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.
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.
