124: How to have the women YOU want, want you back | Dear Men

Jason Lange: You know, I don't want to come across as harsh, but I do want to offer as an invitation to any men who do feel like the women they don't like or that they want, don't want them back. And if this is a long standing pattern, you know, I'd like to offer a bit of a challenge that is, you know, in my perspective, from where I stand and the many men we've worked with and the work I've done myself, if that keeps happening, there is somewhere in your life I think you can take deeper responsibility for in deepening or healing.

Melanie Curtin: Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode with Jason Lange, Fan favorite. Love to have you on the podcast. And today we are talking about the pattern of that we've seen in a lot of our clients, of when the women you really want don't want you back. And this is something that Jason, you've had personal experience with, and we've also seen in a number of the men that we work with. So I'm excited to kind of discuss what's around it and how to resolve it so that men don't have to keep going through it. So I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to your personal experience of kind of attracting women that maybe weren't right for you and then on the opposite side, feeling like the women you actually wanted, didn't want you back.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think for me, the place to start here is, um, I think you and I talked about on one of my first appearances here is the idea of the Super Crush, which was how I initially related to the feminine in the sense that I would get these massive crushes on women that would last months, sometimes entire school years. Oftentimes that I wasn't actually interacting with that much or not in a way of actually showing any kind of attraction or, you know, moving things towards dating.

Melanie Curtin: And this would have been. And college, like, timeline.

Jason Lange: Yes.

Melanie Curtin: And twenties. Would you say it also extended into your twenties?

Jason Lange: Oh, yeah. There were definitely remnants of that. You know, it would flare up, let's just say every couple years.

Melanie Curtin: Super Crush Flare up. Super Crush Flare up would be a really good band name too.

Melanie Curtin: Well, it's interesting because, you know, we throw around that term, attracting unavailable women, and we don't always specify what that means. But it sounds like for you, it wasn't necessarily that those women were emotionally unavailable at all. It's that they weren't interested, which meant them that they were unavailable to you. So unavailability doesn't have to mean that this person is, you know, I don't know what the word is emotionally, like, not ready for a relationship, but it can be actually that something in us isn't ready. And so we aren't attracting. Yeah. And so I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that, because I think that can be. When you're in the experience, it's just so frustrating. But the hopeful part is that there is actually you have more control over it than you think that you do. Which is. Which is good.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And I think that point you just made is really important that I think it also illuminates what's often a big pain point that sometimes I experienced, or certainly clients we've worked with experienced of, let's say, pursuing a woman, not being super comfortable, you know, sharing desire, moving it towards dating or whatever that might be. So kind of getting stuck more in that friendly friend zone place that I often did. And then, you know, at some point, kind of spilling. Spilling my guts, oh, my God, I like you. And dah, dah, dah. And then, you know, a woman sometimes saying, well, I'm actually, you know, I'm not ready right now, or I'm not, you know, some. Something comes up, right. There's a reason and then. But something. But somehow, you know, to protect me. It's often not about me, but then, you know, weeks from suddenly she's dating someone, but. And then there's the pain of. But wait, I thought. And it turned out actually it was me. Right. It was just the interest wasn't in me specifically, which is painful. But like you said, actually there's a whole lot we as individuals can do to start to shift that. And so for me, I think one of the first things I realized looking back at, you know, those super crushes and being interested in women that weren't Interested in me was, I think, the hidden goal in it. Maybe, let's say the hidden desire in it for me was that it was actually a way to. It was. It was very safe. Let me just put it that way. So there's actually a lot of safety in being more in the super crush zone of a. You know, on one end of the spectrum, never even telling someone I like them or, you know, pursuing. Because then it can just stay in, like, fantasy. And I never have to be rejected all the way to. Yeah. Actually trying to, you know, share my. My interest and then getting rejected. But the. There was something looking back, you know, when I started doing my work of, oh, wow. Yeah. I never actually had to confront my edges of intimacy by choosing to get crushes on women who weren't interested in me that I kind of knew from early on. I think that was one of the things that, again, in hindsight, I can see is often more than I like to realize. It's pretty clear when there's interest early on. Right. When there's at least a desire to explore it versus not.

Melanie Curtin: And.

Melanie Curtin: And it wasn't like. I think that's the confusing part about choosing. It's like when we say choosing, it's not a conscious choice. It's not like you were 21 years old consciously choosing a woman that was unavailable. You had feelings and you had attraction and you were interested in this woman. Let's just call her Claire. And Claire was attractive to you. She was really cute. She was funny. You liked her. There was a reason that you wanted to move towards her, she was attractive to you. So if you had told 21 year old self that you were choosing someone that wasn't available, that would have been very confusing because to you it was like, I don't feel like I'm choosing. I'm going, you know, towards what I want and it doesn't ever seem to work out. Why is that? Why is it that the women I like don't want me back? It's such a frustrating experience and I think can be so confusing. So when we're saying the word choosing right now, it's not a conscious choice. It's more like your actual body, your subconscious, your physiology didn't really feel safe getting really close to someone. And so it figured out this coping strategy, which I think the shorthand for that is attachment to not get close to someone. So there's this again, push pull, which we covered a little bit last week in terms of somatic therapy. The push pull of your conscious desires and then your unconscious body and its level of safety if your unconscious body doesn't feel safe with something that must be dealt with before your conscious desires can come to fruition. So I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to how did you end up figuring this out? When did you figure out like, oh, there's something unconscious going on or I'm involved here, it's not just something that's happening to me, you know, what was that process like and how did you kind of unwind from it?

Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, you know, I think it peaked right when I was, you know, I was starting to do inner work. I had a therapist for a little while and then I lost my insurance so I didn't have that therapist. But then I found a way to start seeing a coach. And I was doing men's group and I was pursuing a super crush over a long time. And this is one that I've written about the worst state of my life, which is a pretty intense experience where finally, you know, actually the super crush was interested for a moment and there was like a window and we were out on a date. And then patterns in my nervous system of like being so malnourished for touch came out that I was like really heavily, you know, going heavy on the touch at this concert and it didn't feel good to her. So at the end of the day, you know, we're like walking along and I'm like trying to get close to her and she just shoved me away and she's like, I don't remember the exact words I think I wrote about it, but basically just like, stop. I just need, like, I need. I need some space. It's not that I don't want it. It's just a little too much for me in public, which literally, she said, it's not that I don't want it, but immediately my nervous system just tanked back to, you know, what I would say is the age that a lot of that nervous system trauma first got developed in. And I just flatlined. I mean, it was just. That was the end of that whole connection. I couldn't. Basically couldn't talk the rest of the date. And it was clear something was up for me. And I had a session, I think, with my coach within the week or so, and he had done some depth work, and we ended up going to a pretty deep place. And very clearly in the middle of that session, he's like, hey, man, you know, I love you and I want to support you, and this isn't really my territory. I feel like you'd be better served, you know, going and finding another therapist. And luckily his, you know, his wife was. And he connected me to her, and she was a somatic therapist. And that really was the awakening of specifically having a somatic therapist who. And I think it was important that she was a female and that in my sessions with her, she was the first one that just clued me into those very subtle, like, notice when we make eye contact and when I'm this close versus this close, like, what happens in your nervous system. And that is where I would feel anxiety, like, of just closeness, just closeness. And she started me on a beautiful path that helped me start to unwind some of that and get more comfortable with giving and receiving touch in important ways. That it was that. That awkwardness that I think was at the root of all these mechanisms that then got deployed so I wouldn't have to feel that awkwardness, right? So, like, that touch, intimacy, awkwardness. So at a very basic level, that was there. And then the super crushes and the safety and the choosing unavailable women, which in some ways reproduced, you know, patterns of what intimacy was for me as a kid in terms of not having a lot of physical touch or emotional closeness with my mom. So that's what I knew it to be. So that was my safe space. And anything to that was like an uncomfortable threat that I didn't yet have the tools to be with. So I was just constantly, you know, it is almost like a superpower in that my attraction pattern, like. Like X ray vision could kind of pull Figure that out without me consciously choosing it. But there would be, you know, I clearly had built up a pattern of knowing, oh, when someone's not immediately available, that's who you should go for. Because then, right. It creates this safe space. So ironically, it was me trying to create safety for myself because there was actual deep fear of connection and intimacy for me specifically.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And there's something that I've noticed in a number of clients that we've worked with as well, around a freeze state. So I've noticed that a lot of the men that I've worked with and that you've worked with and that we've worked with together. When a woman does show interest back, a lot of times that man will go into some kind of freeze state. So he won't know what to do with the attention or it will feel overwhelming too much for him. Whether this is in a sexual scenario or not. If it's just a woman flirting with him or giving him attention, his body will actually kind of freeze up. He won't be able to speak. He'll feel anxiety or he'll just feel numb. He might just feel nothing. But there's this physiological reaction that I think, again, can be really frustrating and confusing if you're going through it because you're like, you know, she was giving me attention, I should have gone after it, or why couldn't I? Or why didn't I? And all of that. And I guess I just want to sort of name that explicitly here because that feels like it's related to this subject. It feels very related to. If your actual body, you know, isn't. Doesn't feel safe with closeness. When closeness comes towards you, not even just you going after, but when it comes towards you, you. Your body's not necessarily going to feel safe. And so some strange things might happen that might be really frustrating for you as you're going through them.

Jason Lange: I think that's super important. Right. It's not that. Again, it's not that it's like a conscious thing or you're doing something wrong. It's, you know, I like to think of our nervous system as literally a channel for giving and receiving. If we're not used to receiving, if we've never actually known what, like, safe touch and presence and interest and affection is coming at us. It can be overwhelming. Right. It's like, what is this signal? It just sounds, you know, it actually feels more like noise at first and can be uncomfortable until we've actually done some work to open those channels a little bit and Allow that in and for it to feel a little bit more comfortable and it can just be overwhelming is often what I find. And then not having the tools or vocabulary to kind of express what's going on, I think that was something that was early for me is, you know, a lack of interoception, I think, is what they call it. So the ability to kind of name your inner experience. I didn't have much there, so it's hard to know what to do if I don't even know what's happening in me. Right. That's, I think, a big part of freeze of, like, what? And then. But I feel like I should know because I'm an adult or, you know, and then it just creates these whole Certainly spirals for me at times.

Melanie Curtin: Right. And an example of that is you're on this date, she pushes you away, you go into a shame spiral, your whole nervous system collapses, and you're not really able to speak or communicate with her about any of it. So she's just sort of like, I imagine being her. I'm like, I fucked it up. Like, I shut him down. Like, he's not okay. I'm. You know, I'm having a whole other experience too, around what happened, and I'm like, are you okay? And he's just like, almost catatonic. Just sort of like, it's fine, but I know it's not, but he can't share. Like, it's just not comfortable for anybody involved. And I'm wondering too, because it does feel like a lot of the men that we work with do come from family backgrounds with either parents who fought a lot or. And. Or just not a lot of touch. Right. Not a lot of warmth, not a lot of affection. Maybe a critical parent or neglect, like some form of neglect, which I think when I hear the word neglect, I think of, like, extreme child abuse cases where, like, kids are locked in the basement and don't get food and everything. But the truth is that emotional neglect or physical neglect, you know, lack of affection, things like that, just not really being hugged, not really being held, not having your parent attuned to you, like emotionally attuned to you, give you physical warm, like, affection can really, really impact you. And I'm wondering if you would just share a little bit about your journey, learning about that on a personal level and how it kind of affected you.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, this one weaves into. For those that are regular listeners, you know, large parts of my story in that, you know, and this is a pain point, a lot of Guys we work with often experience and I think is one of the things, you know, we help guide them through of the shame that can come up when we can't self regulate. So right. When we can't self regulate, we freeze, we fight, we flee, we turn to other ways to regulate. Oftentimes, right, these are substances, weed, alcohol, porn, like I talked about a couple weeks ago, ways to regulate and soothe my nervous system. And so when we, you know, when I would get overwhelmed at first looking back, right, Shame kicks out of that, like, oh my God, why couldn't I X, Y or Z? But I think it's super important. What you spoke to of tying it back into family of origin is a lot of us don't know how to self regulate because we were never attuned to. So the way we first learn how to regulate is when someone co regulates us. That's really, in my opinion, the primary function of our caregivers. Right. We have these wide open nervous systems. We have no ability to self regulate ourselves. You know, I'm a new father, so I see this daily with my daughter. I can't get mad at her when she's overwhelmed or overtired and keeps crying. She literally doesn't have the capacity to yet bring herself down.

Melanie Curtin: And when we say, when you're saying the word regulate, the simple way of saying that is kind of like to calm yourself down, right. To soothe yourself so that you feel better. That's just what we mean by that word. If it feels a little clinical.

Jason Lange: Yeah, to just kind of bring, bring oneself back to the moment and connect to the breath. Doesn't mean the problems go away, but. Right. Just an ability to kind of be with whatever's happening in us in the moment and come back and have choice in terms of how we're responding oftentimes now, like I said, I think that's one of the primary jobs of our caregivers. And if so, so many of us men, you know, that we work with in particular, and honestly, women these days too, didn't quite get that right. I think the stresses of the American nuclear family and parents having to work and just like there's a lot of time where we don't get that. There's a lot of reasons I think that's playing out in our culture right now. But so we never learned. We never had somebody like bring attunement to us and help us slow our nervous systems down and just feel like it's okay, you're all right. I think that's the ability to, I Think that might be another way to put this idea of regulating the ability to feel into. I'm okay. I'm all right. Whatever's going on, like, my life's not actually in danger, which most of the time it's not, particularly around these emotional or attachment issues. Um, now, you know, a good somatic therapist, some good coaches, some good men's groups, can help us bring that online. Right? That. That was what my work really started with, is me becoming aware of. Right. A huge part of this. Becoming aware of when. When am I freezing? Because I can't do anything to unfreeze if I'm not even aware I'm freezing. So what does freezing feel like in my body? Where does it live? How does it breathe? What does it look like? When does it tend to come up as that awareness builds? Right. There's a little bit of distance that I started to create from it that I would have a little bit more choice. And it was going in there and doing that that, you know, I started to notice that, okay, maybe I tend to go after women who aren't really interested in me, and maybe there's a reason for that. And so what would it be like to turn my attention or be more open to other types of energy from women coming at me? And that began a whole different journey, right, of actually starting to move into relationships and having to deal with the awkwardness of communicating and touch. All those things that, you know, I moved through on my journey that are edgy in a different way. Right? Edgy in the nervous system. And thank God I had practice and I had structures around me to help navigate that in important, important ways. You know, there was, you know, when I was probably, you know, high school into college, you know, I did always have good kind of crews of men around me, even if they weren't necessarily deep. But I can definitely look back and it was just touch in general, that I was just not. I was not the guy that would come up to my brother, you know, friends and tussle or wrestle. There was always distance. There was just always distance. And that's totally changed now. I'm way more comfortable with that because of all this work that I've done on my nervous system.

Melanie Curtin: So I think another good example of how this shows up, especially given what you just said, is the. The idea of settling or, like, it's confusing when it's like, I want this woman over here who I feel really attracted to and turned on by, but I don't really feel safe with her. And then there's this woman over here that I feel safe with, but I feel like if I were to be with her, it would kind of be settling. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit, because we've seen that a number of times in our clients, and I think you might have experienced it as well, of just the emotional resonance of someone who feels familiar in that way that maybe we felt with our unsafe parent can be very sexually alluring and we don't really know why. But there is this thing that happens, and I'm wondering, because we've seen it, have you experienced that and what was your journey around it?

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And it's incredibly gratifying to then see, you know, the joy, really. I mean, so if we go back to Kyle, like, the joy of, like, oh, wow, I'm finally on a ride that actually feels good and feels genuine and authentic. We're both sharing where we're at. Or, you know, we're both. We have really connected sex. Like, that can be different. Right? Not just hot sex, but actually connected sex. Like, I feel safe. She feels safe. Like, I feel like I can tell her when I'm like, I'm not getting hard. I don't think it's gonna happen tonight. And it's like, that's no problem. Like, we can do something else. Like, whereas before, it'd be like, I'm in a shame spiral. I can't believe I can't get hard. I should be able to perform all the time. And then she doesn't know what's going on because you're in a shame spiral and all that. So just the joy of genuine connection, which is one of the best parts of life. Like, really, if you think about it, it's like there are certain fundamental parts of life that are like, this is part of the human experience that we're also supposed to have because it brings so much joy and energy and vitality to our lives and richness. And ultimately is what is supposed to lead to a new family structure. Right. Is that sense of connection and joy and trust and love is what grows a healthy human and the chaos grows an unhealthy human. So I just am very inspired by you and Violet and just how you've been raising your daughter and watching, like, two conscious parents, like, attuning and actually doing the things that a lot of us didn't necessarily get. It's really exciting what people who are doing the work are passing on to the next generation. Because then, you know, your daughter might not have to unwind all of this shit. Like, I'm sure she'll have stuff, but I think the degree will be fine. Far less than many of the rest of us and what we experienced. So I think that's a really elegant and powerful sort of legacy of work is like, our client Kyle, in the future, I think he's going to be a great dad. And I think he's just going to keep on his growth path and he's going to deeply serve the women he's with and ultimately his children. And that's. I don't know, that's really inspiring to me as we sort of wrap up this episode.

Jason Lange: Totally. I think it's one of the great things available to us in this moment in time. Like, wow, yeah, this stuff can change and be healed and we can shift it. Right? Shift the legacy of nervous system where we're transmitting to our children and that they're going to inherit. And this is, this is one of those things that I don't want to come across as harsh, but I do want to offer as an invitation to any men who do feel like the women they don't like or that they want, don't want them back. And if this is a long standing pattern, I'd like to offer a bit of a challenge that is in my perspective from where I stand and the many men we've worked with and the work I've done myself, if that keeps happening, there is somewhere in your life, I think you can take deeper responsibility for deepening or healing. It's probably not your fault. You didn't ask for these things in the way you were raised. But to really take a sober look at, okay, what part of myself might I need to heal? What part of myself could I deepen into? What kind of structures around me could I get support in doing that? Because it's a place where you actually have a tremendous amount of power. You really, really do. And don't. You know, one of the most heartbreaking things is sometimes when I get on the phone with guys who are like, at that point where they just, they've kind of given up hope. Right. Because the same thing just keeps happening over and over and like, what's the point? What's the point in reaching out to someone? What's the point in going on another first date? And I just want you to know that it can really shift. It can really shift. And there's probably just some things to take a look at there that you don't have to take a look at alone.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, you don't have to do it alone. Yeah, that was my biggest, my biggest thing there.

Jason Lange: Don't have to do it alone. And you know, Mel and I are certainly available if you want to chat with us. And if it's not us, there's lots of other places to turn to, to start this kind of path of like, just what's there, you know, what needs to be healed, what needs to be deepened, because the moment we do that, things will start to shift on the other side of that. I've just seen it too many times and it's not a straight path and it doesn't all happen at once, but it does happen if you just keep walking that path. At this point, I feel like I can say I will guarantee that if you walk that line of inner work that something will shift in terms of who you're attracting their attraction back to you.

Melanie Curtin: Oh, that's a great place to wrap. So, yeah, just to say, if you are interested in Jason and my work, we have a free masterclass called how to Take Control of youf Love Life.

Jason Lange: And that's available at Evolutionary Men Training.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. So free training if you're interested in that. And otherwise we will catch you next time. Sam dun.