319: ‘My relationship is war.’ (What do I do?) | Dear Men

Jason Lange: Work around the love, the connection, the trust piece. That's the part that's much harder to build and find a partner who's committed to. But when you do, you know, the polarity, in some sense is. It's just much easier because you have a solid framework. But if you are at war with each other, it's hard to feel that real kind of polarity.

Melanie Curtin: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another Jason episode. Fan favorite. Always glad to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Jason Lange: Excited to be back.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Today we are talking about my relationship is war. And we came up with this from an actual call. Someone actually said this. And we've been wanting to touch on this topic for a while because it's something that we've seen with a pretty good number of our clients, and that is the pattern of men being in relationships where it's highly dysregulating to both partners, not just him, but to her as well. And what we want to do is sort of contrast that with a relationship that is generative. So essentially what we mean by this is we have noticed that a lot of our men have been in or are in currently relationships that are pretty draining. So they. They're taking a lot of energy. It's requiring a lot from them to keep the relationship up or to, let's say, caretake their partner or support their partner, or they're in BPD relationships where they're just trying to put out fires and keep the peace. And it takes a lot from them. Right. It requires a lot. They have to give a lot. It's. It's. It's pretty depleting versus relationships where you feel appreciated and you feel nourished and you feel uplifted and you feel inspired. And so because there's that presence of that person in your life and you actually feel supported, you are more available to give your gifts in the world. You are more available to provide for others. You are. Your cup runneth over. You're actually more available than less available. So there's a pretty big delta between those, because if you think about sort of a pendulum in the middle is neutral. When you're depleted, you. You aren't as able to give to yourself or others because you're sort of constantly on guard. And I'm sure you'll get into that. Jason versus if you swing to the other side, where you feel more soothed, more nourished, more, you know, you got more of that oxytocin and dopamine, right? You've got the connection. The connection neurochemicals going, you're going to be more available to provide and to give and to be creative and to be inspired and to, you know, do your thing in the world. So that's the topic and I would love to hear from you, you know, since you are the one on a lot of of the calls, the initial calls with men. What have you noticed about this pattern?

Jason Lange: Yeah, so in addition to, you know, this coming up on some specific calls, part of what inspired this is, you know, we've been doing this for many years now and I've done thousands of calls with men and a shocking kind of pattern emerging of realizing how significant, you know, obviously this isn't everyone because only a certain type of man tends to reach out to us. But more men than I ever would have believed are in relationships that are essentially, like I said, war, meaning every point of contact in the relationship creates stress in their nervous system, whether that's through conflict, aggression, fear, whatever that might be. And so there the idea here is the relationship itself becomes one of the primary sources of stress and dysregulation in, in our, in, in a man's life. On top of all of the plenty of existing stresses that the world is just going to bring to us, no matter what it's, you know, we, we get challenged in being alive, things don't always go our way. And just what a paradigm shift it is for some men to realize that, that that reality is just one choice and that there's actually a completely different choice out there that you and I often talk about that ideally our romantic relationship, our int ship, it's a source of rejuvenation for us against the stresses of life. So it doesn't become necessarily another one of those stresses. It's somewhere we go to get resourced, grounded, connected, regulated, so then we can go back out into the world and handle even more. And you know, this term war that I use is for some, for some of our clients who are very much in relationships with highly volatile partners, partners with BPD tendencies, it can actually feel like war. Like there's a battle, there's an argument, there is a fight, there is a fight or flight, moment to moment that is really, really challenging. Like for some men, like getting attacked verbally, emotionally, sometimes even physically, like, you know, their partners are really coming at them and they're literally on guard. For other men I've seen, what I mean by war is just the disregulation that can happen under tremendous amounts of uncertainty. So other partners, this can happen from just, you know, they're an extreme amount of financial stress. They don't have any resources to give each other or one of their partners is really on the edge of not being okay. So there's this sense if. If I don't keep making my partner okay, they won't make it right. And so every moment is, are they okay? Are they okay? Are they okay? And, you know, this one in particular for nice guys tends to come pretty fiercely because then they're so focused on their partner's well, being inside, they're actually kind of dying in a sense. They're just not taking care of themselves. So, you know, the. The war thing doesn't just mean, like, battle and aggression. It absolutely can, but what it means is our nervous system is chronically in a state of fight, flight, or freeze. And our relationship is the source, the strongest source in a sense, of what's causing that. And so suddenly, you know, and I've had experiences with this. I have a great, great marriage. And there's definitely periods of time where my wife and I have gone through extreme challenges or been very disconnected. And when that disconnection is there, it shows up in every aspect of my life. It's like, I can't. It's really hard to just cut that off, so to speak. So in my work with clients, my work with men, being out in the world, it's like there in the awareness of, oh, my God, I know something has to happen here. This is really uncomfortable. We're really not connected. And so it stays with me. And it takes a tremendous amount of energy from my life contrasted to. And, you know, it's. It's interesting. I've seen this show up, even just in the family system, when Violet and I are, well connected, we're on the same page. It doesn't mean we're not having conflict, but, like, we're resourcing each other. Our relationship is a priority. We're taking care of ourselves. We're open, we're communicative, and, you know, just as important, we're connecting sexually. There is, like, it. I. I kind of call it. It's. It's almost like lube for life. It's just everything works a little bit easier, right? I'm able to go deal with work stress a little more, deal with stress in our family system, with our child a little more. And we just have more energy and resource available for each other where I'm more grounded. And not only am I more grounded, but there's. There's. There's presence and energy. I have an overflow of like, oh, I got something to give right now. And it's just been stunning to me how easy it can be. And it's not always, you know, men just jump into these types of relationships, but it is the kind of frog in the boiling pot of water. It's like these little conflicts start and then suddenly, two, three, four years later, it's like, wow, this is like a battle. Every day I come home, I don't know what I'm about to get. I have to armor up and defend myself. I have to, you know, keep my safety literally in mind in different scenarios of, you know, how do I protect myself? Or for a lot of men, how do I protect my kids? And it really activates that just sympathetic part of our nervous system that's like, oh my God, um, I gotta pay attention to survive here. And it is just, it takes so much, so much for men. And so if nothing else, the thing we just want to presence is that is not how relationship has to be. And there is something else possible.

Melanie Curtin: I couldn't have said that last part better than that.

Jason Lange: And I.

Melanie Curtin: There's so many parallels between the ways that we engage in romantic relationships and the ways that we grew up. So I want to presence a couple of things about my own journey. So my mom had borderline personality disorder, also known as bpd. If any of this part resonates for you, you should listen to the other episodes we have on bpd. We have many of them and I would say a good, at least a good quarter of our clients have related with, with women with bpd. That's a pretty popular dynamic. And so, yeah, for my mom, I'll just speak about my experience, let's say. Okay, one of the things that would happen, for example, is when I heard her car in the driveway. Because I often got home from school before her, she was at work. When I heard her car get home in the driveway, my body started to have a response. Like, I, I, I freaked out a little bit, like, oh, fuck, have I cleaned enough? So one of the things that, you know, had her feel supportive was cleaning. So like, shit, have I done the dishes? I would rush around and tidy up the living room and kind of like be, be stressed and be anxious because I didn't really know what was going to happen when she got home. And looking back now, I can, I know that I thought it was all about me. Meaning, you know, she's, she's, when she comes through the door, she's mad at me because I didn't do the dishes. Or she's mad at me because I didn't clean the bathroom, or she's mad at me because I didn't, you know, whatever. Fill in the blank. Now, looking back, I realize that, you know, they're working on renaming bpd, Emotional Regulation Disorder. So these folks have a hard time regulating themselves. Now, I understand that it had way more to do with her and whatever had happened at work and whatever mood she was in. And so if she was dysregulated, she would find something in the environment that triggered her and then she would lash out. So it. But in my world, it was just like, sometimes I get lashed out at and sometimes I don't. And. And what I have found is that if I've cleaned more, then I'm less likely to be lashed out at. So I would do the thing that I, that I had the illusion like, this will protect me, this will keep me safe. And. And sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't. And that was very confusing. So when we grow up with a parent like that or in a home where there's a lot of uncertainty and we never really know what we're going to get, I'm looking at you. Children of alcoholics, children of. Children of addicts. Any. Anyone, really, that's just sort of like, sometimes things are okay and sometimes they're really not. That is going to produce hyper vigilance on the part of the child. So I grew up and became hyper vigilant. I was always scanning, particularly for mom, like, what is Mom's mood? How is mom doing? What can I do to help Mom? Because that would keep me safe. That, I mean, it's kind of an illusion. But that was the, the tracking mechanism that I was under was how can I keep myself safe? And so that sense of I'm only safe if you're okay often will carry with us into romantic relationships later in life. So I can remember, you know, that hyper vigilance showing up with my. My first sort of like, real partner. And one thing I remember is that he was kind of depressive. He was kind of a. I mean, honestly, he was kind of a downer sometimes. And so sometimes I would try to cheer him up. Sometimes I would just be with him in that. But he wasn't very supportive of my full expression or my exuberance or my joy. It didn't match him. And so I became more closed, more smaller. I just became smaller and less happy and didn't really notice it. So the frog in the boiling water, like that really resonates with Me. And I was also kind of worried a lot about him or us or what was going on. And I didn't feel loved. Like, I didn't feel loved, adored, cherished. I, I, sometimes it was like I felt tolerated. Like, I felt like he was attracted to me and we had really good sex, but I didn't really feel like me, my personality, my, my, my, my selfness was delighted in. By him or anything. And so I remember having this conversation with a housemate and she was in a relationship and they seemed really happy. And I remember feeling like my relationship was a roller coaster. My relationship was an emotional roller coaster. And, you know, I would be, it would be really good and then it'd be really bad. And, and he was up and down. And I remember looking at her and thinking, they seem really stable. Like, I look at them, he comes over, they interact. Just, I'm just like, I just feel like they're having. I feel like she's having a different experience of relationships. So I was in the kitchen with her one day and I asked her about it and, and she basically corroborated that. She was like, oh, yeah, it's not volatile. Like, we don't, we don't really have a lot of conflict. And then she, I'll never forget this. She said when I look. And he, she was very short and he was very tall, which actually was funny because it's similar in my relationship. And she said sometimes I look up and like, way up, right? She looks up. He's like way above her. I look up and his eyes are like two pools of compassion. Like two deep pools of compassion is what she said. And I just remember thinking in that moment, I think there might be something wrong with my relationship. Like, it was one of those, I don't know, illumination, like, elucidating moments. Also, I was crying all the time. Like, I was like, this probably isn't a good sign that I'm crying almost every day. You know, that, that feels like maybe that's not normal, but when you are the frog in the boiling water, you're kind of like, I don't know, is this just how it is? So then what I, what I remember is that I went to visit my friend on the East Coast. This was all happening in California. I went to visit my friend on the east coast. And I think I was there for three or four days. And it took. It was about like day, day two or three, I was in the shower and I just could feel my body relax. So being around this close friend of mine, who was not volatile, very understanding, a great listener. And also we. We had fun together. We could laugh together. I felt myself coming back to myself. I felt myself coming back to myself. I felt more me. I felt more alive. I felt happier. I felt just. I just felt myself more. And I remember being in the shower and. And again thinking, I think there's something. I think that's not a good sign. I think if I'm feeling this kind of contrast, being with my friend versus being with my boyfriend, something's wrong. So I bring that up in part to say that, you know, I think it's really difficult when we're in the midst of a hard situation, whatever it is, to actually know there is a possibility for something else. It just feels so all consuming or overwhelming, and it's really hard to picture something else. And I do think it's important. And I think what I would want to say more than anything on this episode is you don't have to stay in that situation. And I have no judgment about how long it takes you to get out. It took me much longer than it, quote, should have to get out of that. That relationship. I kept staying, in part because the sex was so good and in part because I didn't really know anything else. And I had a story that, well, if I break up with this partner, I'll just attract someone else who's like this. I had this kind of like, well, these are my lessons to learn. I got to learn these lessons. This is just how it is. Like, if it's not with this man, it's going to be with another man. And there's a certain element of truth to. We do tend to need to learn lessons. But what I would say is that sometimes the lesson is leaving. Sometimes the lesson is setting the boundary and exiting. Because when. When you're a child, you. You can't exit a relationship with a parent. You are. You are sort of at their mercy, right? You don't have that choice. So there is an element of learned helplessness where you're just like, well, this is my life. Like, I just. I have to do my best in this scenario because I don't have any other choices. But when you're an adult, there, there comes a time when you do have a choice to exit, and that is actually the responsible choice. That is what you are, quote, supposed to do. And when I say supposed to, what I mean is, for your highest growth, the choice is to set the boundary and exit the relationship. And I want to make a point here because we. We also have, you know, a number of men who've been in situations like mine. Like I was describing with my mom and I, eventually, when I was older, did set boundaries with my mom and I. I know that you're going to speak to this dynamic of, you know, there's a sense of every moment is, are they okay? Are they okay? Are they okay? Like, I'm only okay if they're okay. When I was in my twenties, I became aware of how unhealthy my relationship was with my mom. Like, this is not, this is not actually normal. This is not, this is not healthy. And this is really taxing for me, right? It's really, really, it's a very high cost for me to be in contact with her, right? When, when I am, I am dysregulated, I am anxious, I am fearful, I am, I am. You know, there's a, there's a really high cost to that and there is a certain maturity around choosing ourselves, really choosing ourselves and saying, it's not fair to my body, mind to be in contact with you when you behave this way. It's not fair. I need to choose myself. I choose to choose myself instead of you. And for my whole childhood, I had always chosen her well, being over mine. That was how I did my thing. That was how I lived. And that was kind of appropriate. But that's how, that is how you survive. If you, if you constantly piss off a volatile parent, it's not going to go well for you. Something, something that's going to happen. You learned these things for a reason. So it's one of the bravest things I would say I've done in my life was setting boundaries with my mom around being in contact with her. And there was a mom moment when I was on the phone with her and she got angry and upset and hung up on me. And then I think she took the phone off the hook. This is way back in the day when you had phones with hooks. And because I kept calling her back, I was concerned for her safety and I kept calling her back and it kept being busy. And so I had a total freak out, right? Like, oh my God, oh my God, what if I made her so angry that she hurts herself? What if she kills herself? And so I called my dad and I called my grandma and I was like, can you check on her? You know, I was trying to do everything that I could think of to do. And I was thinking about calling a neighbor and then I was almost like, like divine guidance or something. I had this just sense, come over me. And I heard this, this message that said, even if she kills herself, it's still not your fault. Even if she kills herself, it's still not your fault. And I guess part of why I'm bringing that up is I just want you to know if you are a man out there listening, and you have had that, that sense of, well, I can't leave my partner because she might hurt herself or she might kill herself, I just want to say that you are not responsible for anyone else except you. You are responsible for you, and that's it. And everyone else is having their own life experience, and they are on their own path. They're on their own growth path. And it is, it is an act of maturity to live that, to own that, to live that and to trust that. It's not healthy to be enmeshed. It's not healthy to be codependent. And it takes two people to do that. And that's essentially what I did when I set boundaries with my mom, was I ended a codependent relationship. I exited a codependent dynamic. I said, I'm not doing this dance anymore. I choose something else. And I don't know what that means for you. I, I, I have a lot of compassion. I'm, I'm scared, and I'm doing it anyway. Like, I have compassion, and I'm scared, and I'm doing it anyway. And my life improved, and I did a lot of personal growth work. And then from that place, from doing a bunch of personal growth work, I started to attract different kinds of partners. And that's something that I want to say is that, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but it's not, it's not enough to just end the relationship or to get out. It's like you got to also do the work if you want a healthier relationship. And I'm, I'm struck by how quickly that can take place, how quickly one can do the work. And I'm thinking in particular of one of our clients who, you know, we'll call him Nate for the purpose of this episode. You know, he, when he came to us, he was in the midst of essentially separation, separating from his wife. And it was not his choice. He did not want to separate. He wanted to make things work. And she was, she was done. And that was really hard for him. And there were elements of their dynamic, I wouldn't say bpd, but there were elements that were not healthy and were not serving him. But he really didn't want to let go and so he was. He was kind of holding on. And this, again, to your point about uncertainty, when he showed up to calls, he was pretty dysregulated, right? It was, you know, he was pretty anxious. He was moving around a lot space. He was like, you know, his. His sentences were fragmented. Sometimes he was speaking really quickly. It was obvious, like, this guy's under stress. This is a stressful situation. He is. This is. This is really hard. And then as he went through the program and as we watched him essentially become more centered and more grounded and really more accepting of this is happening, and this might actually be healthy for me, this might actually be the best thing. Her leaving might be the best thing that's ever happened to me. As he moved through that process and became more open, more available, more grounded, you know, doing all of the growth work and getting connected to other men, really feeling the support and the connection and the community, that is a game changer. He. He started to blossom, essentially, and it was so fascinating. I've seen this many, many times where men come in highly dysregulated, and then after only, I would say, like, eight to 10 weeks, they're much more regulated and much more grounded. And the kind of woman that you're going to attract from that place is a different kind of woman. And that is exactly what happened. So he did that growth work. He also came to the retreat the following year, did a lot of deep work at that retreat, and then from that place attracted a new partner. And now he's in the kind of relationship that's much more open, much more communicative. You know, I feel like he was stifled in his old relationship because he couldn't really express himself. She didn't really have space for that. She didn't really want to hear it. She wasn't ready. She. She. I think in some ways he was too much for her, quote, unquote, too much for her, because she didn't want to go into all that deep stuff. She didn't want to talk about the real stuff. She didn't want to talk about sex. She didn't want to talk about love, really. I mean, she's had some limitations versus now. It's like this other world for him. And it's so fascinating to me because I don't think he would have necessarily chosen that. Right. I would say many of our clients that come in are either in relationships where they're like, I'm not sure about this. Like, I'm trying to decide if this is right, or they're like, My woman just left me. Or my woman is in the process of leaving me, and I'm freaking out, and I don't know what's next, but I know that I don't want to do that again. And either way, I feel like there's a graduation point. Right. Men are coming, and they're graduating from a certain relationship. If you graduate and then you do the work, oh, my God, what's on the other side of that is tremendous.

Jason Lange: Yeah. There's a couple of things I just want to highlight. One, that for some of the men we work with who are particularly deep in this kind of warlike relationship, there is a pretty noticeable impact. Some of them have commented on very explicitly, like, oh, I notice when I drop my wife off at the airport, my whole body goes. There's. So there's an actual physiological relaxation and downshift. Getting out of that kind of intense interaction, which. Exposing ourselves to that partner over and over keeps kicking that up, in a sense, and can be part of what makes it so dysregulating. And I think there's this thing you're saying of, you know, you got to do your work is so key here because the right, the. The crux of all this attachment stuff is whatever family system we were raised in and grown in as kids, in a sense, that's what our nervous system gets conditioned to. So it's like it dials into, oh, this is what love is. This is what love feels like. And so whether we're conscious of it or not, until we've gone in and really worked that, we will keep attracting partners who recreate those conditions. So an unavailable partner or a volatile partner or whatever that might be. Right. That'll keep happening. That's the part, you know, we want to tune into when we're in a relationship. It's like, well, even if I don't, even if I live this one, leave this one, it's going to come up somewhere else. So there's no ignoring that. And in order to work it, you have to have an open, available partner who's willing to own their side while you own your side and consciously choose, hey, let's lean into this so we can heal this with each other. And not every partner is up for that. We've seen that with many of our men who start to get clear, start to ask for things, and their partner just will not show up and go to therapy or do the work or come to connection nights or whatever that might be. But it's. It's a little insidious. Because we won't realize it, but like we're attracted to this certain type of volatility or absence or whatever because it's what our body just knew when it was young. And so it's really important and we work with guys to really surface some of these hidden patterns so they can see, oh, wow, yeah, this has played out in eight relationships. There it is, right. I want to play this out differently and it's so important. Then when we do that work, when we get more grounded, like you said, our nervous system changes. And sometimes it is the profound bravery of saying, I can't be in this relationship anymore. Being with you. I may love you, but being with you in our dynamic, which doesn't look like it's going to change, is actually causing me self harm. I'm, I'm hurting myself just being in relationship with you and exiting that and setting that boundary is often the first step to then attracting a partner who's in a very different place themselves, who has also maybe set that boundary. It's the beauty of boundaries is the more we set them, the more we attract people who understand and receive and set them themselves and can take, you know, care of themselves in a sense. And just the last thing I really want to highlight here is so, you know, a lot of what we talk about on this show and in our program is polarity, right? How do we create that current of attraction and electricity with our partner? And it's so important and it's so key and there's a lot of missing pieces of it in our culture. But you know, as my teacher once told me, polarity is the easy part. Like legitimately we can drop in, do a weekend workshop, you can mostly learn all the tools of polarity pretty fast and start implementing them. The love piece, so that, hey, I'm here, I'm available to you, I feel close to you, I'm willing to be vulnerable with you, and most importantly, I feel safe with you. That's the hard part. That takes so much more work. And when you have that, it's, you know, it's, it's almost fun to just sprinkle in polarity. But sometimes we're, you know, we do also have clients coming in who are really struggling is they're trying to just attack the polarity and not do that really hard and sometimes humbling and sometimes life changing. Like, wow, we can't do this. Work around the love, the connection, the trust piece. That's the part that's much harder to build and find a partner who's committed to. But when you do, you know, the polarity in some sense is. It's just much easier because you have a solid framework. But if you are at war with each other, it's hard to feel that real kind of polarity. There's like, you know, some couples have the like or fight polarity of like, we get so aggressive and then it, it kind of creates a certain type of polarity with each other. But that is hardly regulating in the way we're talking about of wow, I feel on my same page. I feel co regulated with my partner and now I feel attracted and I get to express that to them. That's what we want to point to here, that when that's all firing and you have that love and polarity, it's like, yeah, your relationship, it becomes like a, a generator. Like literally you just have life force and energy and excitement and a groundedness with each other that allows you to be more bold in other areas of your life because you kind of have this safe shore you can always come back to, so to speak. But it takes that willing partner. And you know, just as many of our men who have a willing partner have partners who just aren't there. And it's not to, you know, judge them as people. They just, they're not there on their journey, they're not ready to take that step. And for some men it becomes that question of, well, okay, if it takes my partner maybe five years to get to a place where she's even available to get into this deeper stuff, do I want to wait that long or do I want to exit knowing that there's probably someone out there who's ready to play ball in a reciprocal relationship right now where yes, we're going to have conflict and we're going to have seasons, but it's not that way all the time. Like I said, my relationship plenty of times we've gone through some very disconnected, very conflict oriented seasons, but it's not that way all the time. There's always a coming back in, a resourcing of each other. And oh yeah, this is why we're here, this is why we're doing this. Because we have this available to us. So, you know, it's okay. Maybe one way to stick with the metaphor here is it's okay to have battles, but that's different from being in chronic sustained war with each other. And that dysregulation of the nervous system is the really key thing here. You know, our relationship should co regulate us, not disregulate us. And we've just seen it time and time again that there's some men that don't even realize they're in a disregulating relationship and they wonder why everything is so hard and they're so burnt out and they're so stressed and they're so challenged. And we're here to just, you know, really highlight it might not be the right relationship then, or it's time for you to come forward, get a lot of support, potentially get support for yourself and for your relationship and say, baby, I can't live like this anymore. Here's what I envision for us. What if, what if when we spent time together, it made us feel better, not worse? You know, something kind of as simple as that and then seeing is that possible, can we create this together?

Melanie Curtin: I really appreciated when you said our relationship should co regulate us, not dysregulate us. And I think that there's an aspect to this where, you know, I've been in relationships where I was experiencing both. Sometimes the relationship co regulated me and sometimes it dysregulated me. And one pattern that I've seen, and I would say is true, true for me for sure, is when I was editing certain parts of myself, consistently, the relationship was fine. But if I came forward with more of me, then he got angry or defensive and so I, I, I cut those parts off and that sucked. That sucked. So I'm, I'm thinking specifically of a relationship I was in where, yeah, if I got a little bratty or like, you know, expressive, like, like that kind of thing, not even necessarily about the two of us, but just like, oh, I'm so mad about this thing that happened with my mentor, blah, blah, blah, like I became expressive and, and, you know, animated. I remember one particular moment where he rolled his eyes and I got really triggered by that. Like I felt dismissed and it just didn't feel good. And we had had other things going on as well. But that was a, that was a moment where I felt like I'm not actually fully accepted in this relationship. Like I'm accepted as long as I'm kind of nice a lot of the time. And I, and it didn't feel good, right? It didn't feel good. And so I got really triggered. And then the way that we, quote, repaired from that was terrible. It was just, it was so much worse. It was, yeah, he just, he didn't, he didn't show up in a way that felt welcoming or safe to me. And so I spent the, the whole night essentially in anguish and in Pain and just. I was so depleted by the end of that. I didn't have faith that we were going to make it through. We sort of made it. We sort of repaired that. But that's the kind of thing where that just happened over and over and over. And so there were parts of the relationship that felt restorative, but there were parts that felt really bad. And, and it, and I think I just want to say that it, it can be confusing if you're in the kind of relationship where you're like, well, how do I tell if it's co regulating versus dysregulating, Right? It's like, yeah, if you feel, if you tend to feel more relaxed when you're not with the person and just more like, oh, I can be my full self. If you feel like you are more yourself with friends than with your partner, that's a, that's a sign. That is a sign. And I've seen that again and again where sometimes I'll be with my. I, I remember being in that relationship and being with my friends and thinking how freeing it felt to actually be able to be my full self with my friends and only part of myself with my partner. So that would be another signal. And then I, I do want to kind of speak briefly to this concept that I've come up with called toxic loyalty, which is that a lot of us, I think, particularly if we had a certain kind of parent, we were trained to be loyal. We were trained to be loyal. We were trained to be loyal to the family system. To. For example, one of the most famous books on alcoholism and addiction is called Don't Tell the Family Secrets. Don't Tell the Family Secret. So I have a close person in my life whose dad was an alcoholic and he said, yeah, I never brought my friends home, I never brought my friends home after school because I never knew who was going to be there. I didn't know who was going to show up. And, and I never told anyone that. I never talked to anyone about that. You know, it's one of those things that we. Yeah, there's just a lot of secrecy and, and stuff around that kind of thing. But we're often trained to, in that way to be loyal to that parent or those parents, you know, and that can lead to what I call toxic loyalty, which is this belief that I have to, I can't challenge this person, I can't push this person. I have to, I can't leave this person. It's absolutely unacceptable for me to abandon this person. And I think that, that's a great example of me exiting that relationship with my mom, for example, I knew that she was going to take that as abandonment. I knew it like this. This absolutely A equals B. If I set boundaries here, she will take that as rejection and abandonment and it will be potentially a trigger for suicide. Like I knew that, that, that was the extremity. And I think a lot of you listening that have been in this situation have a sense of that and it still doesn't. Like that is toxic loyalty. If it's like I am sacrificing my well being by being in relationship with you, that's not okay. It's not okay. It's not okay to do that. And that's how we were trained. A lot of us in our youth is, that's what we did. So that's what we do. And I just want to point out that toxic loyalty is not healthy. And if that's how you feel in a dynamic, and by the way, I've seen this play out as well with bosses. If you're in a, if you're in a toxic loyalty situation with a boss or a job where you feel like you're stuck, you can't leave, you have to stay. Even though it's draining your life, it's sucking your soul, that's a problem. You want to get some help for that. You want to get some support, you want to get some other voices in there, you want to get some community, you want to, you want to. Let's, let's, let's dig into that. Because I've seen time and again that as especially in our clients, I've witnessed them and I think this is particularly true. Recently we had a client who was in this kind of, this kind of job, right, with, with a toxic boss who, who reminded him it felt like a similar dynamic to his ex wife. And I pointed it out and was like, I don't think this is the, the position to stay in. I think this is the position to leave mindfully, right? Not in a reactive way, not in a, I quit, I can't do this anymore. But mindfully, I choose something else. I choose something else. I actively choose something else. I'm not doing this again. I've done this many times in my life. I'm going to choose to exit. And there's something really, really powerful about that because for a lot of us, myself included, I had never made that choice before. I had always just stayed. So for me, mindfully actually making a choice to depart for myself, for my own well being Was bizarre. The way I put it to friends at the time was, it feels like I'm walking on Mars now. Like, I don't even know what happens next. I've never done this before in my life. I'm like, in my spacesuit, like, moving through, like, what do I do now? What happens? I have always, always, always sacrificed myself for her. So if I'm choosing myself now, I'm like, whoa, I don't even know what to do. So I guess I just wanted to, to point that out, that it's such an act of bravery to do that. And I feel very, very proud of that client in question about. He did choose to leave that job. He mindfully chose something else. Like, I'm not, I'm not doing this. I've done this. I kind of see where this movie is going, been to the end a few times, and I'm going to choose something else, which is really brave. And I think it's. It does require support. If you don't have any support in your life, if you don't have, you know, mentors, community, friends, like I said, other voices that are helping you, it's going to be really hard to make a different choice. So, again, doing the work, getting into communities, getting that, getting, getting those voices into your life is really, really important when you want to make big shifts because there are little young parts of you that are going to be scared. And you need some people in your life saying, you're doing great, good job. You've. I've been where you are. I've been through it. You can do it, too. You need some cheerleaders. We all need that. Because life is hard and personal growth is hard. It's totally worth it. And it's challenging. It's really, it requires some energy, it requires some bravery, it requires some trust. So, yeah, wanted to say that. Would love your responses on that. And then I have another question.

Jason Lange: Yeah, the, the, the toxic loyalty. I think we, we definitely see play out with nice guys. So I just want to highlight that it's one clear place that we've seen a lot of men make a pivot, that it's, you know, this one comes up a lot with kids, too, when there's kids involved. Like, no, I have to stay. And again, what we're pointing to here is it's not a relationship, it's not a healthy relationship. If it only works if you're in harmony, if it requires you to be abandoning yourself, feeling hurt, feeling dysregulated in any way, and, you know, the move towards a healthy relationship and kind of breaking that toxic loyalty is so vulnerable so often, like karmically disruptive to lineages. And, you know, like you said, you know, it's not. It's never our fault what happens to the. The person, in a sense, but like, closely related to that I just want to point out too, is that when we allow that dynamic to persist, we're also co. Like we're actively creating it. So I'm keeping my partner there. In a sense, if I keep replicating this system of maybe she won't be okay without me. I'm actually contributing to keeping her unwell by staying in this status quo. And so there's, you know, this isn't some kind of like, magic, airy, fairy thing, but, you know, there is a truth to Sometimes the deepest love I can have for my partner is saying, this is not working for either of us. I don't know how to make it work. We've tried and I gotta exit to protect myself. And, you know, my hope is this is actually going to be the opening you need to get the growth and change or whatever you want, you know, whatever might happen, that may happen or it may not. But, you know, there's a frame of. It's a different type of loyalty that I know. I know us being in this relationship is not creating wellness for us, is not creating wellness for you or me. So as hard as it's going to be on you or me to exit this, I'm going to do it. We're going to do it. We're ending this in hopes that it'll create a deeper wellness or at least an opening for that to potentially shift. And, you know, in a sense, to me, that's like a loyalty to someone's soul. It's like a different thing. It's like, I don't. I tried with you, I tried to lead us out of this. It didn't work. I'm hurting myself in the process. You're being hurt in the process. So it's. It's time for us to exit. You know, I want you to be in a relationship that doesn't feel like war. I want to be in a relationship that doesn't feel like war. And just for whatever reason our karma is right now, we can't do that together. And the support of a community to guide you through that can be so invaluable. And we've mentioned so many times just how often supportive it is for guys just to talk to someone who's on the other side of that and they're like, no, it actually got better. Like to have some experiences of and hear firsthand, like it got better. It didn't just get better for me, but like my partner's actually doing better too. And now we can relate to each other, you know, as co parents or something else. And it's freed up something. So it can be a deep act of loving service to, you know, exit this kind of relationship as well.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I'm thinking of one of our clients who I'll call him Jeremy, who was in also in a marriage. I think they were. Yeah, they were still married when we started working with them or with him. And she was very cold. She was pretty cold and unavailable. And that was a repeat of some dynamics from his childhood with like trying to get mom's attention. Basically always trying to get mom's attention. Like, you know, that scrabbly feeling of like almost desperation if I need her to pay attention to me, like why isn't she paying attention? Pay attention to me. And so he had this partner who you know, repeated those dynamics and long story short, he, he tried everything. I mean he tried everything. He did so well, you know, approaching her in all kinds of different ways and being communicative and she just was not available. She didn't want to do it. She didn't want to do the work. She was not interested. Right. And so he chose to mindfully close that relationship. And when he started dating, it was immensely gratifying to witness him relate with women that were available. He was like, holy shit, this is really different. You know, I am stunned by how open women can be. I just thought this was how women were and I just thought this was, you know. Yeah, just thought it was how it was. And I'm particularly thinking about sexually. You know, women that were really enjoying themselves are really open or ready to have conversations or ready to try different things. He was like, that was never available in my marriage. That was just like a non starter. And she was pretty shut down and closed. And so everything was. He kind of felt like he was tiptoeing around. Right. There was a lot of, a lot of effort and a lot of fear and a lot of closedness and not a lot of exploration and fun and openness. And so he just had this radiant experience. And he also said something like, yeah, my kids have, because they were co parenting, they co parented. I think they had two kids. My kids have said things like, wow, you're so much happier now. They, they noticed how much more energy he had. So back to it being war versus it being generative. You know, our relationship can be a cold war. I would say that their relationship was more of a cold war. It wasn't volatile. It was, it didn't have a lot of spikes but there was just an always, just this sense of dis. Ease like it's just we're not, it's. We're not at ease with each other. I want more from you than you can give. And she actually started to do better after they closed things as well because I think it was stressful for her to constantly know that she was letting down her partner. She could feel that she was letting him down. She knew that he wanted more from her than she could give. She just wasn't available and wasn't interested in doing the work to become available. But it was still stressful for her and she wasn't a bad person. I don't think there's that. We're not talking about evil people. We're just all doing our best. So. So he became a lot more dynamic in the world. Just more excited about things, more lit up. There was more creativity in his life. He was in, you know, a dating phase which eventually he found a new relationship again at a higher level of consciousness essentially with, with another growth minded woman. And guess what? That's now he's role modeling to his children. So he has exited the relationship that wasn't working, gone through the transition period and is now role modeling another kind of relationship. And they are very successfully co parenting. They are, they are, you know, they're doing the damn thing. So I just, I kind of want to, yeah. Share the inspiration around the possibility that it, it doesn't have to be or, and sometimes I would say often, not always, but I'm going to go with often. It does require graduating from certain relationships. And that's the term that I've been using lately with, with friends as well is, you know, I have a friend who's going through a breakup right now and it feels more like you're graduating from a dynamic that honestly your mom did and her mom probably did and a lot of folks in your lineage had a similar dynamic and you are now making a different choice. You are graduating from that rather than just repeating the past.

Jason Lange: It's not easy, but it can be done. And you know, I'll just close out here with again. One last message to parents in particular is it's one of the greatest gifts you can give to your kids. Even though, yes, there may be some acute near term discomfort, dysregulation transitioning the family, they are learning, they are getting conditioned to what a relationship is by seeing you in yours. So if you're at war with your parent, with your, your spouse, you know that's what they're going to come to expect. And so many of our guys, myself included, we didn't really see the alternative of that modeled for us. And so we don't even know it's an option of like, oh, wow, yeah, my partner. This can be someone who I, I come back to myself with. We come back to each other, we get resourced, we get rel. Relaxed in our nervous systems. And because of that, we can handle the ups and downs together. And that gets transmitted to, you know, everyone that experiences us, our relationship. And that can be a great, great gift to your family unit and to your friends as well.

Melanie Curtin: Yes. When we grow, we tend to have a ripple effect on really everyone around us. So it's a huge gift. If you want to grow and you want to work with us, there are a couple of ways to do that. You can do coaching, go to Evolutionary Men, Apply and we also have a few spots left at our live retreat at the end of August if you're interested in that. You can also go to Evolutionary Men. All the details are there. It's three and a half days over Labor Day weekend and it's a jump start. It is a jumpstart. If you are ready, if you want to come do some real work in person, come join us.