Here's the tension that showed up in my conversation with Melanie Curtin about polarizing with powerful women: we want to be the strong, grounded presence our partners need, yet our instinct to fix and solve often becomes the very thing that creates distance between us. It's this paradox where our masculine desire to provide solutions can actually disconnect us from the feminine energy that's asking simply to be witnessed and held.
The core of what we explored was really about how to show up when your partner is activated, upset, or stressed. Most of us guys default to fixing mode. We hear our partner struggling and immediately jump to solutions, trying to get her out of whatever she's experiencing. I've done this countless times myself, and my wife will tell you it rarely goes well. What she actually wants in those moments, what most women want, is to be met where they are. Not fixed, just received.
We talked about the difference between reflection and deflection. Can you actually be with her in her experience, or are you subtly trying to change it because it's uncomfortable for you? That's the real question. And here's the thing, the more you've done your own work around being with your emotions, your rage, your grief, your fear, the easier it's going to be to be present with hers. This is why I'm such a huge advocate for men's work and men's groups. You get to practice this capacity in a safer container before you bring it into your intimate relationship.
We also covered some practical stuff. How to drop into your body when things get intense. How to take feedback without immediately lawyering up and defending yourself, which I used to do constantly. How to praise your partner in ways that actually land. And yeah, how physical touch and presence can sometimes cut through mental chatter faster than any conversation ever could.
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Jason Lange: And I think for a lot, certainly for myself and a lot of men, it is triggering for us because it triggers kind of for the alpha, the masculine, a lot of our core wounds of oh, we're not enough or we're not doing it right or there's something that we're not good enough for our partner because he or she is criticizing me or giving me some feedback or something. So then we immediately, oftentimes, at least I certainly used to and sometimes still do go into defending.
Melanie Curtin: That's a great point. It. It sort of reminds me of, like, if I come and I'm sad, right? I'm. If I come to a man and I'm sad and, like, I'm feeling left out. Like, my friends forgot to invite me to this thing and they only just invited me, and I just found out. He's like, well, you got invited. What's the problem? I think that's an example of. Yeah, that's not what I need to hear. You're not. You're not helping, and you're not fixing the problem. I'm over here. So I think this is actually a really good time to do a very brief review of alpha and omega as energies. So in the past, we've often used the words masculine and feminine, and we may use those a bit in this episode. But one of my teachers, London, uses the words alpha and omega, which map to the same energy. So alpha maps to masculine and omega maps to feminine. And we're going to use those words for today. And. And there's different versions and, you know, work around polarity. But for today, the way I want to frame this conversation is Alpha is thinking. When you're in Alpha, and everyone has both of these energies in them, as we shared many times and many people have one side more developed than the other. Alpha is thinking. It's thinking, it's doing. It's penetrating, it's planning, it's executing, It's. It's thinking. It's thinking energy, it's rationing. Rationality, it's logic. Omega is flow. It's feelings. It's. It's being in the moment. It's allowing. It's. It's. It's feeling. So really, Alpha is thinking. Omega is feelings. So when you're in Alpha, you're executing or you're thinking. You're often, you're. When you're working, you're. You're often in Alpha. When you're in Omega, maybe you're. You're surfing, you're with the waves, or you're dancing. You're in the moment. You're with the music, you're intuitively moving in. Being an Omega is. Is flow. It's a flow state. Some people reach it. People reach it in all kinds of different ways, but that's really what we're talking about. And so being in Alpha versus being an Omega, if, If your woman has come to you and she's sad about something and she's, you know, sharing with you vulnerably about her feelings, that's not the time to meet her in Alpha and quote, just fix it. Well, you got invited. Just. Just everything's fine. I don't understand. Why are we still talking about this like the, the trouble has passed. She's still in Omega and she wants to be met there. Or at least I do. I think a lot of women want to be met in Omega where they are in their flow. And so if you, if you're trying to get her out of that because you perceive her as, like, upset or there's something wrong, let me just, let me just fix this now. You got invited all as well. Yeah, but I, but I felt really left out. I have felt left out in this group for a long time. And this just reminded me of that. That's. That's not meeting her where she's at. So a version of meeting her where she's at is. That sounds really painful, right? Just naming and witnessing and being with your woman in her feelings and her flow and reflecting back to her how she's feeling. That's meeting her where she's at, really meeting her where she's at. And there's something that feels deeply nourishing to me as a woman, to be reflected when I'm in my feels. You don't have to fix it. You just have to witness it. So that's my version of I used to do a song, don't fix it. Just witness it. Don't fix it. Just witness it. And that's what we're talking about. It. We're not talking about if there's something around the house that actually needs to be fixed that's different. We're talking mostly when we're saying don't fix it is don't fix her emotions. She doesn't need to fix her emotions. A powerful woman is in touch with her emotions and she just needs to feel them. She just needs to feel them, and she wants you to be there with her as she's feeling them. That's all you need to do. You don't need to do anything else. And it's interesting because I remember reading a book years ago where a couple was about to go on vacation and they had kids, and it was this big whirlwind getting out of the house because they had a babysitter. They were going to go on a solo trip. They get in the car, and she just was like, I'm exhausted. And he had this whole internal experience around, like, oh, my God, is the vacation going to suck? Is she even going to be like, is she going to want to have sex? Is going to be. And because of everything he had learned, he chose not to try to fix it, which he would have done in the past. He was like, absolutely. I would have been like, well, maybe like, we can get you coffee or, you know, I just. All of this, like, thinking, right, Alpha energy. And instead he just dropped in and he said, kids can be exhausting, can't they? And she said, yeah. And then she perked up. She just perked up. That was it. It didn't need to be a whole thing. And in his head, he thought, holy shit, this is so much easier. This is so much easier. And I think that's a great example of the contrast between trying to fix it and meeting Omega with alpha energy, which doesn't work, versus meeting Omega with Omega energy, at least to start, right? Like, emotionally meeting her where she's at for me feels really good. And feeling, Feeling witnessed, feeling reflected and feeling kind of held. Yeah.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I love that. I think reflect is the key word there. That if you just remember, you're reflecting because the. The experience, you know, And I've. I've had this too, as a man. Like when someone can receive me and when they don't and they try to fix it. Like, this happens in men's groups all the time. But the it's. It's be another way to think. I think of this is being received. Like, if you're trying to change me already, you're not receiving me right. You're not actually with me. And I think what that can particularly feel like is, oh, you're not loving me. You don't love me because I'm away right now and you don't want me to be that way. So you're not okay with me as I am. So I don't feel loved. I know, it's. It's right. Like, but that's, it's not that it's like a conscious thought necessarily, but that's often the energetic feeling when someone doesn't receive us versus oh, I'll just be with you. Where you're at seems like you're feeling this right? And there's that kind of reflection there. And sometimes that's enough. Like you said in that example, in your experiences, sometimes that will do it alone. Sometimes more can happen after that, where she'll then kind of lean in. Well, you know, I'm wondering, like, do you think I'm crazy? Am I overanalyzing this or whatever? And then there might be a little back and forth. But you cannot skip that first step of, you know, it's really a step of resonance, of coming into the same space, connecting, just being with things as they're at, being with her, where she's at. And then things, you know, there's a lot more open and a lot more potential after that because you are connected. She's going to feel received, she's going to feel connected, and she's going to feel, oh, he's not trying to change me right now. And when we can feel someone's not trying to change us, in my experience, way more open to getting their opinion. Actually, when I feel like they're not, they don't have an agenda, then it's like, well, what do you think of da da da? And it really starts with that. Yeah, just meet them where they're at. It's like, you know, in the martial arts world, it would kind of be like aikido. Like, you just want to work with the energy that's there. You just, just work with the energy that's there. Don't even try to redirect it at first, but just meet that energy, be with it.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I remember. I like that. I was also thinking about aikido, because there's a way that you. When motion comes towards you, you accept that motion and then you redirect.
Jason Lange: Yes, exactly.
Melanie Curtin: And accepting and then a redirecting. And rather than resisting. It's not a resisting, it's accepting and redirecting. And I remember someone, years ago, there's a workshop or something, and they were describing this situation where a woman was really upset about something and really pissed about it. And I don't think it was about that man. I don't think it was about their relationship. It was something in her life. And he's. And he said something like, I love it. Bring. Tell me more. Bring it all. What else? What else you got? And that felt really good to me. It felt like, oh, he's not afraid of her rage. He's not afraid of her anger. He's not afraid of her grief. He's not afraid of her emotions. He's actually like, I got space for that. What else you got? I got space for that. What else you got? And to me, that's one of the sexiest things I can imagine is a container for my Omega flow. And I think this is something that I've been hearing a lot about lately is the feminine wants to be contained. And I'm not, again, not just talking about women, but everyone, right? Our Omega, our inner Omega wants to be contained. It wants to be held. It wants to be. It wants to be. It wants to know that it's not too much, right? And when you. When you feel like someone has a lot of space for whatever you're going through, you don't feel like you're too much. So that I remember, it was like this was a video or something. You could actually see the woman's body relax when he was like, give me more. Bring it all. I know there's more in there. Give it to me. You can see her just like, there's actually going to be space for me and all of me. And because of that, the tone actually went down, right? But when. When I. When I have experienced someone else not be able to have space for my omega flow, and I'm specifically thinking about, like, anger, frustration, like rage, like that place when I can sense that they don't. They're kind of resistant, they're resisting, I lock up and I tend to shut down. One of my ex boyfriends said, you don't explode, you implode. And I don't think I'm the only woman who does that. So I Think there's something important to include here in this discussion, which is you will only be able to hold her omega, to the extent that you have touched your own. So part of the reason it's so important to do personal growth work and to actually reach your own emotional depths is because you will only be able to hold her to the extent that you've held yourself. So I've been with. With men who I can feel their kind of resistance, especially around things like grief and rage, because they haven't gone there in themselves and they can't really tolerate holding it in someone else. They can kind of tolerate being around it, sort of, but not really. But they can't tolerate like, I've got this. I'm bring it. Bring. Bring more of it. Like, I'm here for this. I've got this. They can't do that part. So I'm curious if you can share just a little bit about your own experience with that. Because I think it's easy to say we'll just have space for her omega, but you actually need to do some work to be able to do that.
Melanie Curtin: I have a quick example of one of our clients who put this into practice with his woman. I think his woman has some trauma, like many of us, and so I think a lot of you probably know this, but for people who have had some kind of childhood trauma, their startle reflex is often more sensitive. So loud noises, things like a door slamming, can kind of jolt them into a fight or flight feeling. And this happened, I think he. He accidentally slammed a door or something happened that startled her and he could feel that she was having a reaction. And in the past, he might have tried to, like, calm her down with words or, or maybe even just try to convince her everything was fine. Right? Convinced. Try to convince the body, mind that it's not upset, which doesn't work. And instead he got still and he. He went over and he just stood right behind her just so that she could feel his body, right, could feel his body, and said kind of like softly, I'm sorry I startled you. I'm here, I'm with you. And he could feel her body relax. And then they hugged, and that was it. And he said that was a pretty, pretty big difference between how things might have gone in the past and again, how much faster it was and how much more efficient. So I think that's an example of there's a way as. As Alpha, that you can use your physical body and you can bring your physical body as a way of bringing her in. And again, you can only do that if you've done your own work. You've got to do your work. You got to get into your body, you got to be able to feel feelings, you got to get into men's groups, you got to get into community. You have to do the work to be able to be present and be and embody alpha, because you can't polarize the moment if you're not embodying. Embodying it. There's no way. You can't fake it. You can't be sort of anxious, nervous, and be like, I'm sorry I startled you. Like, please don't be mad at me. Right? You can't. If your belly isn't soft, if you're not breathing, if you're not deeply present in that moment. She can feel it. We can feel it. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. So do the work. The work works. Any last things while we, when we.
Jason Lange: Start to wrap, I think we covered quite a bit, actually. So I think that gives guys a a lot to work with. And this stuff does work. That's the thing. It's not theoretical. Like, you put this into practice and it will change your relationships.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I think that's one of the really rewarding things about what we do, is just hearing men's success stories. It's really rewarding. So if you do put some of these into practice and you want to share your celebrations, please do reach out@dearmen podcastmail.com and again, yeah, if you are ready to do the work, if you want to drop in and you want to become this man who can embody alpha, then go to evolutionary men slash. Apply.
