277: Want to maximize polarity? Learn to do this well. | Dear Men

Melanie Curtin: But the thing is, we can feel. I can feel when you're actually with me in and here and holding me, I can feel the difference between that. So if you invalidate me in what I'm noticing, which is I notice that your physical body is here, but you're not mentally with me, if you invalidate me there, now I'm even more pissed.

Jason Lange: Hello.

Melanie Curtin: Hello. A quick note before we start this episode. I have a celebration to share from one of our clients. This is actually a celebration from a while back, so I'm going to read it and then give you a little update. And this is from a man who was in a very, very challenging marriage and then ended that and got divorced. And when he joined us, he was in the dating phase and this is his celebration. Well, I met a very attractive, confident woman organically as a result of the eye contact challenge. And I've been seeing her since then, a little on and off. I turned down another opportunity recently from an attractive woman and generally feel confident that I would have been well received had I intentionally dated on apps or otherwise. More importantly, I've been able to navigate challenging relationships in a much more healthy way than I would have before, including persisting through shame spirals, dealing with awkward sexual situations, and exercising masculine leadership with the woman I'm seeing, as well as other situations where I led and closed off containers with a lot of integrity. Now, here's a fun update. It's been a few months since this celebration and he has gotten into a relationship with that woman that he was seeing. So that is moving forward and it feels like a much healthier dynamic than he had in his marriage. And I think that's one of the more inspiring things that I've seen in our work, is how much growth can happen in a short amount of time and how much better it feels to be in healthy dynamics, how much better it feels to be able to lead, how much better it feels to know that you have have the skills that you need to actually be authentic to who you are in relationship. So super proud of this man, proud of all of our clients. And if you are interested in taking action and actually getting to breakthrough in your sex and love life, whether you are single or in a relationship or married, get in touch, go to Evolutionary Men Apply to see if you want to join our program. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode. So glad to have you with us, Jason. Today we're talking about transitions and polarity and how to do that in a skillful manner. This is something that we see a lot, particularly for our men that are in relationships, whether those are long term, short term, or marriages. Handling transitions. We're sort of going to talk about two layers to this. One is macro transitions and one is microtransitions transitions. And I think we'll. Yeah, we'll just start to get into it. So maybe just briefly before we start, what, what would you say defines a transition and what would you say is a common mistake that you see men making around handling transitions?

Jason Lange: Yeah, transition in this sense. First I'll say it's kind of a subset of, of this idea of context. Like what's the context we're in, meaning we're doing something and what's the environment or the situation around us is one simple way to think of context. And there's lots of ways to explore the power of context setting that's really important and that we've covered actually in, in some different ways on this show before. But transitions are specifically like the gear shift when we're moving from one mode to another, I would say. Right. And it's not that complicated. It's just as simple as, oh, I'm going from work to home. I am in a relational space with my wife and now I am in a space with my kids. And these are often pretty fluid. You know, we might be moving back and forth quite a bit in, in, in, in real time, but it's all different. And you know, those of us in, in this kind of work, we even have context shifts often with our friends and families. Sometimes it's like, oh, I'm, I'm coaching you right now. I'm offering you some guidance on something I feel like I have some expertise or knowledge in. But then there might be a context shift where, oh, now we're just hanging out as friends or in a different situation. Right. I think this is as we get more mature, something we realize and get to experience a lot more that the same people we might experience different contexts with and in. And we have to kind of transition between modes. In one of the areas. A lot of us, men and myself included get into some trouble here, so to speak, and have some problems is when we're not clear about what mode we're in and if and when we're transitioning to another mode. And so this shows up really big in relationships and our ability to kind of communicate what's going on and just, just swift switch, just shift gears quite simply. And for a lot of guys that I work with, this is huge around work. And I think this is becoming more and more of an issue for a lot of people, not even just men, because there is a lot more fluidity with work, work from home, virtual and remote work. It's not like I've gone to office, I've punched in, I'm working, I punch out, I'm not working. It's at any time, wow. My attention could be here, my attention could be in my phone, my attention can be on my thoughts and my work. It's constant. And if we're not doing a good job of even just being aware of what mode we're in, let alone communicating that, that can cause a lot of strife in relationships. And you know, we talk a tremendous amount about the importance of being present as men in, in our intimate and family and friendship relationships. And a key part of that is we can't really be. If we can't actually be present, it's really important to communicate that generally that will cause more long term trust, even if kind of a more immediate maybe frustration sometimes. But where we get into tons of trouble is if we can't actually be present in some moment and we don't communicate that, so then we end up maybe half assing it. And that can build a ton of resentment in relationships.

Jason Lange: So this is a man who kind of has a job where, you know, his work and home aren't really separate and there's really no end to the job. There's just Always something to do, right? There's always more to do. And he was raised in a culture and lifestyle of there's always more to do and you should always be working on it. And that caused tension, you know, it's causing tension in his household between him and his spouse because there was always work with him and he wasn't really available to her to connect in the ways he wanted. So she had made a request to him, you know, what if you could you just work from like 8 to 6, right, and have some hours, then we know you're here. And then there's other times campy, you're not working and you'll be available for me. And you know, he, he wanted to do that. And one of the problems we were just talking about this that he would get into would be, you know, six o' clock would be rolling up and he'd be deep in the midst of a task. So he's in that tunnel vision state of like this is what I'm doing and I get it. There's a certain momentum to certain to tasks, right. Getting started is often the hardest thing. Once we're in it, we just kind of want to push. And as a man I feel this a lot with all kinds of work I do, there's a tension that it's like, well, I'm not going to be free of that tension until this project or thing is done. So I want to get it done because otherwise I'm not really going to be able to relax. And that's, you know, again that's just that kind of alpha go energy we all have access to. But so sometimes he would make the choice that, well, if I do a half hour more now, then I won't have to do this tomorrow and I'll be done. But then he wouldn't communicate that to his partner. So she'd be expecting him to come home. He wouldn't come home. You know, he, she wouldn't be available for dinner, whatever that might be and she would get upset versus, you know, A, there's just sticking to that boundary and B, there's at least the other key thing we can do as men is when we know we're not going to be available, communicate that as soon as possible or as soon as we realize that we're not available and then communicate when we think we can be available. Okay, I'm not going to be able to make it home at tonight. I'm choosing to finish this project. I will be home at and I'll be Fully available to you then right now, you know, that's not gonna be a perfect landing every time. There may still be some strife around that. But again, if you actually follow through on that, and this is really important, so if you renegotiate, you want to really stick that landing, it's going to create some more trust and safety long term and it's at least going to let our partner know where we're at and it's going to start to handle that transition. Right. Okay, here was the context I thought we were in. This is the context we're now going to be in. I want you to know that. So you know, and you know that I'm thinking about you. Right? Even is important in that I'm aware that I'm not meeting that agreement or changing it or whatever that might be.

Melanie Curtin: That's a really good point. It does make me feel safe and secure. When a man acknowledges we had this agreement, I would like to change it to this agreement. Just the part about even I remember in, in dating when a man said, hey, I know that we talked about doing something this weekend. Here's where I'm at. What do you think? Just the acknowledgement of we had tentative plans or we talked about this or we were maybe going to do this makes me feel secure, like, okay, you are listening to me. You do care about what's going on between us. I want to talk about macro transitions versus microtransitions. So I think that most of what we were just sort of sharing was micro transitions. These are in the day to day, you know, coming, coming and going, particularly coming and going from work to home. And that's not the only kinds of transitions we go through in a relationship. One of the other transitions we go through, we do this in relation in relationships, long term relationships, as well as dating. But I think we'll start with dating as a context. One of the transitions we go through when we're dating is how close we're getting. And it's not, it's not just about how long we've been dating. Because I think particularly one thing that I've seen in our clients a lot is particularly men who are divorced or have been in long term relationships before and now are dating. When they're doing growth work like the kind that they do in our program, they, they grow a lot quickly. So they, they transform pretty quickly. So they're, they're coming from a different space, they're able to lead in a different way, they're more present in their bodies, they're Generating more polarity. And so a lot of what I see is the dating relationships they have after growing are a lot deeper and more authentic and more. More exciting and more vibrant than maybe they've ever experienced before. So we've consistently had men say, I've gotten closer to this woman in six months than I was ever with my wife in 20 years. Or I've gotten closer. I feel more connected to this woman in four months than I did with my wife of eight years. And it's not because of the people involved. I want to be clear. It's not like this woman they're dating now is better than their wife was. It's more that they are able to hold a different kind of space. They're able to lead better. They're able to have the kinds of conversations we're about to talk about. So my point is that emotional closeness and, you know, how. How. Yeah, just how close we've gotten is not always about length of time. And in our culture, we tend to view relationships that way. Like, oh, they were together for six years. That's really serious. Versus they were together for six months. But when we first start dating and we're getting to know each other, there's. There's a. There's a. There is a context switch between. Cool. We've gone on some dates, and this is nice to. Wow. We've shared some really deep, real things, and we're. We're moving towards something more serious now. And a lot of the time, like, our culture does a very poor job of explaining how to have that conversation or how to lead that conversation. We spend a lot of time, I would say, in our program helping men with exactly this. And one of the reasons that's important is a sexual safety, sexual health and emotional safety. So if you're. If you're seeing multiple people or if you're thinking about seeing multiple people and you're dating and you're getting close to someone and you can kind of feel them getting close to you, right? Like, she's giving you more of her heart. There's. There's more emotional sharing at depth. You know, it's like that's a time. That's a macro context shift. Like, we were in one place. We were casually seeing each other. Now it feels like, oh, we're getting more serious. Like, things are getting closer between us, even if it's only been four weeks. So can you say a little bit about what that transition can look like and how a man can skillfully lead there in a way that does generate Polarity, totally.

Jason Lange: So these, these kind of macro transitions, you know, in an early relationship are super key. And I've been kind of using the analogy of like pace car. So it's just the car that's kind of aware of where the front, you know, where are we, where are we in relationship to this kind of journey we're on in the willingness to kind of talk about that and lead that conversation. It's not super complex in terms of what you actually have to do. It's just actually taking the time to have the conversation or initiate it or, hey, I notice, yeah, we spent the last couple of weekends together. Or yeah, you know, I, I'm aware that we've been spending about, you know, two thirds of the week together now, either at your place or my place. And it feels like we're not just, you know, casually dating anymore. I just want to check in, you know, and acknowledge kind of what's going on, how it feels for you, how it feels for me. That kind of thing is super helpful to just lead that conversation and acknowledge that our relationship is moving into new territory here. Right. That can be just time spent together, depth of connection, like you said. Absolutely. Around sex or intimacy of, okay, yeah, it feels like we're connecting here or it's about time to connect. And instead of just plunging in, like, let's talk about it. Which again, is just going to create more opportunity for trust to be built, which is going to create more polarity, long term, truth be told, in just the willingness to lead that and kind of talk about these different points or like, hey, we're headed into the holidays. This is a time where I often spend a lot of time with my family. What do you do? How do we want to handle that? You know, maybe we've just been dating for a month and a half. Are we ready to kind of bring each other into each other's families and do that whole rigmarole? Not everyone's going to be ready, but it's much better to consciously talk about that transition than to not or ignore it or pretend it's not there. And then someone's wondering, like, is, I don't know, are we going to spend the holidays together? Are we not? Like, I'm not super clear what's going on here. And again, that causes that lack of clarity, causes the other kind of tension, which is kind of not good for polarity. We want the erotic polarity, not the, I don't know what's going on. Tension is not so much what helps. And so handling the transitions as we kind of move through these first phases of relationships, often just means being aware of what's happening in talking about it. Right. Just creating a little space to have some conversations.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I really want to sort of highlight what you just said about my experience as a woman in dating. Is that because men aren't generally taught how to lead these kinds of conversations, they don't lead them. And then what happens is I have led them and that with the polarity. So alpha and Omega, if you think about it, alpha is consciousness, energy. Omega is flow. Alpha is banks of the river. Omega is the water. It's the rushing water. So when Alpha, in any context, whether it's work or. Or life or personal, whatever, alpha brings clarity. That's part of what alpha does. And again, we all have both of these polarities inside of us. This isn't just about the sex that you were, you know, the sex or gender. It's not about sex or gender, but there is. There is something about the willingness to go first, the willingness to bring something up, the willingness to lead a conversation that. That generates alpha energy that is. That is alpha. So I think a lot of what I have seen is that a lot of men don't. Haven't learned how to do this, don't know how to do it. And so they tend to hang back and they tend to be passive, and they tend to wait, and they don't know how to bring up the holidays. And so they just either decide to invite her home or not or kind of wait and see what will happen. So I think there's something to be said here about being proactive and being willing to lead conversations like this generates healthy polarity. It generates healthy Alpha energy. That puts her into Omega, that puts her into a receiving state. So if a man comes to me and says, yeah, so we've been dating for like six, six or seven weeks now, and the holidays are coming up, I'd love to just check in about, you know, our plans and what we're thinking about. That would feel really good to me. That would feel like, oh, great, I get to share some things. Like, yeah, I honestly, like, for the past three weeks, I've been like, I don't know, should I invite him home? Is it too soon? I've been having all these feelings about it. Like, you can. You can feel how now I get to share and I get to be expressive and I get to reveal what's on my heart. Because he hasn't created a space because he has invited me into it. If I'm the one who says, hey, I was thinking maybe, you know, you could, like, come to my place for. For Hanukkah. Like, how does. How is that? What do you think? I'm not. I haven't expressed or revealed all the things I have around that. Right. So you can feel how part of what I think we're. We're suggesting here in this section is processing the relationship as it goes along is a good idea. Creating the space to process the relationship as you go along generates healthy alpha energy. So you being willing to do that, you being willing to step into that space does two things. One, it generates healthy alpha. Two, it allows you to witness her response. It allows you to witness her response. How does she respond? Does she share? Is she open? Is she expressive? Do you enjoy the ways she's expressive? You know, how does it feel when you lead as a man? You get to see how she follows. If you're not leading, you don't get to see how she follows. You might get to see how she leads because there's a vacuum and no one else is leading, so she's leading. We can probably tell you how that's going to go with respect to polarity and sex, but you can probably guess. But I think there's something important there about. Processing the relationship as it goes along is not something we are taught how to do. These are new skills that you build in a program like ours with mentors through listening to podcasts like this. It's a new skill. We don't see that role modeled on sitcoms. We do not see this part. We only see the like, would you like to go out? Sure. Sounds great. We kiss. Now we're suddenly in a relationship, and now we're, you know, and then the next thing that happens is someone proposes. There's no, like, how's this going for you? How are you feeling about being in a relationship after being married? Right. Or dating after being married? What is this like for you? What are you experiencing? Creating those conversations and spaces for you to share and reveal as well as for her to share and reveal and is super important. And I want to see something else, which is when you acknowledge what's actually going on, it doesn't mean you have to keep doing that. And so one of the things I've seen in some of our men is it's we. We are. We are very good at what we do. And so the men that come through our program grow and transform. And then the way they show up in the world, they get different responses from women. They're like, holy shit. I've never had a woman say this. I've never had her respond this way. This is new. And there aren't that many developed, aware, attuned men in the world. And so men tend to get a really great response from women. And then one of the things that can happen is that a woman can fall really hard, really fast. Because it's like, wow, I've never been with a man who was leading in this way. I've never been with a man who was emotionally aware. I've never been. And then this thing can happen where it's like, whoa, things are going really fast. And as a man, in leading these conversations, one of the things you can do is slow things down, right? You can name what's happening, you can share where you're at, and you can share, like, I'm wanting to slow things down. I'm excited about connecting with you. I love what's going on, and I'm noticing it's going really fast, and I'm. I'm feeling a little out of control around it. I would love to slow things down. I would love to hear from you about how that feels, how does that feel, hearing that, etc. So I just wanted to say that you don't have to just keep going with how things are. You get to shape the experience that you're having in dating and relationship, and slowing things down is part of that. Speeding things up is part of that too. Like, hey, I noticed that we've been together or we've been dating for, you know, nine months. I love connecting with you. We see each other about once a week. I'm. I'm wanting to spend more time together. I would love to plan a trip. I would love to get to know you and take things to a deeper level. How does that feel for you? Right. I'm not saying you always have to be slowing the pace down. I'm just saying pacing is an important part of what we're discussing here. And you get to help shape that, and you get to do that based on what's actually happening and processing as you, as you go along. Any kind of comments on that, it works. So.

Jason Lange: And so this happens in long term relationships too, Right. So these are, these are kind of. Then the ability to have the bigger conversations about transitions or seasons we're having in our relationship, right? Of, oh, hey, you know, it, it feels like. And I'm noticing that just, it feels like we're kind of in a season of disconnection. Right now. Right. You're just kind of in your thing. I'm in my thing. And I know we haven't really had a lot of together time or intimate time or whatever. And I just want to be honest and acknowledge that that's what's going on and that's what I'm experiencing. And you know, how do you feel that? Or there's some big shift coming up with a job or in the family and just talking about this stuff. How are you feeling about the fact that, you know, a kid's going to be entering our life in two months? How are you feeling about leaving your work? How you feel like these big conversations that are moments of transition in our life, it's just the willingness to talk about them and just name that there's a context shift, right? Of oh my God, yeah, we did just have our first kid. And we are transitioning out of that kind of fun dating energy on each other can do wild stuff. And we're transitioning into our priority is going to be on our kid for, you know, maybe up to 18 years to some extent. And that's going to feel different in our relationship. And so we can either ignore that and pretend like that's not happening or we can talk about it. Right. We can actually talk about that transition and what it means and what we do still value in that and what we are aware that it's just going to shift. That's going to be different in this new phase. Right. These, these conversations just are so important and so easy to ignore because it's never like particularly these bigger macro ones in long term stuff. It's never like, well, we have to talk about this right now because it's not like always. It's not really a right now thing. It's just more this kind of high level thing. And so there's. Well, we could just watch Netflix tonight, right? And then I've gone weeks without having a discussion around something that needed to be discussed or I thought should be discussed because it was like, well, it doesn't really need to happen now. But you know, the platitude exists. There's no time like the present like to, okay, well let's just have it now because then ironically, what that'll often do is make that time more enjoyable of when we do go then watch Netflix because we'll be on the same page. We'll feel more connected, we'll feel more vital with each other, in my experience at least.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I, I also, I guess shout out to relationship retreats so this is a concept that I heard about recently. But just taking a trip, doing even, even a day trip, but really an overnight trip is probably better. But just getting out of the house, being somewhere else that isn't the house can help, I think, a lot with some of these, particularly the macro ones, even date nights, just literally being somewhere else that isn't your house and having the deeper conversations, I think is. Is powerful. And particularly trips, travel, that kind of thing. There's just a different space that you're in. There's a different energy. And I wanted to come back to what you said about child. Child rearing and processing. What's going on? They did a study with new parents. So these were folks with an infant, right? Like very new parents. And they had the control group who didn't have any structure. And then they had the group where they had a. Once a week, I think it was 30 minutes. It wasn't a very long meeting because, you know, new parents are extremely busy and sleep prep. But I think it was. It was either 30 minutes or an hour that they did a call with the parents. Just like, how's parenting going? That's it. It was just, how is. How is this going for you? And they did it weekly, which is. Which is a lot. You know, weekly is like legit. And what they found was they were tracking how the parents were feeling about parenting. So essentially not success levels, what is it? Levels of contentment or whatever, happiness around parenting, but also happiness with the relationship. So how am I feeling about my relationship and how am I feeling about being a parent? And consistently, the parents who had this supportive structure around just processing the relationship once a week had better scores across the board. So they were happier in their relationship and they felt more empowered as parents. So there's just something about consistently processing an experience as you're going through it that helps you with that experience. There's just something about talking about it that helps. And I don't know, I will try to find the study and drop it in the show notes, but that has stayed with me for a long time, which is that it's not like they were getting parenting mentoring. They weren't getting more money, they weren't getting more sleep. There was nothing else going on. There was no other supportive structure in their life besides once a week we talk about this together. And that's pretty much it. They weren't even really structured discussions. So I think there's something to be said there. And when you were talking about, you know, macro transitions, parenting is a Great example of one of the major transitions that happens is when the kid goes to school. Okay, great. This is a transition point when the kid is more independent, meaning they don't require as much care and attention. Intensive care and attention. Right. It's like, oh, whoa, we just got some time back. And then again, teenagehood is a transition. They, there's usually a lot more pushback. There's just, there's more, there can be more friction emotionally and at the same time, a lot of times the kid is out of the house more. So there again, you get some more time back type thing depends on the team, but you get the idea. And then there's the empty nest transition. So we worked with plenty of clients where there's a big transition happening or coming up that is, wow, we're going to be without kids for the first time in 18 years or 22 years or however long it is if they have multiple children in the house. And that's like, that's a big deal, you know, and, and getting ahead of it, being proactive and having some conversations about how do we want to feel in this next season of our lives, how do we want to support each other, what's a vision that we have around connection or whatever it is. How are, how are you feeling about the griefs? Right. There's going to be grief on both sides of not having the parenting identity as a major forward facing identity in the house every day kind of thing. And that's again, it's not really something that we have a lot of teaching around. We don't get a lot of training on how to have these conversations or when to have these conversations or how to have these conversations. And I think that's a disservice to us and to our family systems really, because all of us would benefit from these, from these.

Jason Lange: Totally. In just tracking that is what's so key. Right. So again, you can think of a macro thing in a long term relationship or a short term relationship of, oh, I know my busy season is coming up. It's going to be an intense month for me at work and there's just no, sometimes there's just no way around a certain season that we're not going to have as much time for connection or intimacy or whatever that might be. Now an unconscious man will just dive into that and then if his partner gets upset or complains about it, he'll try to make excuses. Conscious man can start to presence that early on, right. And say, hey, I, I want you to know, like I care about you. And I love you. And I know a lot of my attention is going to be on this project. You know, we have a case going to trial or something going on, and I'm not going to be as available to you. Want to have a couple touch points we can create in between. And then I'm already working on. I'm thinking of us just going away this weekend when it's all done. Right. Something like that. Right. So suddenly that whole moment or context kind of feels wrapped in awareness, which is going to feel differently. And so much of what we're talking about, of the ability to handle transitions here for us men in particular is just being aware of the context and mode us or our relationship are in and then communicating that to the best of our ability. Here's what I'm aware of and what I'm seeing. That's. That's really it.

Melanie Curtin: Like.

Melanie Curtin: Cardigan.

Jason Lange: Cardigan, Right. And then it's, I'm with you. I'm with you now. This is the space we're in. We're relating in our household together. And I see you. And then end of the episode, does it all reverse. Goes out the front door. Right? That's a ritual marking, a transition of sense that allows us to bring a different type of awareness and communicate something. Right. So the kids watching that, right? Get that cue. Oh, he's putting on the thing. He's here with me now, right? I have someone with me now. And whether that's with your kids, with your family, with your wife, to think or with yourself, in places you need to set boundaries with work or working out or whatever you can think of. Rituals are a way to support yourself in doing that.

Melanie Curtin: That.

Jason Lange: Right. How do we greet each other? How do we say goodbye to each other? Those little things really add up as a couple to build those rituals that mark those context shifts. Oh, we're back. We're together. I see you, I hear you, whatever that might be. So I've always loved that example, and it stays with me. And I think about it often in terms of how I can bring that into the various facets of my life and routines we do with my daughter and things like that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, they would have to sign up in the next two hours, essentially.

Melanie Curtin: I guess that's.

Jason Lange: Yeah, no, all good. But thank you, though. Okay. Yeah, we start at .

Melanie Curtin: All right, well, stay tuned. We have more things coming up this fall and winter and we'll see you next time.

Jason Lange: Don't.