239: Realized I’m a “Nice Guy.” Now what do I do about it? | Dear Men

Jason Lange: Attraction happens in the body, right? Like, it's an actual feeling in the body. And so as men, if we're not in our body or disconnected from it, we're disconnected from our attraction. And when we're disconnected from our attraction, it doesn't particularly feel very good to who we're with.

Melanie Curtin: Hey, everyone, just a quick note before the episode starts. Thank you to those of you that have already become patrons of this podcast. As many of you already know, a lot of podcasts are going behind paywall, and I'm committed to keeping this one open. So if you're interested in helping with that effort and sort of paying it forward so that the podcast can keep going, you can become a patron. Just Google Dear Men podcast Patreon, and it'll come up right away. And if you become a patron at a $10 or more level, then you get access to a live monthly Q and A with me. And I just set the date for that for January, so it will be next Wednesday at noon, pac. So if you're interested in becoming a patron and participating in that call, you can join anytime right up until the event itself. I will be sending out a final reminder on Wednesday morning Pacific time, so anytime before then. And you can actually jump on the live call with me this week. And if you can't make those live calls, you can always send in a question beforehand, and I'll be sure to record it and send it out to patrons so that your question is answered as well. So thank you for listening, and I'm. I'm really excited about this. I'm excited to connect with patrons and to have just, yeah. Vibrant community. So thank you to those of you that have joined. It makes a big difference. I feel really supported over here, so thank you for your participation. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode. I am thrilled to have Jason back with me. Thank you for being here.

Jason Lange: Excited to be here.

Melanie Curtin: So today we're talking about nice guy syndrome and the sort of arc of realizing, oh, you know what? I think I'm a nice guy. I think I just figured out that that's. That is a. I tick a lot of these boxes, right? I am an archetype of this. This ilk. So now what. What do I do about it? How does this work? What happens next? And we've worked with a lot of men in this. In this category who identify in this way. And so we. We wanted to just share four concrete steps to take. To emerge from the nice guy into a kind man is a new archetype that we like To. To talk about, which is, yeah, it's not a boy or a guy, it's a man. And he holds as value, kindness, generosity of spirit, grounded, grounded, giving and providing, healthy. Providing essentially the healthy masculine, which is what most of our men that we work with want to be. They want to express that in the world. It's at their core where they want to get to. So. So, yeah, so we're just going to go through those steps and talk a little bit about each one and then. And Jason, I would love for you to just, you know, share as much as possible about your own journey through these, because I think that you have lived experience and lived experience of being, you know, in a different place now. So the first step that we came up with has to do with a pretty. What's the word? Pretty substantial pattern that we see in a lot of the men that we work with, which is that they're in their head a lot. They step. They spend a lot of time in their head, and they'll. They'll even say that, you know, like, yeah, I spend a lot of time in my head, or I'm in my head a lot. And I'm just curious if you can. Can take us through a little bit about what that was like for you, spending a lot of time in your head, especially when you were young. Um, just what was that experience like?

Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, it was a safe place. The safe place, right, that I kind of retreated to, went to. To just be okay in so many ways and self regulate and in a lot of ways was a great thing because it gave me somewhere to go. And then in other ways, seeded what became a lot of problems for me as I grew into adolescence and adulthood of being more in my head than in my body in the moment, and overthinking things, constantly ruminating. I think this is something that is another sign of a lot of nice guys out there, is heavy on the rumination. So rumination just meaning kind of getting stuck in these thought loops or thinking about things, overthinking of things, trying to figure out the right answer more so than actually just like taking action in the world. And so for me, I was just incredibly disconnected from my body, right? And my body wasn't necessarily a pleasant place to be for all kinds of reasons, some of which we talked about on previous episodes, you know, not liking my body, the shape of my body, not feeling good in my body. And then later on top of that, just, you know, a huge swath of emotions I had never actually processed or been present to so it just wasn't a great place for me to be, and it wasn't an instinctual place for me to be. It was way more up in my head. And because of that, you know, particularly women had a really hard time connecting to me. When I did get close to women, I was kind of more anxiously in my head than I was, you know, actually in my full body. And I was totally disconnected, too. And this has been a probably even longer term trajectory around this. Totally disconnected from, like, my power, right, which included, you know, my sexuality, my desire, just knowing what I want, naming what I want, things we'll talk about in addition, but just that, you know, the. As we talk to our men about, like, the lower third of our body, just kind of, kind of from the genitals down, like, I just wasn't really in there. I. I felt like I actually. I did. It wasn't even a conceptual thing. I actually floated through life like I would. This was something one of my somatic therapists pointed out to me as some kind of crazy developmental thing. But, like, it's really common for neglect or trauma, all kinds of things when you're young. For, like, you walk on your toes, you're actually not grounded. And I would walk like, barefoot through the house on my toes when, When I was little. And as. As a teenager, I was not fully rooted in myself and I kind of just floated through the world, which was okay, but I never felt very satisfied in anything really. And I had, like, connections, but they weren't. They weren't like, deep.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I. I really appreciate what you're saying here about everything's sort of fine, right? It's like, bland, it's beige, it's not awful, but it's not great. And I think that's an experience I've had frequently with a lot of our men, is that many are survivors of bullying and, and neglect. So one or one or both. Sometimes both. Sometimes one. But, you know, neglect at home and bullying at school is a. Is a killer combination. And that sense of tiptoeing through life, that's a little bit what I got. The sense of. Of walking barefoot on your hose through the house, sort of like, I'm not really here. I'm sort of invisible. No one notices me anyway. And if I tiptoe like this, then maybe I won't trigger, you know, some kind of emotional response from dad or whatever it is. But there's, there's that sense of. Yeah, tiptoeing. Tiptoeing through life and learning to keep your head Down. That's something that I've definitely seen as a pattern in many of our men, is especially when it comes to difficult emotions in oneself or others, there's a tendency to just keep your head down. Just keep your head down.

Jason Lange: Don't.

Melanie Curtin: Don't engage. You know, keep. If you keep your head down, which is, I believe, a military term for not getting shot, right? If you keep your head down, you are a lot safer. If you're being chased or if you're in a. In an engagement, in a vehicle or whatever it is, if you keep your head down, you're less likely to be attacked, you're less likely to be harmed. And I think that's a pattern that I've witnessed in many of our men, is that tendency to avoid. Right, Avoid. And I think that. That what you described about going up into your head as a safe place, I think is a really important thing, because this episode is not meant to shame anyone. The point is not to shame anyone for this as a strategy, for example, it's simply to point out that this is strategy. This is a strategy that has been employed for a long time for a lot of people, because it was scary, right? Home was scary, or school was scary, or both were scary. And. And when I say scary, I don't just mean physical attack, but even just feeling humiliated, feeling made fun of, teased. For a child or a young adult, being humiliated by one's peers is. Feels like the end of the world. It's a. It's. The stakes are really high. It's not. It's not a. An aside. You know, there are lots of young people. The leading cause of death for people under 25 is suicide. And that's because, you know, in a lot of cases, that person doesn't feel like they belong. They don't feel like they belong. What's the point? What's the. What's even the point of living? I'm a piece of shit. I'm worthless. There's no point. Those thoughts are coming from that sense of isolation, which often comes in part from what you're describing of. I keep my head down, I stay in my head. I. And so the. And so the. The. The beauty of that is that you stay safe. The cost of that is that you don't experience deep closeness. You don't experience deep closeness because in order to. In order to have deep closeness, we have to be able to be vulnerable with safe people. Right? We have to be able to be vulnerable with safe people. And that's really the learning that I think A lot of our men go through is how to actually do that as well as being around some safe people. Right. Our community is full of safe people. And that is often a new experience for men. Like, wow, I've never been in a group where I could share this or where I've seen men sharing things like this. And that's part of the recovery process because it's, it's showing you how to, to do that. So step one and what we're talking about is get embodied. Get embodied. Reconnect to your power. If you know that you are in the nice guy zone of things, then it's very likely that you spend a lot of time in your head and it's time to spend more time in your body. So I'm wondering if you can. Yeah, just give us some examples of how you did this. What was your experience of getting into your body? How. How did you do that?

Jason Lange: Yeah, this is a big part of what we support, you know, men doing these days. And for me, it was a couple different arenas. There was, you know, actually learning tools like embodiment practices to help bring me in and connect me to my body that I can do on a daily basis, really. And learning to prioritize that in my life to make sure, you know, I'm doing those practices, learning about emotions. And so. Right. My journey with somatic therapy and going to therapists and learning to actually come into contact with what's happening in my body, it was a huge journey for me. Right. I've talked before about when I first got into this work, people, you know, a question that would often make me freeze is, what do you feel? What are you feeling? I didn't have the interoception to be able to name my inner experience. And so being guided into that and being, you know, taught to slow down and actually connect to the things that I was feeling in my body. I think this is something sometimes guys don't connect is emotions are actually sensations in our body. Right. They happen in our body. And when we don't have the tools or the awareness or the comfort with them, we don't want to touch them because it. It like what do we do with that? I don't know. I don't want to just start crying or, you know, there's all kinds of man box stuff that gets layered on top of us or we just don't feel safe to be able to process the various emotions that have built up in us over the years. So coming into contact with my emotions was actually a huge part of Being in my body. And what I started to discover in some of my deep work is when I would go there and connect to grief or connect to anger or connect to shame, afterwards I would suddenly be in my body. I would feel like, really relaxed, grounded, present, just here. It's just, it's like a. You know, as I sometimes tell guys, it's. It's just like a very sober sensation. Just like, oh, I'm. I'm just here. It's just I'm here. My mind's not overthinking, not over. I'm just here. And that came through a process of doing emotional work, getting, Getting in touch with my emotions, which then brought me into my body. Learning some embodiment tools along the way and then learning to actually, you know, connect to and embrace, you know, my sexuality as well. Just that, like, yeah, I have. I want women. I have, I have. I have desire. I, like, that's a part of me and I want to move towards that, that part of me. Like, I want to trust those impulses. And as soon as I did, I started to have actual success. Right.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I. One thing I'm noticing, I really want to draw a straight line here is that for me as a woman, I am attracted to men who are present in their bodies. And my experience is that the vast majority of men are not present and relaxed in their bodies. And I really appreciate you bringing up stuck emotion, an emotion that hasn't been felt because in my experience, a lot of men are wandering around with repressed emotion in. In their physical body. And the way that it manifests is as anxiety or depression. Anxiety or depression. And so there's. It's hard to describe in words, but there's a sort of almost sort of slumped effect that I can kind of sense in, In. In men. And it doesn't have me want to be close to them. It has me care for them. Right. I care. I care about this person. I want. I want the best for this person. I want do well, but I don't want to fuck him. And so if, if, you know, if you've had that experience of being around women or being on dates or even just. Just being in the environment and feeling like she's not necessarily. She's not leaning in because she wants to have sex with you. She's. She connects with you or if you get, if you get friendzoned, for example, I just want to draw a straight line between. It is some amount of work, right. Going back and feeling repressed emotions. This process we're talking about it's not easy, but I want to a very straight line between it's worth it. It's deeply, deeply worth it. Because when you go here and you do this work and you come out on the other side and you are just more relaxed and present in your body, then attraction becomes a lot more effortless. You don't have to try so hard. There's not that you're not trying to game the system. You know, sometimes we'll have guys at the beginning of the program like, what should I text and when should I text and what should I say? And you know, there's a lot of kind of worry and concern and anxiety and. And we watch them as they go through and they start to feel and. And make sense of their past and get into their bodies and, you know, purge some of this old stuff that down the road it's like, I want to text her, I'm going to text her. And maybe there's some talking through of the wording, but it doesn't have the same energy, doesn't feel the same. So I guess I just want to say it's worth it. It's worth it. This work is worth it. It's worth it. It makes a big difference. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that of what was your experience after doing some of this feeling, the old feelings getting into your body. What was relating with women like after that?

Jason Lange: A lot more interesting, a lot more vital, a lot sexier, for sure. Because I think the other key thing to point out here that, you know, the Friend Zone and Nice Guy, they often are linked, right? In a sense, like, oh, there is. I feel that care for you, but I don't like, as you said, I don't know. Fuck you. Attraction happens in the body, right? Like it's an actual feeling in the body. And so as men, if we're not in our body or disconnected from it, we're disconnected from our attraction. And when we're disconnected from our attraction, it doesn't particularly feel very good to who we're with. Right. It doesn't actually create that. That kind of energetic loop. So as I started to get more in my body, I felt more connected to women. I felt more attracted to women, they felt more attracted to me. There was an actual energy between us that I could feel, right. It wasn't like a cognitive thing. And then that energy would guide my next moves, right? Like, oh, yeah, there's right. There's just that, right. We've all probably been there and if you aren't yet. This is somewhere you can get where you're there with someone and it's just so clear. Wow. I'm feeling energy in my body and I can feel she's feeling energy in her body. This is a time for us to connect, whatever that means in that moment. Right? There's, there's, there's a time for us to connect.

Melanie Curtin: About this. Great story about this from one of our clients. Early on, this is early on in the program. One of our clients messaged me. And this was, I would say he, he was a self identified, classic nice guy. He was like, oh, I'm a nice guy. Literally, I come from a nice family. And I don't mean that in a good way, right, like nice dad, nice mom, you know, like, this is a nice household, which doesn't mean that we actually talk about real things or anything, but. And he had not had very much success with women for pretty much his whole life. And he messaged me and he said, and we'd been doing work on embodiment and all the things that we're talking about. And he said, holy shit. Last night I went to a birthday party at a bar with a friend and I, I did the thing we talked about. I followed the energy. You know, there was a girl on the dance floor, she looked at me and I just, I went over, I just went over and she was really receptive. And we started dancing and I just focused on being in my body and being in the moment and being with her. And I could feel it was happening. It was happening. There was like a little zing. And I kissed her and she was enthusiastic about it. Like she, he was like, I've never had a dance floor make out. Like, I never did that. You know, high school, college, just never happened for me. I'm thrilled. And it was. And it wasn't that hard. He was like, it wasn't that hard. It was like you said, you know, I followed the energy. There was a moment, I followed the moment. I stayed in my body, I did the next thing. So I love what you said about you were guided to the next moment. Because I think that's something that is also kind of a hallmark of, of, of the nice guy pattern is I've got to have everything planned out or I've got to know the exact right. I've got to have it all figured out, you know, beforehand. And there's a lot of planning and ruminating and thinking and perfectionism that goes into it when really life is kind of messy and it doesn't always make sense. And it's not. You don't. You can't always know what's going to happen. You know, we've talked to guys in the same vein where they said, I took my woman away for a romantic weekend. We had the biggest conflict we've ever had, and we repaired, but the trip wasn't what I thought it was going to be. But we ended up closer than we were before. So you can't always know. You can plan for the most romantic thing and it can turn into crap, and you can plan for crap and it can turn into magic. So there's something about that of, you know, staying in. In the body, like knowing how to be in the body. Right. Because that man had been working on this. He had been working with us. He had been doing his own work. He was really working on it. And it all paid off. And it ended up being a whole lot easier than what he was doing before, which also wasn't working. Like, it was harder and it didn't work. This is easier and worked.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Think of your body as an antenna. If you're not in it, you're missing so much information. And, you know, there's entire courses and crap people sell on how to read a woman's signals and what does this mean? And like, you don't need that. If you're in your body and know how to connect to it, that's such a key thing that most nice guys just aren't there. They're not in their body for that reason. They're more in their head. And, you know, one of this will kind of tie into another point we're going to make. But one of the kind of hallmarks is nice guys almost always have their attention on the other over themselves. And when your attention's fully on someone else, you're generally disconnected from your body.

Melanie Curtin: That's such a good point.

Jason Lange: Part of what we work with men on is learning how to modulate that and make sure that you're not losing yourself when connecting with someone else. And when you can feel your body, you know how to breathe in your body, you're more trustable, you're more attractive, you're more solid, you are more present, and you're going to get more of what you want in life.

Melanie Curtin: Yes. And I think this is a good segue. Yeah. To step two, because one of the things that we also witness, you know, to your point, about putting attention on the other person, and it's not just in a dating context. Right. It's like, what does my co parent want? What does my boss want? What does my neighbor want, you know, versus what do I want to happen have happen in this situation? Moving from there is different. So step one is getting embodied. Step two is learn to prioritize yourself. And for a lot of nice guys, that's really edgy. Edgy. It's really edgy because that requires a knowing what, what you want. Right. In order to prioritize yourself. That's a big edge for a lot of our men. And then being willing to stand up for it, being willing to advocate for it, being willing to ask for it, being willing to voice it. And I think there's a really great example of this. We've had this happen several times. But one of our clients said, yeah, I've just sort of, I've just started asking my co parent for what I want more. Just, hey, would you be willing to come at this time instead of this time, hey, could we swap days on this day or whatever it is? And he said before, I just wouldn't even, I just wouldn't even ask. Right. I would just assume, oh, it'll be inconvenient for her, she won't want to, or any of the litany of reasons that we don't advocate for ourselves. And he's been kind of delighted at how much it's been, how much his life has shifted since prioritizing himself and, and moving in that direction. Of course not everyone is going to have that relationship with their co parent. I understand that. But as a larger principle, you know, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to your own lived experience of putting everyone else first versus prioritizing yourself. What was that like?

Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, this particularly showed up for me in terms of work. So I know another way to another frame that this is connected to is just boundaries learning about, and this is work we do with our men, helping men learn about boundaries and start to set them, which oftentimes has to do with how do I take care of myself and make sure I'm getting what I need. So I would often have no boundaries, you know, as a freelance web developer for a good chunk of time and I just had no boundaries at all. Would work on weekends, would work late at night, would get emails, everything. All my energy would shift to that. Would overwork, would get underpaid, you know, like all kinds of stuff. And then I was miserable and exhausted and tired and broke. And over time really had the ahas around this as I was doing my work and like, oh yeah, no I really need to speak up on behalf of myself. Nobody's, you know, occasionally a few angels would do it for me, but in general, you know, I had to, like, really learn to prioritize myself and learn to ask for what I wanted and go for what I needed to be able to show up fully in a moment or in a. In a. In any kind of relationship or situation. And now, you know, part of how we sequence this today is you'll, you'll see that it's. It's a lot easier to prioritize yourself if you kind of know what you want. And it's a lot easier to know what you want or what you need or what's not working for you if you're in your body and paying attention. So. Right. One of our recent clients, we had him doing some of the practices and exercises, and it, like, it just rang him like a bell when we were like, yeah, you know, and start setting boundaries and get clear about your one. He's like, I have no idea what I want. No idea what I want. And when you have no idea what you want, it's. It's like, it's another way of giving away your power because then you're just at the whims of life. Whatever's happening to you is your life. There's no pushing back to guide it or direct it if, if you're not learning to prioritize yourself and take care of yourself. And this, this is a huge one. You know, this goes from nice guys just on a first date where, you know, oftentimes we can kind of defer to, like, oh, I want to make sure everything works perfectly for her, and, like, I want to be available for her and da, da, da, to, hey, here's what I can do this time and place. Like, does that work for you? Because that's actually what works for me is all the way through. You know, we work with a lot of dads, and I'm a dad myself. And you got to learn to like, oh, yeah, there's a reason. Right? The, the, the, the old cliche of you put the oxygen mask on yourself first because when we're suffering, we can't take care of anyone else. Like, really take care of anyone else. And so having to learn to prioritize, you know, time to work out, time to rec March, time to do men's work has been a big shift for me in relationship. Same thing. Learning to prioritize self. What do I need? What do I want? And what's hard about this certainly was for Me and I think is for a lot of the guys we work with is our, our tuning fork is so off balance. We start the idea of even asking for something we want or need makes us feel like an. Yeah, like I'm a selfish. Like, oh my God, I can't ask for that. Like, what if they need something different? Right. But learning that, well, when you can really name what you need and name what you want and learn to prioritize yourself, that also makes you more trustable because everyone knows where you're really at. Right. And doesn't, you know, particularly. I think sometimes, and I'm sure you could speak to this, there's like a way, I think the feminine can sometimes attune, like he's saying yes to that. But I could tell, like, maybe it's not actually a good idea for him. Like, you have a lot of work to do, you know, you don't have to do that. Oh yeah, no, I. I'll pick you up from the airport, no problem. Right. Like that's, that's the kind of scenario a lot of us nice guys could get into when we're not learning to do this versus like, oh, yeah, no, I would love to pick you up and I'm just slammed right now and it's just not going to work for me. I would love to see you sometime early next week or whatever, but I really need to get some sleep tonight.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a good example of my experience is that when a man says yes too much and doesn't prioritize himself, I lose respect for him. I lose respect. And when I lose respect, I don't want to be sexual with him. So there's a, there's actually a relationship between those two, between prioritizing oneself and setting healthy boundaries, which is really what we're talking about, and fuckability. Like, it feels actually really healthy when a man is able to set boundaries. And I'm thinking actually of one of our clients who came on one of our calls and said, yeah, I. I told my boss I couldn't work last weekend. I've never done that before in my life. It's my first time ever saying, no, I can't work that weekend. And it was, it was honestly a turn on. I was like, oh, that's hot. Like, good for him. Like, it felt like, yes. There's a reason that we say someone having a backbone. There's something about our spine and standing up straight with our shoulders back and head up. There is something about that posture that you could I could feel that from him of like, I'm breathing differently, I'm moving differently. And it wasn't like it was easy, right? It was edgy. It was scary for him to do that. It was new. And it was like, oh, this is a whole new world. If I'm able to actually get my needs met myself, rather than silently suffering and being passively resentful of my boss for even asking, could I come in this weekend? Because that's what happens a lot, right, Is the boss says, hey, hey, man, can you come in Saturday? We've got a lot of projects on at that point. It is not a demand. It's not, you're gonna get fired if you don't do this. But so many of us, and I think, especially in the nice guy paradigm, take it as a demand. We hear it as a demand. We hear it as, you have to come in Saturday. And so the pausing, the dropping in, leaning on the work that you've done, to say, actually, I'm not available Saturday takes a lot of. Of psychic effort, right? It's like, that's. That's the hard part. And then many times, not all times, not if you're dealing with a borderline person, right? But many times, the person like, all right, no problem. See you next week. And in this case, it was something like that, right? The guy said, it wasn't that big a deal. It was okay, you know, it was kind of like, I understand this point. I understand. It's all right. And he was like, if I can keep this up, my whole life is going to change. Because if I can actually make the space I need for what I need when I need it, I'm going to be less tired, like you said, right? I'm going to have more energy. I'm going to feel better in my body because I'm not going to be as exhausted. This man had a very physically demanding job, so he actually needed physical rest, more of it than he was getting. Then I'm going to be able to date more, right? It's like my world is kind of going to open up if I'm actually able to sustain this. And I think that's a good example of. Yeah, learning how to prioritize yourself. No one else can do that for you. They can't. They can't. They're not in your body. They don't know how tired you are. They don't know about your day. They don't know whether picking them up from the airport is going to inconvenience you and leave you with sleep debt for the next three days. They don't know that. So they're making an ask, they're requesting something. And you learning to prioritize yourself is part of, of growing up. In my opinion. That's part of the, the challenging part of being an adult is establishing healthy boundaries.

Melanie Curtin: And I think this is a good segue into step three. So step one is get embodied. Step two is learn to prioritize yourself. And step three is get the right support. So, and this training, it can be coaching, it can be therapy, it can be community. Arguably, it could be. It should be all of them. But I think this is a really important step because there's a reason that your body, mind is afraid of setting boundaries. And a lot of the time it is. I'm afraid of being abandoned. Right. I'm afraid that if I say, actually, I can't pick you up at the airport, that you'll say, okay, fine, and you won't want to connect with me anymore, and I will be left completely alone. So I've had multiple conversations. I'm thinking of one particular man who identifies as a nice guy. And he said, yes, I would. I, you know, before I grew, essentially, I would just take scraps of whatever people would give me because I was so afraid that if I didn't take them, I would get nothing. So there's. And that comes from somewhere, right. That comes usually from childhood or even, you know, intergenerational trauma that I guess I just want to say there is a sacred process around this, around really holding space for those young parts and really holding space and grieving. Sometimes what that little person had to go through and all of the fear that they have held about this. This behavior doesn't just come out of the blue. Right. It comes. It comes from somewhere. You know, we have many clients who've had. Who are. Yeah. Whose parents have been, you know, alcoholics or narcissists or. Or just kind of haven't paid attention to them, really. Like, they've provided physically, but they haven't provided any attunement, really. And so there' this sense of isolation and loneliness and just feeling missed for such a long time that when any connection comes as an Adult, even if it's, I provide something for you, like, I'll give you a ride to the airport so that I get some kind of connection. Right. That it comes from somewhere, I guess, is my point. And getting the right support, getting the right mentors, being around people who can guide you through the process and speeds it all up. And I think that you pointed to that in your process, Jason, and maybe you can elucidate that a bit, but it seems like there were some elements where you really needed help, you needed someone else to help you get into your body or whatever the next step was, because there's a way that there was some stuckness and some frozen frozenness happening. Can you share a little bit about that?

Jason Lange: Totally. I. I again think I'm not alone in here where. And this was, you know, my journey started really before podcasts were even a thing. But, you know, I had countless books and books on tape and, like, so much information, but no way to process it and actually helped me bring it into my life, which I think is a place a lot of us can get stuck sometimes. I think now more than ever where there's. There's always another podcast in the feed or book to read or. Well, that'll fix me. That'll fix me. But you actually got to bring it into your body, into your lived experience. And so, you know, what we do in our program is the kind of result of the path I had to walk through, if that makes sense. And we don't do therapy per se. There's therapeutic elements in our program, but therapy is a big part of that. And that's something not every man, but a lot of men who aren't in therapy by the time they're done with our program are trying it, because it. It's. It's. Again, it's cross training, as I sometimes say. It's working things from another angle that's really important. And then on top of that, there is. There's the training and the education, so the actual learning the tools for how to be in your body, learning the tools for how to set boundaries, learning the tools for how to communicate all of this stuff. Right. There's something you're really genius at in terms of helping men learn to frame things in a way that actually lead to connection and not disconnection. Right. Which is oftentimes the. The fear so many men have. But when you. You start to learn some basic tools, and it's like, oh, I can actually have these conversations that would have been uncomfortable for me before. I would have Been afraid of. So that training is really key. And then the coaching piece is. Right. Coaching, I think comes from, kind of hits it from two angles of some accountability like in, in some. In. In a process being like led through a process and kind of also connecting to those a little farther along the path. Now I'm not saying we have everything fixed, fixed or figured out ourselves. Right. You and I are deep in our own processes to this day, but there's some things we figured out that have helped us get here. And so it, it makes it easier for us to guide other men right through that part of their journey. And that coaching piece is just someone paying attention is such a key piece. Like I'm paying attention to you. I'm tracking this with you. That's where so many nice guys didn't really have that growing up. Right. Like you said, absent parents, neglectful parents, or what I think is, you know, a good chunk of the time for men. Kind of more of an enmesh mint with one of the parents where the attunement, the direction of the attunement was the wrong way.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah.

Jason Lange: So parents are supposed to be attuning to us as kids and instead from an early age we had to learn to attune and kind of co regulate them. Well, I can't, I can't act out too much or dad will get mad at me or oh, mom's sad today, so I gotta like go in and help her. And that I think is the seed of so much nice guy syndrome a lot of the time and learning the way out of that is someone healthy attuning to us and paying attention. Which coaches can do. Right. We can do, we can support. Therapists can do that as well.

Melanie Curtin: And in your experience, from what I remember, a lot of the early mentors that you had were somatic therapists and community members. Right. You were a member of men's groups and they. The. Would you say that your fellow, the fellow members of your men's group were some of your mentors or what did this look like for you?

Jason Lange: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that leads right into the third pillar where these things start to blur. Right. Because you end up getting. They're all the same thing, but they're all kind of just a different part of the pedestal is community. And so men's group community, people who are on that same journey, some of whom are farther in certain parts, maybe not as far in other. But we're teaching each other, we're attuning to each other, we're supporting Each other. We're sharing what worked for me. We're sharing what our experience of each other is. Right? That's certainly something I got from men's group of, hey, like, you know, I still still have this, I still have this to this day. You know, like I'm in a group last year and man looks me in the eyes. I just, I just, I just really don't feel you grounded in your body. Okay. Like, there's just something about. I'm not feeling you grounded in your body right now.

Melanie Curtin: Now.

Jason Lange: And then zap. I'm like, oh, you're right, you're right. Right? There's a little embarrassment. Like after everything, it's just like I'm totally not actually connected to myself, my body in the ground in this moment. And that helped me learn, right. That helped me again further attune to myself of, oh, I thought I was connected, but I wasn't. So that's something I need to pay attention to in the future. And these men can support me in that. So. Community goes a long way and it's one of the things that really changed everything for me. Because the other cool thing about community is through community, it's like the next thing we need often comes to us through sharing, through connection, through working, getting to know other people. They're like sharing something about their process or they're into. And we're like that. I need that, like whatever that is that feels important to me. Who is your, you know, where did you learn that or how did you do that? And, and it really just kind of synergizes and speeds up the whole thing because, you know, leaving the world of the nice guy behind and stepping into that kind demand, it's. It's not impossible, I would say, but it's near impossible to do alone. Yeah, all to do alone. Like, there's just, it's just too much to try to be able to manage that on yourself. And when you bring all these pieces together, you know, the training, the coaching and then the community, you're getting connection along the way, you're getting step, you're getting feedback, you know, things that we've just, There's a reason we have all three of these kind of pillars in our program, because this is what it takes. You need the training and education, you need the one on one accountability and depth from coaches. And then you need a community kind of holding you through the whole way, deepening you and helping you just feel okay.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I, I do feel a certain amount of, of grief in our culture, at how lonely and isolated so many men are. Many, many people. But I would say extra for men, because I. I just feel that our culture trains men out of connecting with one another. Right around 11, 12, you know, it becomes. There's the rampant homophobia in our culture and, you know, the classic bro hug of, like, I pat you twice on the back, which, it's not enough. We're supposed to hold each other. We're social animals. We're supposed to hug and stay. Stay hugging for at least, you know, seven breaths. We're supposed to be held. We're supposed to be held. And there are so many men. So if you're listening and you feel only a lot of the time, I don't know, my heart goes out to you. I feel you. I feel that pain. And it's a huge disservice, I think, that our culture does. And so there's an extra necessary step here of getting into community, because it's not. Provided it doesn't just happen, I guess, is what I'm saying. In our culture, it's something that we have to build and seek out, rather than villages or tribes where you were just part of something right away and that went through your whole life and you had a place and a role and a. And three generations around you. And, you know, it's. We don't live like that anymore. At least those of us in the west, many of those listening and. Yeah, I just want to say I. I see you. Go ahead.

Jason Lange: Just want to add one piece to this. And sometimes it takes a different community, which is really key, right. Something we see a lot with our men, and that can come with some growing pains and something. But the. Just the point being that if. If your community could lead you out of this, they would have. If you could just read yourself a book out of this, you would have. But that hasn't happened yet. So sometimes we need a shift, right? We need to shift to a different type of community that is a little more on point with this kind of work and moving it forward and aware of these different dynamics. That's so key.

Melanie Curtin: And.

Jason Lange: And then, you know, another insight that just hit me that I think is the key difference between the nice guy and the kind man is a kind man knows when to say, I need help. Yes, I need help. I'm not going to just pretend like everything's okay and I'm going to figure it out and suffer in silence like you said. But there's like a, okay, I need help. This isn't working. And I am strong enough and open enough to just name that and go for it.

Melanie Curtin: That's such a good point. And I know that you've led that way yourself in your own life, and you've also led your relationship that way. Like, hey, we're kind of stuck right now. We need some help. We're gonna. We're gonna bring in some help. And I think that there's something deeply masculine about that. To me, that feels deeply masculine because it is providing to me that's providing for oneself or for the relationship of I can't provide this thing, and I see that this thing is needed, so I'm going to provide it a different way, which is. Right. I'm going to bring someone else in that knows what the they're talking about to help. There's something deeply masculine about that. And, yeah, thanks for naming. Those are such good points. So then the last step. So the three that we have now are get embodied. Learn to prioritize yourself. Get support. Really get the right support. And then the last one is learn to lead. And this is, you know, something that we. We talk about a lot on the podcast. And I just want to pause on it for a moment, which is if you think about sort of two different paths, the passive path and the aggressive path. The passive path is I don't really do much. I lean back. I'm waiting for her to approach me, or I'm waiting for my boss to tell me something, or I'm sort of. I'm passive, a little afraid. I don't want to bring up tension in the room. Right. I can feel that there's something going on on this date, but I don't really. I'm going to keep my head down, right? I'm passive. I'm going to keep my head down. Aggressive is, well, what's wrong with you? Right? There's something going on on the date, and it's going on the attack. Or like, well, you're frigid or telling some. Telling someone how they are being aggressive. Most nice guys don't go this path, but they have witnessed other people that have, and they are. So they're extra not. I don't want to go there because I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that guy. It's my worst nightmare. I don't want to be. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable or afraid of me or whatever. So there's passive and there's aggressive, and we talk about leading. It's kind of the middle way. Right. So it's naming the moment. We've talked about this on other episodes, but say there's tension in the room. It's saying, hey, I'm noticing. I'm feeling some tension in the space. I just would love to hear anything you want to share. Right. That's leading. It's not dominating. It's not being aggressive, and it's not being passive, which is. I'm noticing something very quietly, and I'm not saying anything about it. And I'm shrinking a little bit. I'm moving back, and, like, I'm just going to, you know, I'm just going to go away really fast because obviously something's happening, but I don't want to really get in there because I'm afraid of my own emotions, so I'm extra afraid of hers. And so leading is. Learning to lead is. It's almost like the balm to the nice Guy syndrome overall, because it. In order to be able to lead, you kind of have to be in your body to even notice what's happening in the moment. You have to have had the right support to be able to offer your suggestion or your desire to hear more, whatever it is. And you're. There's a way that you're advocating for yourself because you. You don't want to be sitting there in a. In a period of tension, not knowing what's going on. That's uncomfortable for you, too. So it's kind of. It's. It's. Everything has to come before this. In order to lead. Well, you have to do a lot of other work first. But that ability to lead, I think, is. I think is the epitome of the healthy masculine, the ability to lead. Well, and again, leading is not dominating. I'm not talking about dominating. I'm talking about leading. It's kind of the. The advanced, you know, like, you go here and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm a kind man. Like, I've got like. Like, I've, you know, I've figured it out. I've passed the test. And it doesn't mean that you're perfect all the time. That's not what we're saying. But that ability to lead, to me, is a marker of your development, of your level of development as a man. So I'm curious if you can say a little bit about what's, like, a moment when you kind of realize, like, oh, I'm leading, or I just led, or, like, wow, I can. I'm doing it.

Jason Lange: Yeah. I don't know if I feel like Maybe I've shared this on the podcast before, but certainly the first kind of big, big night out between Violet and I was on New Year's Eve. I don't know, seven, eight years ago now. Hard to believe, but, yeah, all these things happened. We were spending time with each other, we were at a cool dance party, we were grooving, we were connecting, and suddenly we were face to face and the energy was building, and I felt it. So I was like, I want to kiss you now. And that was it.

Melanie Curtin: And then she was like, yes, please.

Melanie Curtin: Oh, that's such a great segue too, because I. I was inspired by a recent message that we got from one of our alumni. I was hoping to read that about this. I like that. Going with great sensitivity. That feels apropos. So this is from one of our clients. He says, hey, Jason and Mel wanted to let you know I had a great win. A couple of weeks ago, I had a first date with a woman I recently reconnected with, and it was awesome. She reached out to let me know that she would get fancy espresso drinks with me, quote, anywhere, and that she was single. So we spent that weekend at my family's farmhouse. I scheduled everything, dinners, nature Walks so that by Sunday she was so in her feminine grabbing me in the backyard. I've never witnessed a woman so happy because of me leading. The dates were excellent. I was concerned that by Sunday we would get on each other's nerves. But the opposite was the case. The conversations were so strong that it felt like we would never leave. I'm saying that as a good thing. I even used the Dr. Glover line. Stay in the car. I'm gonna get the door for you. Also, we talked about a lot of work I've done with you guys. And I think there was an episode about asking consent for kissing. She was so perturbed that someone would ask to kiss her. Who would ask to kiss someone. So when it was time, I didn't. Lol. Anyway, I wanted to say thanks for opening up a new skill that I didn't know was there. Driving slash leading on dates. It really makes a difference afterwards too. She called me a man for setting everything up and being present. That feels so validating. I'm currently starting to plan the next one. Yeah. From M. Isn't that a great note? I love that note.

Jason Lange: Yeah. So, so well deserved too.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And it points to that all of the work that this man has done up till this point to get capacity to lead in that way all came to bear in that moment. Right. He has been brave, he has led. He has set boundaries in his family system, you know, at work, he has leaned in to personal growth and community and it's paying off. And it. So it's like, I think a lot of times we don't make those connections. But I think it's because he has had quality support. It's because he's done a lot of his growth work already that he was able to show up in that way. So it's not just that moment. It's all the moment up to that moment and then the ability to lead from there.

Jason Lange: Totally. That's, I think, a great way to summarize kind of the training piece too. Right. So it's like we train so when the big game comes, we know how to play. We're ready to take our shot.

Melanie Curtin: Right.

Jason Lange: And we've done all that work to get in our body, to get in touch with our emotions, to become open and sensitive, to attune to ourselves, to attune to the other person and to know we're being held in a larger community. Right. Where if for whatever reason they weren't a good fit and it went a different way, he also could have still reached out to us. Because he had, he would have had somewhere to go with it, to debrief and to talk about it and whatnot. And that's that great, great thing of. He was, he was being held the whole way through us, through, through others, through a lot of the work he's done that allowed him to really show up, up and lead in that moment.

Melanie Curtin: You know, I feel like on reflection, this is one of the most gratifying parts, is getting these notes. I just, I'm remembering another one that we got from a man who's also in a new relationship. And just the difference of repeatedly, I feel like men repeatedly, like, wow, this is a lot different than my past. This is a lot different than my past relationship. Like, I already feel like I can feel that this is different. And it's, it's just, it's very, it's very gratifying to, to know that and to, to celebrate with you all. To celebrate with all of you that have written those kinds of notes. We read all of them and we love all of them. And so, yeah, thank you for sharing those with us. It's one of the best parts of my life, actually. So we're going to start to wrap up here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast. As I've mentioned on other episodes, I do have a Patreon and you can just Google Patreon Dear Men podcast. If you join at a 10 level or more, you will be helping to ensure that this podcast stays free and open to everyone. And also you will have access to a monthly Q and A with me, Live Q A with me. And if you are interested in going beyond information and trying out transformation and you are interested in coaching, you can take our free training at Evolutionary Men Slash training. And that will give you a little bit more info about coaching and all of the rest of that, if that's interesting to you. Any last thoughts before we wrap?

Jason Lange: It gets a lot more fun being on the other, other side of Nice Guy. Let me just put it that way. It gets a lot more fun. There's just a lot more room for fun in life.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I liked your comment of. It was a lot more interesting. Thank you. We'll see you guys next time.