405: You’ll be empty nesters soon. What’ll happen to the marriage? | Dear Men

Jason Lange: When that goes away, what are we gonna be left with? And that awareness, that willingness to be proactive or to just acknowledge the pain right now of it's all going great. And, you know, I think this is something more and more men we work with are really attuned to. I don't want it to just be good. I want it to be fucking amazing, right? I wanna have a vital, alive partnership with this woman. I built a.

Melanie Curtin: Hi everyone, A few quick announcements before we get into this episode. We are entering the portal of the spring equinox this weekend. This episode is dropping the Friday before the spring equinox. Depending on where you are in the different hemispheres of the world, that will be on March 20th or 21st. That is the exact moment when lightness and darkness, the light and the dark, are evenly spaced throughout that period. So we are coming back into the period of spring here in the northern hemisphere, fall in the southern hemisphere hemisphere. So the. Yeah, the two are exactly equal, the light and the dark. And there's a lot of symbology around that which you can check out. But what I would say is that it is a powerful time to release, to let go of the old and to invite in the new. To let go of the old and invite in the new, which is also the theme of our upcoming course, Breathwork Breakthrough, which we are coming back to this year. We held it last year, it was very successful and we're coming back to it this year. If you are interested in a somatic form of release and renewal and clearing out old psychic material that you haven't been able to touch with things like talk therapy, Breathwork can be very, very effective for that. And you will be in a container of like minded men with myself and Luke Adler, who you've heard on the podcast. We're also going to record an episode next week. So you will be hearing that if you are interested in Breathwork Breakthrough, we are starting the course April 6 and early bird will end. Early bird for enrollments will end March 29th or 30th. I need to look at my calendar, but that' coming up. I think it's March 29, which I believe is the end of next weekend. So not this weekend, but next weekend. And if you're interested then just reach out. Just email me and I'll get you on my calendar. Email me@dearmen podcastmail.com and just tell me that you're interested and we'll get you on my calendar to book a call. You will get a discount if you are one of Our alumni, you will get a pretty significant discount. If you've done Pillars of Presence or any shadow work with Jason and Luke, or if you've done one of my programs with Luke, like Breathwork, Breakthrough or Sexual Mastery, you will get a significant discount. And you will also get a discount for Early Bird. So for those of you interested, please, please reach out. Just. Just let's have a conversation about it and see if it's a fit. You are not committing to joining the course by having a conversation. But I want to get those calls booked so that we can get guys in and get rolling. Get rolling with clearing out the old, making space for the new, and calling in what you truly want in your life, which is really what all of this is about. It's about healing and growth and expansion. And with that, let's get into the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode. Not done this topic yet, which I can't believe in the years and years of us doing this podcast. But today we're talking about empty nesters. This has been a theme that we've seen in our community, and some questions have come up around it, and it just feels like it's kind of been up lately. So, yeah, we're going to talk about what to do when you are about to be empty nesters. Maybe you already are, but for a lot of, I think, our clients, there's this moment of, oh, whoa, the kids are going to leave the house relatively soon, right, within the next two to four to six, six years. And I've kind of got my attention on what are we going to do as a couple when that happens, what is going to happen to us? And there can be some feelings that come up with that. So, yeah, I would love to hear from you what you feel like you've heard, particularly on calls with guys as they're considering coming into the program, what you're hearing from them around empty nesting.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think, you know, the benefit, I think, to the men we work with is they do have awareness. They are listening to shows like this. They are relationally aware. And even if maybe they haven't taken action yet. So, you know, we're seeing an increasing amount of men tracking, like, tracking this thing that not all men do. And so we also work with those men who didn't track it and are in the, oh, my God, I'm in the middle of a divorce now. You know, my wife didn't love me anymore. We haven't really had a relationship since the kids were born. Things changed. Da, da, da, da. So we do work with both, I would say, best case scenario. And part of, I think why you and I were inspired to do this episode is, hey, you can be proactive as a man. And so, you know, I just want to start the episode saying that. That there's a lot that can change when you keep your eye on the ball and in the work you and I teach. I think this is one of the main places men can step up. Their level of leadership in the relationship is to track the relationship and care for it and remove her from being the sole person doing that, saying, hey, we need more time to connect to, To. To be with each other, to be present with each other. So I. I do see guys who, you know, in a lot of ways, I think where this most tangibly shows up is, you know, things are going well. The kids are actually doing pretty well. My job's going pretty well, but the marriage is not, you know, it's not that. It's not even that. It's like red alert, fight territory. It's just. It kind of feels flat. We, you know, we're. We're close to, if not actually, actually at that border of sexless 10, 10 times or less a year. And, you know, we like each other, we get along well, we're great companions and friends, but there's not a whole lot of juice. And I think those are the guys that are tracking. Okay. So actually, the glue holding us together right now is all the obligations of family. So when that goes away, what are we going to be left with? And that awareness, that willingness to be proactive or to just acknowledge the pain right now of it's all going great. And, you know, I think this is something more and more men we work with are really attuned to. I don't want it to just be good. I want it to be fucking amazing. Right? I want to have a vital, alive partnership with this woman I built a life with. So there. There's a. A lot more pre. Awareness, I would say. And then, yeah, we do work with a lot of guys who sometimes they're already in the exit phase of, oh, my God, the kids are leaving. And it is. We are breaking apart. Because, you know, sometimes it is just compatibility. Sometimes the relationship just wasn't tended the way it needed to be.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, it's interesting that that word tended, because part of what comes up for me and part of what I've seen, one of the things that I've seen repeatedly in the clients that we've worked with, particularly from men that are. I would say 50s, 60s, 70s. And we've worked with men from. I mean, we've worked with men from the age of 19 to 76. So we've worked with men of all ages. But what I would say is that what I've noticed is that many, many men of all ages say things like, I feel like I've wasted so much time. They have a lot of grief about the time that they've wasted. And then ones of really. Of all ages, but especially the ones 50s, 60s, 70s, they say things like, I wish I had done this sooner. Right? I wish I had done this personal growth work sooner. And one of the really heartbreaking ones is when I remember sitting with a client once, and I remember, you know, he was learning about polarity, and he was grasping more of what it means to lead in a relationship and how to initiate vulnerable conversations and how to actually.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: How to lead in a relationship. In a. In a love relationship. And he said, I really think that if I'd known all about this before and if I had trained, my marriage would have worked. And I could just feel his sadness because I felt like he was recognizing how much loss existed. And it wasn't just the loss of that relationship. It was the loss of the years of disconnection and the years of feeling kind of lonely in a relationship and sort of knowing, man, I think my partner would have been down to do this with me, right? I think she would have played. I think she would have played ball. I just didn't know what to do or how to get there. And I didn't have the right support, and I didn't have the right mentorship. So I think one thing that's loud for me in this conversation is kind of presencing that for anyone out there listening, that that wisdom of those gentlemen and that longing and that. That wish that they had gotten involved in the work sooner, that they had engaged sooner because of all of the years that were lost, that were kind of lost years in some ways. You know, what you're speaking to is so poignant. I think about that feeling of. It's just. It's just kind of flat, Right? Nothing wrong. It's not horrible. We're not fighting every day, but we're kind of going through the motions. Everything's sort of fine, and there's. And you just know that there's more possible. And maybe you have a sense that your woman isn't satisfied and isn't as happy as she could be, and, you know, that you're not, you know, And a lot of the times that this pattern does show up in sex, right. That's frequently where we see it the most is just we're not having sex or we're having. When we have sex, it feels like she's doing it as a duty or as an obligation. It doesn't feel exciting or vibrant or alive. And there's this sense that a lot of people have, I think where particularly when you're. It's an impending empty nest of. Of feeling like, is this it? Is this the rest of my life? Is this how it's going to be? Because it doesn't really feel like it's exciting or meaningful or maybe enough for me. Can you share a little bit about that? Because I'm curious. There's kind of the two sides, right? There's sort of how's my partner doing? But then there's also how am I doing?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think, I think you named a real pain point I've talked to guys about on the many calls I do of the awareness of There is this gap I want to bridge. Right. I can feel she's kind of over here and I'm kind of over here. Feel she's wanting something and I'm very much wanting something. And I don't know how to bridge that gap. And that's painful and it hurts me. It's hurting her. And I feel lost. Right. In a sense. And that's a very real place for men. And there's sometimes a sense of I can feel my partner slipping away or our relationship slipping away. And you know, it's like a slow moving train wreck of like. And I don't know how to stop it. And that's a scary place to be. And you know, I think the deeper context of part of what you're talking about with the flatness, you know, one of one of the teachers we work with, right. He kind of just names this in little fun rhyme is it's very easy once the kids come and the job kicks in, to mainly relate to our partners as roles. This is my role. This is your role. We have this functioning system. We're trying to keep it alive. And what we lose is the capacity to connect to our partner as a soul. Right. It's just this beautiful spirit that first attracted me in the first place and who was an unknown entity to me that I got to discover. And it was so much energy and so fun and so creative in being able to shift back to. That is one of the capacities we're talking about and challenges that men can be proactive on of how do we start to discover each other again, Particularly after, you know, that first 12 to 15 years of raising kids, they do take a lot of time and attention, and oftentimes our own inner development gets a little slower. The relationship gets a little slower. But on the other side of it, you know, who am I? How can I, you know, relate more deeply to my partner as she is if I don't know who I am? And so there's just a lot of questions and a lot of openness in a really ripe opportunity for coming back into connection. And, you know, I, I, I, I, I've told this a couple times. I joke about it that even after our second kid, you know, Violet and I do this professionally. This is what we do. We're talking about this stuff all day. And, you know, we had our first two hours together about a year ago after our second kid was born. And in that two hours, our rules, you know, were no talking about work, no talking about the kids. And it was challenging. Like, we both found ourselves going right back because it's just so right there to, to, oh, my God. And, you know, da, da, da, and da da, da. And did, you know, she did. And it's so cute. Versus, like, wait, no, we're here to be with each other. Like, what is it like to be right now? And it took, like, an actual musculature, and it's taking practice to be able to come back to that and keep that alive. And I think that's one of the things men are intuitively sensing. How do I, how do I lead that to bring us back together? Because there's so much more juice potentially available there. And this is where, you know, I think it's pretty inspiring. The, the sooner you get on top of that, the better, right? The more proactive you are in your relationship. So even if empty nest isn't here quite yet, but you can feel, right, okay, kids are going into high school, then they're going to be visiting colleges or trade school or like, it's coming. And I think where things tend to go awry is if you haven't kept your eye on the ball and you wait too long, there can be a. It's just too much. It's too much to start over again. There's too much hurt, there's too much disconnection. So in some sense, the more proactive you get now of, like, dealing with the disconnections, dealing with the fact you haven't made time with each other, you can, you know, you can salvage things to A pretty remarkable degree.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. It's interesting because when I think back about on about our client roster and men that we've worked with, one thing that strikes me is that, you know, as we were preparing for this call, we were talking about the different men that we've worked with. And actually we have a lot of stories of men who have successfully repolarized relationships where they either already were empty nesters or they were approaching that, or maybe their kids are kind of young. But I mean, even when your kids are young, I have friends whose kids are right around 6 and 4 and my friend is thinking about it. You know, they are thinking about what happens when these kids are grown. You know, is there enough between me and my partner to keep us going? Because I'm feeling skeptical. And what's interesting is. So we'll take one example. Samana's in his 50s, has two kids, I think teenagers. And one thing that has is interesting is that, you know, before he did our program, he had, he had done some personal growth work, but most of it had been pretty heady, so pretty talky. So talk therapy, things like. Yeah, just a lot of, a lot of talking. And I remember repeatedly when he was going through the program, him talking about embodiment as being a complete game changer. And there was one in particular, there was one woman in particular where he said, I feel like I'm learning my wife better than I ever have. Better than I ever have. And the sex we had last night was basically the best sex of our relationship. I don't think we've ever felt closer than we do right now. And I remember thinking how inspiring that was because I think we have kind of a story of decline of relationship in our culture generally. It's like, oh, it's really hot at the beginning and then it just kind of goes downhill. But what I've seen repeatedly, I'm thinking about another couple where he was working with us and then she started working with Violet. And they have a passionate, thriving, alive, vibrant, interesting, dynamic marriage. And they are parents, they are grandparents, they travel together. They. I feel like they have reached a new height, a new level of closeness that I don't think either of them really knew was possible before they did the work. And I just want to point out that in both cases, both, both the man and the woman in these relationships were doing their work. So in one case he actually went first and she was working with Violet first, and then he worked with us and in the other case, vice versa. But I kind of want to make a distinction here that I've seen many success stories. And I've also seen kind of if you want to grow and your partner doesn't want to grow, that doesn't really work. And so I'm wondering maybe we can sort of go category by category, because I think that there are two different circumstances. And what I wouldn't want someone to hear is, oh, if I go and do my work, then, then our marriage will improve. It's possible. It's likely. And what will happen is that your life will improve. Whether or not your marriage stays together, your life will improve. But it's not A equals B. You know, there are two people in a, in a love relationship. So, yeah, maybe we can take the first kind of category. Actually, let's go the opposite direction. Let's do the ones where it doesn't necessarily hang together and then we'll do the ones where it has. And they've created this incredible marriage. Talk to me a little bit. Yeah. About maybe men that we've worked with or what you've seen about men who choose to engage and do the work, and through that they find their truth around their marriage. Because I can think of at least one example.

Jason Lange: Yeah. I think this is actually a category of men we're starting to see more and more, which is a little counter to the narrative of men don't care about the relationship. And dah, dah, dah, is that we're actually seeing men more and more come who are like, I can't do this anymore. I need more. I'm ready to grow. I want to take advantage of all these opportunities and do as much as I can. And then what they find is their partner is just not down. Right. To put time and energy into the relationship, to get a little uncomfortable in their own self discovery and to try to, you know, take it somewhere new. And this is a frank conversation I have with many guys. Right. Some of them have heard it verbatim. It's like, you know, you can. You're a man in, in one of these marriages. You can come and work with Mel and I and we're gonna do everything we can to make you an integrated, conscious, present grounded, masculine leader that can communicate, ask for what you want, give her space. And that doesn't mean she's going to grow or open with you. Right. It just. We can't control our partners. And we do see that marriages come to a conclusion because of that. Because it's just like, wow, okay, I'm not willing to spend the rest of my life in something this stuck. I'm ready for more. Right. And that can be a powerful and hard pivot. And we do really tend to see it seems to improve the system for everyone long term. And you know, you can drop in the show notes some of our episodes. Should we stay together for the kids. Right. It's this big myth that. Oh my God, no. The most important thing for the kids is to be in stability. But it's actually not often the most important thing for the kids is to see their parents in healthy relationships where there's high functioning and lots of love and care going back and forth. And many times we have seen parenting relationships get better as co parents when it's relieved of the burden of the intimate relationship because it just, it wasn't working. So just to know it can be disruptive in that sense. And there are more and more men who are ready to grow and want more. And you know, I've talked about this before. It's really not been any man I've talked to in the hundreds and hundreds of discovery calls I've done that just wants more sex. He's wanting more connection. Sex is kind of the mainstream way we think of that. But there's nothing more painful than for the guys we work with than a partner who gives them sex, but they can tell they're not into it. Right. That is just. That is so devastating to so many men because what they want is, they want all of it. They want to feel the heart, they want to feel the desire, they want to feel together. They want to feel their partner desiring love and connection and yeah, sexual intimacy. And when they don't have that, it really, really hurts. And that's where men can step in, be proactive, know the emptiness is coming, try to make the changes. And what they might find is, okay, no, my partner's just not there. And she has the right to do that and I have the right to do what I want. And I think we're maybe going to grow apart here.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I want to make two points here about what you just said. First, I'm not willing to spend my life in something this stuck. This is a pretty profound statement. And there is a lot of improvement for the kids when you transition out of something that is stuck. And like you said, Jason, there's often a period of disruption. But what we have seen repeatedly is that I would say almost to a man, the men that we've worked with, and I just thought of three off the top of my head that have separated particularly from difficult or withholding Spouses. So women that are maybe cold emotionally or volatile emotionally, especially if you have a volatile partner. Please listen to our episodes on borderline personality disorder. That's gonna be really important for you. But what we've seen is that, you know, I'm think of one guy in particular. His son was, I think, nine or so when they separated, and he divorced his partner, and he's now in a wonderful, thriving love relationship. They recently moved in together. She has some kids, too. They're doing the blended family thing. And his son is absolutely thriving. If he had stayed in that stuck, unhappy, tense marriage where he was constantly walking on eggshells and sacrificing his needs, that is exactly what his son would have learned. Relationship is. That is exactly what the son would have seen a marriage is. Does he want that for his son? Fuck, no. No way. So he had to be brave. He had to grow. And I want to be very clear about what I mean by the word grow, which is for the men that we have seen, it is imperative that they get into relationship with other conscious men to grow. So I want to be very clear. This is not something that you do by yourself. This is not something that you do solo. Men are too alone in our culture. They don't feel like they have anyone they can really drop in with and be real with. They're not getting quality mentorship from trustable guides. You need mentorship and community in order to make these transitions. So what we've seen from these men is that they were stuck in suffering for years, and then they got into a program like ours, and within a matter of months, they were moving. And when I say moving, I mean conversations they'd never had before, connections they'd never had before. Friendships, deep friendships. And not just that, but an awareness of, I don't have to stay here, right? I have choice. I have agency. They just felt so stuck and so trapped for sometimes decades, honestly. And getting them into motion, part of getting them into motion is getting them connected to other men. Can you speak a little bit to that? Because I just want to emphasize that when we're doing this episode, we're not just saying, you know, be proactive. Have a conversation with your wife about the marriage. That's not working. We're saying bring in more resources. Bring in more resources into your selfhood, right? Your. When I say your relationship, I mean your relationship to yourself, your relationship to particularly other trustable men. That is. Then what generates polarity, you know, it's. It's an inside job. It happens within. It's not just between you and your partner. Can you share a little bit about that?

Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, this is one of the counterintuitive things that's so at the root of what we teach, particularly in pillars, is one of the fastest ways to polarize your relationship is to deepen your relationship with other men. The more time you spend with healthy, masculine people that light you up, the more you're going to come back and ignite your own relationship. And you're going to be able to polarize it in a sense because there's going to be more of you to bring more of you available. And this is where so many men, right, they fall for that provider trap that I got to put. Always put family first, family first, family first, family first. And then everything that brings them life force dwindles and it turns out that's not very attractive. Right. Usually what makes a partner fall in love with us and want to be with us is they feel our passions, our drive, the things we're into. They, they get a deep sense of us. And so many men just throw that out the door. Once they get into marriage particularly and, and have kids, it's like, well, I don't have time for all. And getting more deeply connected to other men, it allows us to approach our relationship different, differently, and spending even time with other men. Right. Every time I go away on retreat, I come back and I'm actually more available to my wife and my kids. And it's one of the reasons she's down with me going to do that stuff. Even though it's a burden for her, it's, oh, she can feel how different I am when I go deep with my men because it takes me deeper, which allows me to bring more depth and presence to her. And so this is such a, in some sense, it's like such a low hanging fruit as to, yeah, you can improve your relationships by getting to know other men and prioritizing those connections in the clarity, the support that you're going to get. Not only including them sharing about what's working and not working in their relationships, right. It just ignites the whole system so powerfully and so many men just don't even think about it. And you know, maybe another way to just frame this is the more we can get resourced by quality men in our life, the more energy and presence we have to actually bring to our women to reignite things. And that again, this is an investment you can start making now so that when the kids do leave the house and suddenly it's just You. And in this huge swath of time, guess what? You got something to be involved with. You got your men, you got your community, and you have somewhere to put your energy that will keep you vital and alive and not just looking at her like, what do we do now? Oh, okay, I'm going to be with my men, then I'm going to be with you. This is such a slam dunk investment that frees so much up in men.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I think that's something that's important because what we see a lot, I would say, in our work is we often will have a man join and there's a way that he has felt dependent upon his partner for connection. And when you're dependent, or also known as codependent, there's this feeling like, I can't leave. You know, she's my only source of connection. Deep connection, real connection, intimate connection. Even if that's an illusion. Right. Even if you're not actually in intimate connection with her, there's this idea that this is my only source of connection. And so, of course, you're not going to, you know, even think about leaving. But once you have this sense of brotherhood, once you have this sense of team, once you have this sense of, there are others with me, I'm not alone, I am part of something greater, then your choices expand because you don't feel as dependent. And I'm thinking about a recent client of ours who, yeah, married, got two kids, and, you know, went through the program. And at some point he said, I can tell that my wife is relating to me differently now because I think she can feel the truth of I might leave the marriage. And before, there was never that sense. It was always, she knew I was never going anywhere. And so it's not. I'm not saying it's a threat. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that that dependency ends so that you can make a clear choice. Do I want to stay in this? Does this feel nourishing to me? Is this healthy or am I ready to exit? You know, is it healthier for. For me, for her, for the kids, for everyone, but particularly for me, because a lot of what we're emphasizing is kind of, hey, you've sacrificed your needs for a really long time, and where has that gotten you? Let's try prioritizing your needs and see what happens. And he actually, you know, felt like, well, I'm standing up straighter. You know, I have more energy in my. Just in my life, not in my job and in all areas, because I feel a sense of hope, I feel a sense of possibility. I feel like even if this isn't the marriage for, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. And I think there's really something that's a phrase that I've heard from our guys a lot is, oh, wow, I'm going to be okay. Whereas before, the part of them that was the loudest was, oh my God, I can't leave. I'll never be, I'll be alone for the rest of my life and I'll die alone. Well, of course you're going to stay in a marriage if that's the alternative. So I just want to keep emphasizing the connection to other men. Getting into groups of conscious men, getting mentorship from trustable men, becoming connect, get reconnected to brotherhood. That is the missing ingredient. And that is not possible in talk therapy. That is not possible in one on one connections. That is not possible in couples counseling. This is a totally different aspect that most of us overlook. Right. We just don't think about it. When we think about, quote, fixing a relationship, we think about the two members of the couple. We don't think about who is surrounding the couple. Who are the folks around each member of the couple? Right. Who are the support systems behind and with them? And for many, many men in our culture, they just don't have honest conscious brotherhood. They might have guys they see at the gym, they might have folks they see at work. But can you speak a little bit as a man having that lived experience of being a man? What is the difference between those kinds of surface connections, men that you might see on a regular basis, versus deep brotherhood?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, it changes us. Deep brotherhood changes us. I mean, that's kind of, I don't know how else to say it, other than we make bolder choices, we recover from challenge faster, we feel more connected to ourselves. And obviously all of that shows up in your relationship. If that's true for you, if you literally just have more life force, vitality, energy and direction in your nervous system, your relationship will change. So that's one of the main payoffs. And you know, so much of what we're talking about here is, and we often talk about this training as training or as I now talk about it, certain capacities we have to build, these are skills, these are things we actually have to practice. And it turns out one of the best pipelines we found is there's certain ways of being in our nervous system we can Practice and get feedback on from our men really fast, which we, they can then bring right back into our relationship with so much more efficiency in terms of that skill building in a lower risk environment. So then we feel like we can go explore and play and try new things in our coupledom. Right. And if it doesn't work out, guess what? It's okay. Okay. Because I have guys to go talk about it and oh my God, I learned this or I fell on my face and it's not such a big deal. So in really what we're talking about is, you know, these are real capacities in you you have to build if you want to be able to have a thriving relationship with her beyond just the roles of caregivers for your kids. Right. You actually have to discover what does it mean again to be in relationship with her in the moment. And that's going to be a lot easier if you're present in body, if you're connected to your emotions and if you know what you want and how to communicate it. And guess who can help you with that? Great men in your life.

Melanie Curtin: Yes. Trustable conscious men. And I want to make the point that, you know, it is a process, but from what we've seen, it doesn't take that long. I mean we see pretty drastic results in men within 90 days, 120 days, and by a year later their lives are different. There's something that happens when they get reconnected to good groups of men and trustable mentors. It's just like I just keep. Yeah. Coming back to what you said of it. It's a lot more efficient. It's a lot more efficient. And I want to talk about power briefly, which we don't have too much time to go into. But one of the things about polarity is that what a lot of women are really craving from their men is more of their power. I want to feel your power. I want to feel your voice. I want to feel your desire. I want to feel your want. And, and a lot of men have been cut off from that. And I think that in some ways, you know, power and not talking about dominance, but just that life force energy, you know, that's not really being talked about as much in a place like therapy, couples therapy, one on one therapy. There's, there's kind of a sort of softening effect. I find a lot of times in one on one containers. It's not always true, it's not true all the time. But I just wanted to touch on that. Cause I think there's something Raw and what's the word? I'm not sure what the primal. There's something primal and raw about, for example, the work we do at our live retreat or, you know, there's a lot of places that do this kind of. This kind of work. But there's something about getting in touch with those parts of ourselves, having those seen and witnessed and held with love and respect and reverence so that men in particular can reclaim this part of themselves that they sort of tucked away or they've. They've. They've put on a shelf because they're like, well, that's not safe. You know, that's not safe. I can't go there. I can't be that loud. I can't be that direct. I'm going to rock the boat. I'm going to hurt someone. But that very thing, that power is polarity. That's part of what polarizes a partner. So if you get rid of it, then you've kind of. You've taken so much life energy, vitality, force out of your life, out of her life, out of, you know, it's just it, it that makes me very sad. I feel like I am part of the movement of kind of reclaiming that and bringing that back into the equation. And yes, there is a way to express that stuff in a safe way, in a healthy way. And that's part of what training is. Like you said, that's part of why to work with mentors and groups and all the rest of it is like, well, how do I do that? Right? Because I've. I tucked it away for a reason. I don't want to hurt people. So, yeah, as we start to wrap here, I just want to say we have a lot of other episodes on the topic of polarity. We have some on power, on shame. There's a lot of ways to delve into this. And if you are ready to take action, if you are ready to take action, if you've listened enough and you think to yourself, yeah, this is true, I am missing this element in my life, then you can always go to evolutionary Men apply and get started. Because again, I just want to say, I just want to carry that water from all of those men that I've heard of that said things like, I wish I had done this sooner. I really wish I had done this sooner. I feel like I could have saved a marriage. I could have improved my marriage 10 years ago. You know, I just. I wish that I had done this sooner. So take that for what it's worth, but I really wanted to kind of carry that message along and be that carrier of that voice. Any last thoughts before we wrap?

Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, this is one of those very tangible things where start now, don't wait. Right? It just it. It's. It. There's compounding interest in a sense to getting more relationally present and keeping the eye on the ball of, hey, what's actually happening in my marriage now. Because all the busyness, all the shuttling kids around, all of that is not going to last forever. And the more you start investing in each other to keep that act relationship, the love relationship, the soul relationship, not the roles to keep that alive and well tended now, the easier that transition is going to be. So, you know, even if it's still a couple years out, you can start now. If you're in the midst of it now, you can get help. And worst case scenario is that relationship might come to a close, but you might be able to create something better for yourself, your family and for everyone involved. Involved.