would say in some sense they would happily just sleep with a woman once, twice, a couple times who hasn't done any inner work, but that they will just kind of enjoy physically. Like, this is again, a big stereotype I'm speaking about. But of the men and women I know, more men I know are open to, I just kind of want to explore right now. And X, Y and Z. I'm not sure I want to commit, you know, some of the patterns we saw in this list versus, you know, men having to do a certain amount of work to be able to create that safety so the feminine can experience that safety and open. Like, I think there is something to that. Now, you may say that that's unfair as a man, but again, it just also kind of depends on who you want to date. You could probably go out and find a woman who hasn't done her work so much that will kind of meet you more in that space. But you probably. Anyone listening to this show is probably interested in actually, even if it's a short term, even if it's not monogamous, creating something where there's some actual connectivity. And that just, that takes a certain amount of relationship skills that we have to cultivate as men. And guess what? My wife works with women. Tons of women are having to do a shit ton of work to be able to attract the type of man they want to attract. Again, it's just a perception. And oh, my God, us men, we have to do all this work to be able to attract partners. There's a lot of women out there who are having to do their own types of work to be able to attract and keep a partner too.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I, like, you know, what you said there about the, you know, you just mentioned sort of like balance and shared power is what I heard. You didn't say that word. But in your relationship, and I think in a healthy relationship, there's shared power. And that feels really good because it's like, when I'm strong, I can support you, and if you fall down, I've got you. There's a flexibility in the relationship and in the dynamic for both people to be in their power and for the relationship to actually serve them and have them invite even more of their greatness out. Instead of which I think is only possible in a conscious relationship, because if we're not in a conscious relationship, we're just gonna be replaying patterns that kind of keep us small. And that's, I think, a lot where, you know, the chasing shows up and just all the, you know, the resentment on both sides, all of that, it's like. It's just not. It just doesn't feel as good as, like, shared power. And, yeah, I just. I kind of wanted to speak to that. And there's this survey response I thought was poignant. He just said, very simply, once in a relationship, who do you think has more power? He said, neither. They both have equal power or they should. And I think that's sort of the goal. Right, of healthy relating and healthy relationships is how can we each be in our power and invite that out in our partner as well so that we're sharing it?
Melanie Curtin: Mm. Yes. I love that because that feels like actually the most exciting. The most exciting is I'm showing up and you're showing up and we're seeing what. What is created. Instead of I'm controlling this, I'm controlling things. And yeah, I hope. I hope that that more than anything, the sort of takeaway from this is that the more that you do your consciousness work and the more that you do your internal growth, you know, the more growth you do, the easier it gets. And what I mean by that is when, you know, it's kind of what you indicated of. You used to be chasing and trying and striving and looking, you know, having these super crushes on women and not getting the attention you wanted. And then when you became more conscious, you. You kind of effortlessly attracted the right woman. It wasn't. It wasn't the same feeling of chasing someone who wasn't really there. It was, oh, we're relating. Like, I'm really here, you're really here. There's friction, but there's. But there's, like, aliveness, there's a spark, there's relationship. Not committed necessarily, but just like, wow, we're really doing this. Instead of the old pattern.
Jason Lange: 100%, and there's no way around it. In my mind, for creating a great relationship, you just. You got to deal with your stuff, you got to look at your stuff, you got to know your stuff. And once you do that, you know, the perceived power I actually think will change for a lot of people on both sides.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to start to wrap up here. If there's anyone. I just want to mention our. Our class that we teach. Jason, could you. I think it's. Could you just mention that if people, if men in particular want to go deeper, Jason and I have a masterclass available for free and Jason will tell you more about that.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So Mel and I have a. What I would argue is an awesome 40 minute, pretty deep, pretty packed presentation, how to Take Control youl Love Life, which is about the how to take responsibility piece of how do I take responsibility for everything happening on my side of the court? Which is, you know, a huge part of getting into the type of relationships we want. And we kind of COVID 5 really potent, different shifts you can make immediately to change things. And you can check that out by just going to evolutionary, And it'll have all the instructions you need for how to take that webinar and then reach out to us if you want to learn more afterwards.
Melanie Curtin: Cool. So evolutionary Men, Dearmen. And we will see you next time.
