After years of working with men who struggle to access their own power and set real boundaries, I've noticed something crucial that we rarely address in this work: the deep mistrust so many of us carry toward masculine energy itself. Not just our own masculine essence, but men in general. This conversation with Melanie hit on something essential for every man listening to this show because until we can genuinely trust other men, we'll keep sabotaging our own masculine development.
Most guys I work with didn't have healthy masculine role models growing up. Maybe you got a piece here or there, but the full picture of integrated, grounded masculine energy? That was missing for a lot of us. And here's what I see time and time again: if you don't feel safe with masculine energy outside of you, in other men, you're probably going to have a hard time trusting it inside yourself. That part of you that has power, sets boundaries, speaks up for what you want, feels sexually alive. All of that gets tangled up.
We talked about how the patriarchy actually damages men just as much as women. Boys learn early what they're allowed to feel, how they're allowed to be. And a lot of that damaging conditioning comes from other boys during adolescence. That gets stored in your body as vigilance, as bracing for impact when you walk into a room full of men.
But here's the thing: when you start building real, trusting relationships with other men, it rewires everything. Your nervous system gets to have a different experience. You stop needing your partner to be your only source of safety, which frees up the relationship entirely. You make more discerning choices about who you're with. And women feel it. They feel when you're rooted in something, when you're part of a system that has your back. It's deeply attractive because it's real.
We also got into how men's work in groups can heal peer wounds in ways therapy alone can't. Virtual work has been powerful for guys who need to start building trust from the safety of their own space before showing up in person.
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Melanie Curtin: When I look at that relationship, part of what I see is he's quite isolated, and he doesn't look isolated, like he's got friends. You know, there's people around him, but he doesn't have deep, trusting relationships with other men. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another Jason Lange episode. So happy to have you with us. We are talking about men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men and trust and how your relationships with men impact your relationships with women. And this is something I've been wanting to talk about directly for a while, in part because it's something that my women friends and I have been discussing, and we'll get into that. But welcome to the episode. Thanks for being with us.
Jason Lange: Excited to be back. Great topic.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. So one of the. One of the popular phrases we hear is, oh, I'm kind of a lone wolf. And I feel like there's a. There's a sort of flag that goes up for each of us when we hear that, like, oh, okay, like, a lot of compassion and also some concern. Because what happens a lot of the time is that when a boy is growing up in our culture, and really, I believe this is, you know, fairly universal, like all over the world. Now, in many cultures, not all cultures, but in many cultures, there is a way that that boy becomes increasingly isolated and increasingly less allowed to be his full self. And it starts. Starts pretty young. So I'll give you one example. One man that I dated and was very close with started getting bullied in the fourth grade, and so that completely informed essentially the rest of his life. And that your brain is still forming right? When you're in elementary school, middle school, high school, your brain is still forming. It's actually still myelinating until you're 25. So there's certain imprinting or patterning that happens then. And your sense of safety in the world and who you trust, who you trust and who you don't trust is. Is very affected by. By that. And so for this man that I was close with, part of what happened is that he stopped trusting men, he stopped trusting boys, and he stopped trusting men. And it was subtle. It was obvious in some ways and subtle in other ways. And part of what we're going about today is how does that patterning then impact particularly romantic relationship for men? It seems like. It seems like it wouldn't, right? It's like, oh, well, my relationship with women is going to impact my relationship with women, right? My relationship with women is going to impact my dating life, my sex life, my, you know, long term Relationship, all of that stuff. Why would my relationship with men affect that? It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand. And this is also going to be very relevant to you if you are a man who, for example, has a lot of friends, but a lot of your close friends are women. If you don't have a lot of close friends who are men, this is going to be relevant for you. So to start off with, can you share a little bit about what you've noticed in terms of this pattern of. Particularly around bullying, either in a man's home. So from dad or mom or siblings or. Or at school and. Or at school, what have you noticed in terms of, you know, how many of our men have gone through that? We've done hundreds of calls at this point, maybe over a thousand. Just what are, what are. What are you noticing around this?
Jason Lange: Yeah, Many, many men have been bullied or been the recipient of masculine dysregulation, whether that's rage or anger or outbursts or neglect in some sense. But a lot of our guys, I mean, this isn't new territory in the sense that one of the big crises right now for a lot of men is no role models. Very few men were raised with an experience of healthy, integrated masculine energy. You know, we might get a little piece here, a little piece there, but far more men than women, I think most people realize, just, like, didn't really have a model for it. Right. Kind of making it up as they go. And that has tremendous consequences of which, you know, one particular arena is not trusting other men. Right. Not feeling safe with other men, because the masculine we were raised around gave us good reasons to, you know, form those early opinions, in a sense, but then we'll carry those forward. And, you know, we. We talk about this term a lot, and, you know, people push back and whatever, but the patriarchy is a real thing, and it's actually extremely damaging to men. It's not just damaging to women. Right. It's extremely damaging to men. Part of what we're talking about here is that orientation, that worldview starts to impact boys from a very young age around what they're allowed to feel, how they're allowed to dress, what they're allowed to say. And particularly then as they hit adolescence, what might come from parents or caregivers of the culture starts to come from peers at a very important age where sometimes the most damaging lessons we get about what it means to be a band actually come from other. Other boys and the quickness with which boys can get ostracized or bullied, like genuinely harmed for, for. For being different of some kind. And that creates a pretty deep wounding in many, many men that we work with. And, you know, you and I were talking a little bit to prep for this, and I've probably even spoken about on this show before, but how I often talk to guys about this is as a man, as a masculine oriented man, if you have never experienced healthy masculine energy, so you don't feel safe with it and you don't trust it outside of you, meaning in others, it is almost with near certainty that you will have a hard time trusting it inside yourself. So the part of you that has power, has boundaries, can speak up for what you want, asks for what you need, is sexually turned on. Like, all of that's related in there. So if we've never experienced it, it's pretty hard to trust it inside ourselves. And this is something I just see time and time again and why it is such crucial work to rewire our connection to the masculine and other men, because it will start to rewire that relationship to that energy inside you as a man. And we've seen it. I've seen it, I've experienced it. It's a real thing. And it's a step that a lot of guys just kind of don't think about or want to skip. Because the very patriarchy we're talking, talking about, and particularly the American context of it, celebrates the rugged, individualist cowboy, lone wolf. I've talked about all this stuff like, oh, a good man is a tough man who never needs help. Never know, shows weakness. I don't need anybody in that. Right. You know, there's the, that phrase, like when you said, when someone says that, sometimes there's this, like, air of kind of pride around it, right? Like, oh, yeah, I don't need anyone. Like, there's a pride where what we're pointing to is, ooh, that's actually probably not what you think it is, because usually underneath that there's fear. There's fear. So we reach for the pride part of it because we don't want to often, as men acknowledge the fear that it's like, oh, no. To be vulnerable. Like, no, right. That. That doesn't feel safe at all. What feels much safer is, oh, I don't need anybody. I'm fine. I'm good. Right? I can, I can handle myself. And, you know, I say tell the story all the time. There's a. Yes. A certain capacity in that arena we want to develop. But the, you know, particularly for the More macho sect. You know, my. My just very simple comeback is always, no matter how tough of man you are, there will be a day your body fails you, and you cannot force, brute force your way to whatever you want. It will happen. We all go through it. And it's at that moment you're going to quickly discover, ooh, what's the community? What's the context? What's the system I have around me? And if you haven't invested in that, it can be really brutal. But if you learn to shift your story around that, it actually can be unbelievably transformative.
Melanie Curtin: There's so much in what you just said. I want to go back to the. The transmission of the healthy masculine. And I was really struck the other day. I was, you know, walking down the street, and I ended up connecting with this woman who had a dog. And the dog was pretty fearful, like, pretty, you know, hiding behind her legs, that kind of thing. And she said, yeah, you know, she's a rescue, and she's still learning how to be in the world, but it helps a lot that she's around my dog. So that. So the woman was fostering this dog, and she said, yeah, when she's around my dog, she kind of learns how to be a dog. And she, like, runs and plays and she's following along, learning how to be with this other dog. And I thought to myself, that is so much how a lot of us learn. But we don't think of it that way. We think of, I'm, you know, learning through teaching, and I'm learning through things I'm. That are coming in. But actually being around people who are healthy, being around that transmission and is part of how we grow and how we heal. And I think that's something that I want to emphasize is that we've seen many men come through the program with this kind of patterning. They're showing up with a deep lack of trust in. In men, in the masculine. And they don't even always realize it. What they. It's. It's almost like that's underneath the surface. What they realize is, you know, I'm not getting dates. I'm not getting. I'm. Or I'm getting first dates, I'm not getting second dates. I'm maybe dating someone for a while, and then it's. It's fizzling out, or I'm in a love relationship, like I'm in a marriage or a partnership where I don't feel like I'm in my power. I feel like I'm being walked all over or we're not having sex and I really miss sex. I don't know what to do about it. I feel like I'm frozen. It's not working or I'm not sure is this the right relationship for me. It's showing up in the arena of sex and relationships and dating. But this is a big piece of what, of the work that needs to happen. And that's part of why we're doing this episode is because I, I actually, you know, recently was talking to a woman friend of mine who is closing a relationship in large part because she doesn't feel, she doesn't feel her man's integrity. He's not able to be straight with her. He doesn't give straight answers. He tiptoes around things, he's walking on eggshells. He'll hide things, he'll obscure things. He's, you know, a bit two faced, right? Like he'll say one thing but he'll mean another. You know, he'll hide things that he's done or just, it's just he's not in integrity. And when, when I look at that relationship, part of what I see is he's quite isolated. And he doesn't look isolated like he's got friends, you know, there's people around him, but he doesn't have deep trusting relationships with other men. And when they were together she actually pointed this out to him and said, you know, because they, they, they went out or they were socializing and he was sort of complaining about this other man at the table or you know, later on he was talking about this guy and she was like, I think you have a thing around men. I think you don't really trust men. And he, you know, did, said whatever he said. He, but he wasn't interested in talking about it. But I think it's really, it's really compelling because one of the things that I witness in the men with this kind of patterning is that when you don't feel safe with other men and you don't trust men as a man, you don't feel safe in the world. There's a fundamental lack of safety, of feeling safe and feeling a sense of belonging. And so there's, there's a kind of clenching, clutching, hypervigilance around safety and just being, just literally being and feeling okay and safe in general in the world. I think that's triple. So for folks that are bullied at home, whether that's a brother or another sibling, it doesn't have to be a Brother. It can be a sister, siblings, or dad or mom, really, you know, particularly dad. So like violent dad or withdrawn, absent dad or any kind of critical, you know, critical things. That's a very common one that we hear. And it. It leads to this sense of, well, I'm only safe within myself. So there's this pulling back, pulling away. You know, that. That sense of becoming an island. And so then you might look on the outside like, oh, yeah, I interact with people. But your depth, your. Your vulnerable heart, your feelings, your. You know, the part of you is not being held by anyone. You're not. It's not. It doesn't feel safe to trust anyone, particularly men. So can you. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about what you've witnessed in the guys that we worked with around this, that have come in with this sense of kind of unsafety in the world and how it's related to this?
Jason Lange: Yeah, it creates an extreme amount. Well, not always extreme, sometimes subtle dysregulation and fear. Right. Because there's. I mean, the sense is on guard. Vigilance. Right. Vigilant. Which is different from awareness or alertness. Right. Vigilance has like a. A certain tightening to it.
Melanie Curtin: You're br.
Jason Lange: I'm actually. Yeah. I'm actually braced for impact. And guys we've worked with that have literally been bullied. This. It actually stays in your musculature. There's an actual bracing when I enter the room. Right. My body tightens. And many, many men we've worked with have, Have. Have had that and just have never had a space where they feel, oh, I can actually drop my vigilance in the company of other men. And, you know, this is a military thing, but we've done it at retreats before. You know, the actual experience, that can be very kind of mind blowing for some men when you're making eye contact. Right. In this case, we're doing men's work. So it's with another man and the deep realization, oh, as I'm looking into his eyes, I don't have to protect my back. So if I just stay connected to him, I don't have to be putting all this resource to what could be becoming behind me. Because he sees it. So just in his eyes. He's got my back. Literally, he is seeing my back. He's covering an area of awareness that I can't me him. And so there becomes this actual regulation and relaxation of, oh, all I have to do is be here. Right. Like, I just. All I have to do is be here. I Can I can start to unwind and redirect some of this resource that was literally, you know, sometimes flinching up, tensing, wondering if someone was going to be right there. And so it's, it's that process of learning. Oh, I can, I can trust, right? I can essentially, I can trust. I can trust the masculine here. I can, I can trust men. That starts to deeply rewire a lot of guys we work with. And where it becomes really key for interactions with the feminine, right. With women, in case of the men we mostly work with, is a couple things start to happen. A, that relationship gets freed up of so many things because if we don't have trusted masculine in our life and the only place we're trying to get a sense of safety is our feminine partner, it puts a lot of pressure on that. I've told this, you know, we talked about this ad nauseam. When we start to get that safety elsewhere, it actually frees us up to be in the relationship and need different things from the relationship. And one of the most tangible ways we see this is that as men get more deeply connected to safe, trustable men, they make more discerning decisions about who to be in relationship with or stay in relationship with. Because when the choice is nobody or someone that, yeah, some of the time we connect, but a lot of the times it's hurting me. Oftentimes we'll choose the latter. But suddenly when it's like, whoa, I don't, I don't need that, right? Like, I got. I. I have something behind me now. Men are freed up to make. I've seen, we've seen much wiser decisions, much more discerning decisions about who they partner with and why. And then it also impacts, right? There's, you know, lots of talk about the masculine and providing and protection and safety and security with the feminine. And there's a version of that, right, that's just like, y. I want to be involved with someone who, if things get hard, has resource. Yeah. That doesn't mean. Have to mean you have a ton of money in the bank or something like that, but it just means if you get over, if I get overwhelmed as a man, what do I have to fall back on? And I think in the case of, you know, you've shared stories, friends have shared stories. For some women, when you have a sense this man has nothing to fall back on other than me, it doesn't actually breed a relaxed nerve nervous system, right? It's like, oh, wow, ah, ooh, E. Right. I want to, I want to feel that grounding and as we develop these trusting, secure relationships with other men and you know, really make that shift. And this isn't for every single man in the world, but it's as we develop the right relationships that, oh, men aren't just a threat or competition, but they can become my allies in terms of helping me create the life I want to create. That's the big shift I see in our program. Other programs I lead where it's ah, with that team, I'm actually a lot more capable to do what I want in the world. And I got people looking out for me and giving me feedback. Right. So if I veer off course or. Yeah, oh my God, you know, I told you I wouldn't date another person who was like super hot in bed but then never talked to me. You know, hey, that thing's happening right now, right? This is where groups become very tangible in and where the, you know, kind of going off in a lot of directions here. But the last thing I'll say when we talk about the experience of it, you know, masculinity is a transmission, right? It's an energetic. We get to feel. And if we haven't felt the healthy, deep versions of it, it's very hard to locate that in ourselves like I was talking about. So particularly when it comes to the deep work, you know, will lead. Many times I see and have heard from men who experience another man deeply vulnerable, in tears, in healthy anger, whatever it might be. And their trust for that man goes up, not down. Right? I trust you more seeing how you held yourself and worked with that. Trust you more in terms of your capacity. And they often say, nobody even told me this was, I didn't even know this was a possibility. Right, because you've never seen it that, oh, wait, I can bring emotion forth, I can ask for help whatever it might be as a man. And it doesn't make me weaker, it actually makes me stronger. And then they see it and they're like, well, and this is where guys often get cut up. But then when it comes to their turn, that's like, I know I can't be a burden or I'd be weak. It's like, no, you just saw it from the other side. So you realize that's how everyone else is going to see it. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, you're right. And that does start to change things.
Melanie Curtin: I think this brings up a really important point, which is the power and value and necessity of group work in addition to individual work. I think it is Critically important that not just men, but let's focus on men for the sake of this episode, that men do work with other men in groups, not just solo. There's immense value to one on one coaching. There's immense value to one on one therapy and there is immense value to group work. We are a social animal. We are meant to be in small teams and small groups and small tribes. Overall, we, it's, it's important. It's really important. And there's certain healing work that you're pointing to of witnessing another man in his process that simply cannot be done in a one on one session. You can't do it. And there are ways that we, we will see each other reflected. You know, there are countless times, you know, on our, on our coaching calls where one man will share. You know, sometimes I just, I feel like a monster. Like, I feel like if I want sex, I'm a monster and it makes me a bad man. And we'll say, raise your hand if you've ever felt the same way that you're a bad man because you want sex. And like everybody's hand will go up and you can just see the original man, like his eyes widen, he looks like, wow, I'm not the only one that feels like a monster. There is no way to replicate that in a one on one session. There's simply no way to do it. And something happens, happens. Something happens for us when we deeply know in our bones I am not alone and I am in a group where I can bring my actual truth, right? The things that are actually hard for me, whether that's, I'm having a really hard time saying no to my woman, standing up for myself, I feel like, I feel weak. You know, I feel like I, I'm, I'm struggling or I went out on a date and we went home and I couldn't get it up. And I feel shame. I feel shame. And all these other guys are nodding along like, yep, been there, had that experience. You know, like, I'm with you, I've got your back, right? There's just something that happens that I think is deeply healing and restorative. Particularly because we live in a culture that denies men their humanity, that says you can't feel sad, you can't feel shame, you can't feel triggered, you can't feel all these things or you're less of a man. There's a, there's a way that men feel like they have to hide so many parts of themselves or they'll be ridiculed. They'll be humiliated. I can't tell you how many stories we have from men who've been violently bullied or subtly bullied or both for years. You know, some of them for years. I think one man said it started in fourth grade, and it didn't let up till he left for college. That's like 10 years. I mean, it's just. That blows my mind, that. That amount, sheer amount of time for a lot of men, they report, you know, like, yeah, fourth through sixth grade was really hard. Or, yeah, middle school was not good. You know, that sometimes when they come in, they. They're. They sort of allude to it, but they don't. They don't share all the. All the stories. But I guess I just want to say, if you're out there and you experience that, you are so not alone. And it is possible to heal. And there is a direct line between that healing process and everything you want in sex and love and relationships. It's related, it's linked. It's not separate. And I think a lot of men, they kind of want to skip this step. They're like, I don't really want to. I don't really want to go into all that. Like, I don't really. I can do it without that. Right? Like, I don't really want to. You know, let's talk about dating. Let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about my marriage. I don't really want to look at.
Jason Lange: At.
Melanie Curtin: At that stuff, but there's gold there, and there's tons on the other side. And I want to share just a few stories of men that we've worked with, where they. Where they've. They've come through this. You know, there's one man who experienced bullying, I would say, at home and at school. And he. When he came to us, his. You know, he wasn't in a great place in his marriage. And I think it was a lot related to what you shared earlier, where he felt dependent on her. Like, if I don't have this. If I don't have my wife and my kids, I have nothing. And there's a way that his nervous system felt like, I will die if I don't. If I don't keep this. If I don't keep my wife and kids, I will die. And essentially what happened over the course of the months that he was with us is that he got a lot of support from the group. He made good friends in the group. He had real conversations over and over. He felt the love and the genuine holding that was provided in, in our group of safe, trustable men. And that you could see, actually it showed up a lot in his spine, right? His spine started to get straighter. So he was a little bit lunched. When he showed up, his spine actually became straighter. And I remember there was one sort of breakthrough session where he, he kind of felt into like, if my marriage dissolves, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. I'm not going to die. It's not what I want. It's not, it's not my preference. It's not what I'm hoping for. But if it happens, I'm going to be okay. And I think what you were pointing to is that from that place he was able to make a much more genuine decision around his relationship and he wasn't so dependent. And so essentially part of what happened is he repolarized his marriage. He repolarized his marriage. He started showing up for himself, not just for her, not just kowtowing, not just caving, not just doing all the nice guy stuff, but, you know, standing up for himself and making choices. And yeah, he repolarized his relationship. And that happened in large part because he felt the genuine support and backing that you were talking about. Another guy that I'm thinking of was pretty depressed when he showed up. Pretty depressed, pretty dysregulated. I just remember, I just remember feeling darkness. Like his, his screen was often dark, his clothes were dark. It was just like really dark. And over the course of the program, he really, really leaned in and took on, you know, all of the work. Like he really did the work. And he was also supported by a one on one therapist. But what he found was he said something like, I feel like I've grown more, you know, in the four months here than I have in two to four years of, of therapy, of talk therapy. In part because there's action, we're taking action. You know, that's, there's, that's one of the elements of, of coaching. I think that differentiates it from something like therapy. But also he made friends, really good friends in the program that again, he felt like, this guy has my back. He really gets me. He really gets me at a deep level. I can be my full self with him. I can talk about all the things, right? Because I think that's one of the things that I think is so sad about the patriarchy and the way that boys are raised is that they just stop sharing. Right, right around 12, like 11, 12, 13, they just stop sharing what's really going on for them with other boys because they get mocked, they get ridiculed, they get painfully bullied. And so they're just holding in all of this stuff. All of their human experience is just st. Just trapped in their poor little bodies, which, of course, they have anxiety or depression, you know, so all this material in there that hasn't moved. So. And where I'm going with this is that, you know, he. He pretty much transformed his life. His life transformed through this process. And within, I think a year, maybe nine months to a year, he got into a really, really wonderful love relationship. And they're still together, and it's going really well. And he, you know, he was able to show up for those initial dates in a. In a way with his full self and with his healthy masculine, because he had done a lot of this healing work and because he had come through a lot of these experiences. So I think there's something that. That can feel confusing if you're. If you're a man out there and you're like, oh, my marriage isn't where I want it, or my dating life isn't where I want it, you know, and it's like, well, it's gotta be about women. You know, I've got to figure out women. And there's this. This sort of blind spot around. Actually, this part is really important. And I think that's something that isn't really talked about enough because it doesn't seem like it would be related. It seems like it would be distinct. Any thoughts on that?
Jason Lange: I mean, it's why it's a huge part of the program we run together that it works. I mean, you change this part, and it changes the way you show up in relationship. I mean, another way to think about it, too, is just from a polarity lens. If you want to polarize a feminine partner, the more charged up in the masculine you are. Boom. So if you go spend time with other men, the more time you're spending with other men, you are literally plunging often into masculine energy. And that just shows up, right. I mean, can talk to countless guys, myself included, that have gone on retreat with other men. And you come out of there and you're like a magnet for the feminine. They can feel how polarized you are, how charged up you are by being in that masculine space, which a big part of it is connecting to other men. Right? Connecting to other men. And it's not the sexy work. Right. Like there was a. You know, to their credit or not, I don't know. You know, in the pickup days in the pickup world, they. They had a sense of this with social proof, right? Social proof. Women are looking for social proof like that. You're. You know, you have social proof. And what that really means is, yeah, you know, you are connected. You are connected, and other people trust you. Right? So, I mean, it's. It's kind of that. That it's like, oh, if I go out and I meet a man and I have a deeply trusting experience of all of his friend. It's not friends. It's not a huge leap to think, oh, he must probably be a pretty quality guy if those are the type of people he associates with versus, you know, he's some kind of asshole. Like, why would these people be friends with it? Like, it's kind of what we're talking about with social proof here that the deeper, healthier relationships you cultivate with other men, that is felt. It's just felt right when you're rooted in something. I've been talking about this a lot lately, like, oh, okay, you're part of a system that even if your nervous system gets overwhelmed, those men have capacity to offer to you, Right. And that is deeply desirable and trustable as men. And it does matter, right? I mean, everybody's heard the platitudes, and they're there for a reason. Like, you're the sum result of the five people you spend the most time with. Just. Yeah. Including men, right. What kind of men are you spending time with if you're not spending any time with, if you don't have any healthy male relationships? So maybe you are spending time, but they're shallow. They're just the sports bar, you know, whatever it is, that has an impact, right? It has an impact on your relationships, and it has an impact on the way your woman or the woman you want to be with experiences you. That's what we're trying to point out here, that a lot of guys don't think about. That's. Oh, wait, and you. I tell this to guys as they come through our program. Every investment you're making into a man is an investment into your intimate relationship. And they're like, what do you mean? And then they see it, right? They see what starts to happen as they get into conflict or take a risk on a date. And these men support them in continually coming forward as the best versions of themselves. And then they're able to show back up to their intimate partner or to their wife or, you know, whatever, as with full presence in a lot of ways. So it is big. And then I did just want to circle back to the healing in group thing. One way. I've been thinking about this again, it's a gross generalization. Just take it as that for y'. All. But, you know, part of the gift of therapy is healing. Parental caregiving, attachment, wounding. Right. Where the direction of attunement was off. Right. Just meaning oftentimes I didn't have a healthy caregiver attuning to me, where I just get to be my authentic self. And it's very personal and it's very healing. The power of groups that I've seen that that can't do is peer relationships. How do you heal the peer relationship? I can talk about. I was bullied with my therapist, but it's very different to, wow, I'm in space with other men and my nervous system is having a different experience. So now it has option. Right? And one of the things I. I tell a lot of guys now that, you know, a lot of times I can't do virtual. I just prefer to be in the room. There is a group of men that it actually deeply serves to start virtual. Doesn't mean they don't eventually come to a retreat or something like that or get to know guys. But the. The fact that I can be. That I can start building trust and community with other men, but physically be in the safety of my own room actually is a big deal, because some guys, I've run lots of men's groups in person, lots of retreats. Some guys literally just walking into the room and seeing 15 other men can start to extremely dysregulate them because in the past, that was a very threatening environment for them. It's a little different when, okay, I'm at home. I get to bring something forward. We're connecting on zoom, and then I'm back in my space, right? So this is actually one of the huge pluses I've seen to virtual is that we get to start to update that script, build trust and capacity with these people, and then we might. Then it's much easier to take it offline because suddenly it's like, oh, okay, yeah, there's a bridge there. There's a way in, right. That isn't quite as overwhelming. It's not that you can't do it. We've had guys come to retreat just, you know, cold as well. But that. It's one of the big pluses I've seen, particularly for guys that have heavy trauma around bullying or physical abuse or something like that. It's a. It's a way to kind of ease your nervous system in. That's one of the great gifts of technology right now. But that, again, the rewriting this story of your relationship to other men is one of the most powerful tools to rewriting your experience of the feminine a hundred percent.
Melanie Curtin: And I, I really liked what you said about pacing and making sure to go at the right pace, because especially when we're talking about bullying, we're talking about trauma, and we need to go slow and, you know, at the right pace. One of the things that I've really appreciated about, you know, our program is that I've, I've seen a lot of men, a lot of the men that we've worked with have come in and said, wow, I've never been in a space like this before, right? I've never, I've never witnessed other men being vulnerable like this. And one of the beautiful things about the rolling, rolling admission, the way that our program works is men are signing up all the time. It's not cohort based. So men are coming in is that we've got men that have been in for a few months and then men who are just starting. And so the men who are just starting, they can just observe at first. They can get a sense of the group. They, they don't have to be put on the spot right away, but witnessing the power of vulnerability, the power of these men that are willing to really show up and, and tell the real truth. And one of the things I've been impressed with is how much those like, as men are learning and growing in this, in a, in a virtual space, then they are taking it out into the world. You know, a lot of them start taking more risks with men in their actual lives, some of whom are uncles or cousins or, you know, siblings. And it's sometimes family members, sometimes it's people at work that they're like, oh, I kind of, I've always clicked with this guy, but I've never, I've never taken an emotional risk, right? I've never brought the conversation deeper at lunch, and now they're starting to do that. And, and sometimes they're met. Often they're met, often they're met, and sometimes they're not. But even if they're not, they're. They're held and witnessed by our group, right? There's a place to come home to. And I think that's something that I really want to stress is that sense of home, that sense of belonging, that sense of, that is proud of you. There's something so necessary about having People that are proud of you, you know, whether you succeeded or didn't, we're proud of you. We're just proud of you for showing up. We're proud of you for leaning in. We're proud of you for making the attempt. We're proud of you for taking the risk. It's not about whether it panned out. It's like, you did it. Good job, you did it, and we all need that. And I'm constantly amazed by how many men come in and I just feel this kind of like. Like absence from their ex when they describe their home life or their school life. Like that. That sense of someone being proud of them was just missing. They just weren't. People just weren't really there for them. They weren't really there for them. They were maybe housing them, feeding them, clothing them, but they weren't really there with them for them. Paying attention in that, you know, in the trenches with them. And that's something that I've. I've seen repeatedly is as men in our community do essentially titrate their trauma and open up and become more trusting of the men in the virtual space, in the program, they tend to open up and become more trusting of the right people in their environment. Right now, they're discerning who's safe and who's not. Let me take a risk and see how I'm met. See what comes back, Take another risk, see what comes back, and that kind of thing. And you mentioned the retreat. And I think that, you know, I. I think it's really pretty incredible at this point in history how much we can connect virtually. And when I say that, what I mean is, you know, we have clients from all over the world, different time zones, different parts of primarily North America, but we have clients from Europe and down under and Asia, and. And one of the things is like, that wasn't possible even 20 or 30 years ago in the same way that it is now. And that's actually really important because a lot of the men that come to us say, I haven't found this community in my lived experience, in my world where I am locally. And they need this. They need this particularly to get started, like I said. And then as they shift and they grow and they expand and they become more whole, more trusting, then sometimes those folks show up in their environment, right? It's like, oh, I didn't notice this person, or I've met a new person or whatever. But there's something about the accessibility that I think is pretty extraordinary at this point. And there's value to both. You know, there's immense value to the in person work. It's why we do our live retreat end of August every year. And you know, you and Luke do the shadow programs. There's immense value to both. It's not that either one is better or worse. It's that both are necessary at different times and different seasons. And we've had multiple men come, like you said, just come to the retreat. You know, they just heard about on the podcast, they come to the retreat and they have a complete state experience. They have breakthroughs and then they do the program and they have even more breakthroughs. So I think there's a lot of value to both of those spaces. And I really loved what you said about the distinction between the healing work that's possible one on one and the healing work that's possible in a group. And I do think that that fundamental sense of safety and belonging to wounding is extraordinarily important for all human beings, not just men. And that healing work must happen in community. We can't heal wounding around community one on one. We must be in settings around community.
Jason Lange: Perfectly said. And again, you know, I tell a lot of guys when I end up talking with them, it's like, yeah, you know, we run a program and it's orientation is around dating and relationships and being able to create the type of intimacy you want. And the truth is it's an inner growth program. That's really what we're doing. You know, we can probably spill the cards after all these years. And yeah, you're gonna change your relationship to men, you're gonna change your relationship to your emotions, you're gonna change your relationship to boundaries, communication. And it turns out these things help you relax into your healthy masculine as a man. And when you're relaxed and you're healthy masculine, you don't have to fucking run scripts or do things, you know, fake stories to impress women. Like things that men actually do. Oh, I have to create an image. No, it's. Instead of create the image, just be it. Right? Be a solid man who has healthy relationships in his life, who is in a process of growth that involves feedback from others. And women will notice you. Right. We were just talking about this on one of our calls. I'm sure I've shared it on here before. Stories of, you know, in my 20s, some, some me and some guys were doing pickup and whatnot. And then, you know, we started to started a men's group and go deeper and sometimes we would just go out and go retalk to each other and get very present and go very deep. And I kid you not, many times women came up to us because they could feel there was a depth to us in our connection with each other. While most men were not making eye contact with each other, just stalking women from the side or looking at the sports screen, you know, I'm not judging those men, but there's something different when a man, when a woman sees a man deeply connecting to another man, there's like, oh, what's going on there? And you know, polarity wise, it's like, ooh, what's so special there that there's more attention given to each other than me? Like, and you can feel the polarization of that. Like, I see what's going on there. And that's just a different way to approach things in a sense. So a lot of the work we, we say is, yeah, you know, we're going to give you some assignments and have you lean into some edges. But a lot of it is create a deep life that you feel really good to be part of. That absolutely. At its foundation, has to have. It doesn't mean 10, 20, 30 men in your life, but a couple of core masculine friends that are co. Holding the vision for you in your life are there when you're really feeling down, but will also give you feedback when they see you veering off course from something they know you want. Like, that's really the gift of this community. And, and again, it's not like it's a harder thing to advertise as like a sexy Instagram ad, like, hey, get to know other men and you're going to get more dates. What? But it's true. I mean, maybe we should run that one. I don't know, because the, the evidence has accumulated now with us, you know, seven years into this and certainly in my own life as well.
Melanie Curtin: Yes. And that's. I want to corroborate things that you just said as a woman. Part of what we're talking about here is that sense of safety, safety in one's body. When I'm around a man who is relaxed and grounded in his body, I feel attraction. When I'm around a man who's nervous and anxious and dysregulated, it's not polarizing. So there is that sense of. I keep coming back to that fundamental sense of safety and trust and belonging. There's just a relaxation effect that I find with, you know, just witnessing the physiology of men that come in and then after a few months, their physiology, a lot of them will come in and they're kind of fidgety, you know, there's a lot of movement, there's a lot of tension. I can just feel, feel it. And after a few months they're relaxed. I'm not saying all the time, but a lot more of the time. I mean, countless men, I can think of at least three off the top of my head that I'm thinking of that it was a remarkable transformation and I know that that is sexier, that is sexier. And it was born out, you know, their experiences in the world were like, wow, women are noticing me in a different way. You know, my wife is responding to me in a different way. It's not just men that are single, it's also men that are partnered. So I want to say that as a woman, the effects of this are definitely felt. And, and a lot of women wouldn't be able to say, oh yeah, go heal your relationship with men. That's going to make our relationship better. We're not talking about this, we don't understand the link between it, but it's very obvious for me as a woman and polarity wise, when I feel that sense of relaxation, when I feel that sense of grounding, and I've mentioned it before, but as a conscious woman, I am also, I am uncomfortable if I'm with a man who doesn't have close male friends. I feel, I feel uncomfortable. I feel less safe and secure in the relationship. I just don't feel as secure when I know that he has trustable men around him. I feel much, much safer. I feel much more like, oh yeah, he's got his, he's got his people that really get him, that really know him, who he can be deeply safe and vulnerable with, who he's supported by and that trickles down to our relationship or when we're having challenges. He's got safe, trustable men that he can go to that I feel that I feel good about. Right. I'm like, yeah, that's someone that I would want you to, to get advice from or to, to feel held by. So. So I really love that part about healing and about capacity because I think this is something that can feel permanent, can feel like, oh, is this ever going to change? And it does, it changes. We see lots of men. I'm just going to tell one more quick story which is a man who, when he came to us, he had a lot of nice guy tendencies. He did not have great boundaries with his family of origin. It was just, there was a lot of haze. It was Kind of like. Like muddy and obscured and just sort of like. Like blah energy and just like, kind of gray. And as we did the work together, he. Again, I could kind of see his spine get straighter. He cleared things up with a woman that he was seeing. He made. He made it clear. He brought structure and clarity to the relationship, which felt much better for both of them. He set healthy boundaries with his parents, which was a really big deal. A really big deal. And he just. He felt more vitality. I could feel there was more life force. There was more vitality. There was more clarity. It's not like his life got perfect, but it got a lot better. Right. His quality of life went way up in a pretty short amount of time. And his relationship improved. You know, they started having more deep conversations, real conversations, sometimes hard conversations. But he felt so much more alive. I think that's one of the things that. I heard this quote the other day. I think it was Mark Twain who said, men die. A lot of men die at 27, but we don't bury them till 72. And I think there's something. I found that pretty chilling in a way, but also a bit inspiring because it's like, yeah, if we're not taking risks in our lives, if we're not going for it, if we're not really living, then we're just dying, right? We gotta. We gotta do this. This kind of uncomfortable, hard stuff in order to actually be the full versions of ourselves and to really feel alive. And I think that's one of most gratifying parts of this work, is watch countless men I have watched come alive and. And just. There's just more fire in their belly. There's just more. There's just more vitality. There's more vitality. It's just more exciting. So, yeah, I think we'll. We'll start to land the plane there. But is there anything. Any last thoughts that you have on that? That part?
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, it's just. Luke and I talk about in the shadow program is. Is a flame, is a fire that men get to tend with each other. And it's a real thing. It's deeply enlivening for a lot of men. You know, that's. If I could say anything about our Labor Day retreat, it's. At the end, those guys feel alive, and I think they would gladly say the same, and they're getting to feel that in connection with other men. And, you know, I'll just give a shout out to all the guys that came last year. The most active ongoing chat I've ever seen with a group of men who just met in three days. Like, we're, I don't know, three quarters past last year's, and guys still lighting it up, dropping in videos, chatting with each other, asking for support. And that's just based on the depth of connection they created with each other at that event and what it allows for in their lives.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. So if you are interested in the Labor Day retreat, is that open to the public yet or is that just for alumni? I.
Jason Lange: That will be open to the public in early May, so stay tuned. You can always go to Evolutionary Men Retreat. I'm on the list. Yeah. Guys who are part of our program, they can put in deposits right now to get early access.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And if you do want to come to the retreat, I would. I. And you are an alumni, I would recommend getting in because it's. It's sold out every year and it's probably going to be a little bit quicker this year. So I would get your deposits in if you are interested in that. It's at the end of August. And then if you're interested in our coaching work, you can always go to Evolutionary menu. I forget. Apply. Thank you. Slash, apply. Okay. Cliffhanger. Sam.
