363: We women still need men. Just in a different way. | Dear Men

Jason Lange: And.

Melanie Curtin: And it's more than just the outer trappings, I think. It's the interior experience, the inner experience. What is my value? What is my purpose? What am I here for? What am I good for? There's a kind of a malaise or there's been some confusion or doubt or just. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe you have better words than I do. And then alongside that, there is the loneliness epidemic, which is that men in particular are more socially isolated than ever. And that includes, honestly, men that are in partnership. Right. Not just men that are not partnered, although they, you know, arguably have it the worst. But also partnered people, not just men, but all of us, live in such an isolated way that it's exacerbating everything else that's going on. So we're going to be talking today about how women still need men. We still need you. We really need you, just in a different way than we have in the past. And we're going to get into the two primary needs that we have from men and how men can provide those. Any comments on that sort of section, especially about boys and men?

Jason Lange: Yeah, it's definitely a real thing. And I think where a lot of guys you and I work with, part of what's bringing them towards us is I. I don't know what I'm supposed to be. Right. Like, the rules are a little different than what I was taught growing up, and I don't even know what a man is. Right. And we get a lot of conflicting signals these days about what that's supposed to be as men. And then there's structural changes in society that are kind of simultaneously pulling the ground out out of a lot of men. Right. More and more women are getting educated at a higher rate, at least in Western nations than men. My kind of theory is that as automation and AI comes in, like they actually don't have anything to do with each other in terms of etymology, but right, right there in the word manual labor is man. And turned out a lot of physical labor, a lot of highly repetitive kind of industry tended to be men's bodies. A lot of that's going away to automation. And we are definitely seeing a shift into more of a relational service economy, right, where it's about people relating to each other, whether that's at a coffee shop or coaching, you know, whatever that might be. And that's an area where us men tend to be pretty underdeveloped, right, because we're not taught how to engage and relate and connect with someone or manage, you know, each other. In a sense, a lot of us men just kind of have a fuck it, I'm out. You know, when conflict or tension comes in, in relationships, and that's left a lot of guys a little lost and I would say a little confused as to, okay, how do I, you know, how do I win? How do I win in this? And then that just gets accentuated in terms of the actual interpersonal dynamics that are changing very much between men and women and that we'll talk about many of the shifts there and the very real reality. And I want to be super clear here, it's not easier for either side, men or women, right? There's challenges on both sides, but we're mostly going to speak to the part for men about how men. We are being asked to show up more, with more complexity, more fluidity in some pretty important ways we're going to get into.

Melanie Curtin: I really like that phrase complexity and fluidity, and I think that's something that I think about a lot, is that it used to be in the past, in many places around the world, not just in Western culture, that a man's primary role was breadwinner, that that man provided financial security and actual food on the table. Some people were farming around the world, but just that was a primary function of a man. And it was simple. When I say the word simple, I do not mean easy, right? I'm thinking about Russia in particular. Life was hard, really hard in a lot of ways. So I don't mean easy when I say the word simple, but what I mean is it's very clear. Am I providing financially for my family, yes or no? You know, and that was easy to answer. The reason we're doing this episode is that what a lot of women want now and what we need, what we really need from our men is not necessarily financial security. There are lots of couples where both couple, both members of the couple are earning or they're trading back and forth, right? I'm earning while you go through grad school. You're earning while I go through nursing school. We're we're trading that. And in some couples, the woman makes significantly more money. There's a lot more complexity around who is earning the money for the family. So that is not a primary need in a lot of modern relationships. It's not. It is still in some relationships sometimes, but for a lot of women, that is not the primary need. What we're going to talk about today are the two needs that I've identified and kind of. We've worked with a lot, and what we're kind of seeing as the larger pattern of what women really need from men. And the first one is emotional attunement. First one is emotional attunement. The second one is generating polarity. And we're going to do these in order. So we're going to do the first one, then the second one. And I'm going to reference a few other episodes that we've already done. And if you did resonate, for example, with that question about loneliness, I did an episode called are you lonely? I strongly recommend that. And we also did one called how to handle her big feelings, which we're going to get into shortly. So one of the primary needs, I would say, for a lot of women, and I'm using the word women, but this is really. It doesn't necessarily matter which bodies you're in. It's more who's holding the masculine pole. Right? Who's holding the alpha pole or the omega pole. Some of you have heard me talk about those words before. In polarity, we tend to use the words alpha and omega instead of masculine, feminine, because those words come loaded up with a lot of crap, to be honest. But whoever's holding an alpha pole, and then whoever's holding a more Omega pole. Omega is more flow and radiance, and alpha is more structure and containment. Right, Containment. So when it. When we're talking about emotional resonance or emotional safety, emotional attunement, all of these are similar. One of the things that I've found that I really need from a man in order to feel safe with him is to know that I can bring my emotional intensity. And when I say the word intensity, I don't just mean negative. It could be, you know, I'm annoyed or I'm upset, but it could also be my joy or my sexual expression or my bigness. My bigness, my fullness, my. My vast Omega self. I need to be able to bring that and feel like I can be met. I can be met. So another way of saying this is I'm not going to blow him out, right that he can handle me. When I say I need a man who can handle me, sometimes women will say that part of what we mean is I need to know that there's a sturdy container over there that he is grounded and secure in himself so that he can hold me. And for a lot of men, that robust container is not set. You know, they are easily overwhelmed. They are easily, you know, blown out by a woman's upset or radiance or whatever you want to call it. It. And I would love to hear from you a little bit about, you know, your journey, because in your 20s you were probably not able to handle a woman's fullness, and then you did a bunch of work and now you're much more able to hold that and contain that. Can you speak as a man to your experience of going from that state, from one state to the other?

Melanie Curtin: Yes, I have several comments about this. One is a fun success story from one of our clients. So we have an episode we did on overcoming religious trauma, which I strongly recommend. I'll drop that in the show notes as well. And this man came in and he was single when he arrived, and he had a lot of religious trauma, Christian background, and worked on it. Did a lot of really good work in the program. And then it was either during the program or just after. He had. He had worked on everything we're talking about of getting into his body. Holding presence, breathing, and being willing to be with sexual heat, by the way, is another form of being able to hold intensity in your system because that's an intense feeling and being willing to breathe, stay in connection. In this case, this was eye contact. We had talked to him about eye contact and holding presence and not necessarily filling the space with words on a date, but just holding eye contact and breathing and feeling his attraction. That was one of the things we were training him on. Well, long story short, he ended up going out with this woman that he was really excited about. And she noticed, I mean, very much like they were looking at each other across the table. And he. He came back. I think he must have been still in the program. And he was like, that was a much different date than I've ever been on. And they ended up making out on the street after the date. But he was like, wow, you were right. This. This experience of just generating polarity in this way of me noticing her breathing into my balls and staying in connection, staying in eye contact with her, not looking away, looking down, being ashamed of my desire, but actually being present with my desire with her was super effective. He was really excited. They're still together, they're really happy. It's just a really beautiful story. But that what you mentioned about, you know, a lot of women really want to be polarized. I can't emphasize that enough. It's like. It's like mana. It's like nourishment to the soul. When I feel my man wanting me and. And being direct about that, it is so nourishing. And there are lots of. There are lots of nuances here. There are some women that are going to be more open to that than others. We. We're not saying that this is a, you know, surefire way. Just generate polarity and every woman's gonna fall at your feet. That's not what we're saying. But what we are saying is that this is a need that women have. It is a need and it is a way that a man can provide. That is not the way that we used to need men to provide, but it is a. It is a thirst that we have that we women have, that we. We need you for. We can't generate that on our own. We can't just feel desired without you. You know, you. You are the sun and we are the flower. You are the you. You provide the gaze of attention, and we dance before that gaze of attention. We need you in order to feel fully alive in that way. There's no other way to get there for us. So we're going to start to wrap here. And the other thing I wanted to say was that if you are looking, if you are a man listening to this and you are thinking to yourself, I want this, I want to grow in this way, then consider our program, because we designed it specifically to take you through the things that you need to know and grow and ways you need to develop. And we did that within the container of a safe, healthy community of men. So you get coaching, but you also get the community. And we did that on purpose because one of the things a lot of men lack is conscious male community. Places and spaces where they can be fully themselves. They can bring all of this kind of thing forward that we're talking about and get support and be held and train up right to get all this training. So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, like, oh, they talked about a lot of stuff. I'm not really sure how to do that. Consider the program. Consider our program. You can do other things too. It doesn't have to be our program, but if you are interested in that, you can go to evolutionary men apply. Anything else you want to add before we wrap?

Jason Lange: Developing and deepening both of these capacities is part of what's needed and they're very related and just, you know, it is more fun doing it with other people as well, so you don't have to learn it alone.

Melanie Curtin: Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.