410: Does her emotional intensity overwhelm you? | Dear Men

Jason Lange: Good to be back.

Melanie Curtin: Mvp. Mvp. I'm excited to do this because I feel like this is a specific pattern that shows up a lot in hetero relationships. I think it probably shows up in all relationships, but there's some pretty interesting neurobiological research that we're going to bring into this episode about physiological differences between the way boys brains and girls brains develop and then what implications that has in adulthood. So her intensity overwhelms me. I'm curious if you can speak a little bit to your own kind of lived experience of this topic and then maybe we can shift into what We've seen in clients.

Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. As longtime listeners know, I have a very expressive wife and partner, and she has no problem bringing her intensity to me when she's feeling it. And there were many times that it overwhelmed me. And I tended to be, I think, like a lot of guys that we're going to be talking about here in this episode, more of a freezer in terms of just getting quiet, not really responding and feeling overwhelmed in terms of, okay, what do I do here? And as I've talked about before, too, sometimes internalizing my partner's dysregulation and then it becoming my dysregulation in a sense. And the. Okay, I don't know how to get out of this, which in my partner's case would just intensify it. Right. And that the, you know, we'll be talking about a few different studies in people, but, you know, back when I was a video editor, I did a project for mutual friend of ours who. Who worked for Sue Johnson of the EFT Institute. And then. Right. She's the one that kind of popularized this idea of the demon, Demon dance, which I talk about a lot when I talk about couples. And the number one, like, negative cycle pattern is pursuing withdraw and withdraw and freeze are kind of what we're talking about here. That it's like, I can't handle this, so I'm out. And that is something I would do. And, you know, I'm out doesn't necessarily mean like, hey, I'm running out of here. It's. I'm no longer present in this moment, able to actually respond and relate in a functional way. And that is something that has absolutely been one of the threads I've had to learn to work in my marriage. And the, as other listeners know, the. Our dynamic, we call that the grenade in the wall. Right. Like, she feels me as a wall. She starts to drop a grenade. I get more frozen and the grenade has to get bigger until it blows up the wall and then something comes through that's not particularly pleasant for either of us. So. Absolutely. It's something that I've had to build a lot of somatic awareness around, too, to even start to know when this process is happening. For me, I'm much more attuned to it now. Important to note, you know, even as someone who teaches this stuff and has been in the work now for, you know, 15, 20 years, just because I'm aware it's happening in the moment, I still can't always get myself out of it. Right. Like, sometimes it's like, oh, the thing's happening, and it's happening other times. Right. I have inability to make a move, and that's becoming more and more the case. But I think it's important to note, you know, we all have our up days and down days.

Melanie Curtin: And I also want to emphasize, because I think sometimes this gets skipped, that part of the reason that it has improved for you is because you have invested in mentorship and programs and training to get yourself there. What I'm trying to say is you did not do it all yourself. You invested thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in mentorship and programs and time and energy to develop your nervous system. Would you say that that's true?

Jason Lange: That's absolutely true. And it's still happening. Right. So it's. It's a ongoing journey of practice that, you know, happens in the more explicit ways of getting therapy or doing medicine works and happens in the more subtle ways of just continually surrounding myself with people and relationships that really help me cultivate that process of being more checked in than checked out.

Melanie Curtin: Ooh, I like that. That process of being more checked in than checked out. I would love to. I think. Well, I think what I would like to do is talk a little bit about the neurobiology and the differences that we've come across in our. Our research about this, which is. It's interesting that I've never done this research before, but I want to say up front that I feel like part of what is true in this conversation is that we as a culture, as a society, have a false belief that boys are stronger and boys are less emotional and boys are. I don't know what word to put in there, but. But basically stupid patriarchy thinking of just kind of putting boys in a box where they actually don't belong. So when you look at the research, actually, boys are more sensitive than girls. And maybe we can start with the orchid dandelion research study that you found. But I was consistently surprised myself at the way, because I swim in the water as well. Right. The water we're all swimming in is the water of the patriarchy box, which says boys and men are a certain way and should be a certain way and need to be a certain way. And one of the quote ways, and this is, you know, not explicitly stated, it's implicitly stated in many, many ways in our culture, is that boys are less emotional. They just have fewer emotions, and that's how it is. And that's patently untrue. It's just. That's not actually true. But there's this way that a lot of us, we, because we believe that, you know, there are studies that show that parents treat boys and girls differently from really young because of this false belief. So yeah, maybe you can kind of take it away and share.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think, you know, the, as we've dug into this, you know, some of the research is mixed, but there is this idea of more for boys or girls, more orchid types or more dandelion types. Orchids being very sensitive and need very specific conditions to thrive in. Whereas dandelions, right. They're going to grow anywhere. They're just, they spread despite the conditions. You know, we call them weeds here in the States, even though, you know, they're not really weeds. They're, they have a lot of value in them, but they're just very resilient and they spread very fast and they don't need perfect conditions. And so part of what we're talking about here is, you know, because of a lot of the cultural layering and um, orchid boys kind of get hit twice, right? Because there's the I'm an orchid and then there's the way we treat boys. This is the, you know, the patriarchy, the man box, all this different stuff that we're making huge strides against in our culture, but it's still very relevant and very present in a sense. So the idea is, you know, even if, as we've been going here, you know, been finding different info, even if it's about equal rates, being an orchid often hits boys harder because there's this extra layer they're having to deal with of how boys are taught to relate to our emotions and that how we handle stress is often. There is some research that shows that's a little different for boys and girls, particularly early on, where boys externalize their stress a little bit more and girls often internalize it more. And so depending on the context you're in, one looks more intense than the other. Right. Because it's more disruptive in the classroom or at home or whatever that might be. And so the, the, the, the thing we really want to get at here is, and I see this all the time now, you know, I'm seeing it so much in my 18 month old. We have this story that boys aren't emotionally sensitive. And the truth is there are tons of boys that are extremely emotionally. And you know, how Luke and I put it in our heart of shadow program is we call it the boyful flame. And this is where I think it ties into orchids. It's a little more Fragile. That sensitivity is much more likely to be snuffed out at a faster and earlier age and made and be taught to that boy that it's not okay. Right. And then that has a massive downstream consequence that goes all the way up to what we're talking about here. That we're in a mo. We're grown adults, we're in a relationship, and we don't have the capacity to stay present in an emotionally intensive moment with our partner because that neurology has been shut down in us for so long. And, you know, I think you're going to talk about this more oftentimes. Our sense of interoception is, for a lot of men, pretty undeveloped. It's not that we don't have the capacity to know what we're feeling or to be present in it. It's often just under trained. Right. From a lifetime of all the pressures we receive as boys and men. So we get into the moment and you know, my partner comes at me feeling some kind of disconnection. I start to get flooded. She wants to know what I'm feeling. I'm not even sure what I'm feeling yet. That aggravates her more. I get more flooded and the whole thing goes right from there. It's like, boom, it's over right in that moment. In a sense, yeah.

Melanie Curtin: And I want to talk about the early, the early neurobiology of this. So there was a, there was a study that was done in the late 90s called the still face experiment. And that took basically six month olds, so pretty little babies, and they had the mother display a still face, meaning flat affect, so unresponsive, which is very different. Most, well, healthy parents. Healthy parents of, of any sex or gender. You know, you make faces and you use your voice in a certain way and you engage babies in this certain kind of way. So when the researchers had the mothers do a still face for, I believe it was two minutes, boys were actually more emotionally reactive and more dependent on maternal attunement to return to equilibrium. So basically, the nervous system blueprint for responding to female emotional cues is laid down in infancy. And as you were saying, in general, what they found was that girls were more like dandelions and boys were more like orchids in this moment. That for them it was more distressing that mom was checked out, that mom had a flat affect, that they couldn't reach mom, that mom wasn't attuning to them. That was very distressing for them. They were more reactive and more dependent. More dependent on her Attunement to come back to equilibrium. Right. So girls were able to come back to equilibrium. And again, there's this weird delta where this is what's actually true. And then what our culture thinks is true is. Is the opposite, that girls are more sensitive and the girls need more fill in the blank. I'm not sure what word to use there to get back to study. That's actually not. Not the case. And again, I was surprised by a lot of these findings because I didn't know this. Another one I think is really important to mention is that there's this. There's. There was a study done on what it looks like in a conflict and what's actually happening under the surface. And so they, you know, you know, they stick those electrodes on you and they're. They're measuring all different kinds of physiological markers. So there was one that found that avoidantly attached people show elevated heart rate and skin conductance in emotionally charged relational situations. Meaning a fight. Right. But without the corresponding subjective or behavioral experience of distress. In other words, the body is activated while the mind suppresses awareness of it. Okay, so the body is actually flooded, but the mind thinks I'm okay, Things are okay. Maybe not okay, that's probably not the right word. But it looks like the person's not reacting or responding. It looks like they're checked out, but they're actually quite activated. And this can explain why sometimes avoidant men will appear calm or checked out while they are internally flooded. So they don't have the same. What's the word? Perhaps sympathy response that someone might have when they. They look and they are acting agitated or concerned or, you know, they. They just look blank. They can just look blank. And what you said about the grenade and the wall makes a lot of sense because, well, let's say in a. In a fight with a hetero couple, he's checked out. And she's. She came with some intensity. She came with a reason. She's mad about something. Whether it's something between them or something about their kids or whatever it is. She came with some charge, some upset. And now he's just standing there. Now he's just standing there. And she's like, what? What's happening? Like, what, What? Where are you? And also, did you hear what I just said? Did you hear what I just said? And you can hear in my voice. That's probably going to escalate things. So there's dance. There's this upward escalating situation that can happen when a man is checked out in Conflict situations. And part of what I think is so what's the word? I guess sad. I'm not really sure what the word is, but so sad is that I feel like a lot of human beings, not just men, but a lot of people, are sad, set up for failure in romantic relationship because they have no tools and no training in how to develop their nervous system, how to actually grow capacity in these areas. And what I want to say up front at this, during this episode is it is more than possible to grow your capacity in these ways. It's more than possible. But if you're. But if you're working on the wrong things, right? If you keep talking about the content of the fight, then you're never getting to the root of how. How does one expand one's capacity? How does one grow? In the literature, they call it the window of tolerance. How do I expand my window of tolerance? Your window of tolerance can be pretty narrow. If you grew up without attuned parents, if you grew up with neglect or emotionally volatile parents, which almost all of our clients did, then your window of tolerance can be quite small, but you can expand it. We're going to talk about that later in the episode, but I think that that's important. An important point to make is that what I witness in a lot of people is that they're working on the wrong things. They're putting a lot of time and energy into the wrong things that aren't actually going to move the needle in their relationship because the nervous system is what it's about. It's not actually about how much money we're making, where the kids are going to school, whether I picked them up late, what's going on with your parents. Yes, those things are important, but they're not going to help you not get flooded. Any thoughts on that?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, there's. This is such a. Just amazing and deep conversation because, you know, even as we're sitting here talking, I'm realizing there's this other thing that you and I were talking about a little bit too that I think is part of this story, which is we are often conditioned as men to want to do something, to take action. Right? And so, like we were talking about, you know, one of the. Sue Johnson's research, like one of the number one things is this kind of pursue, avoid withdrawal dynamic. And what's really often underneath that. And again, it's going to be different for each interaction here. But I feel like we could conjecture that, you know, a lot of times I'm overwhelmed with her Intensity. Part of what's going on in those moments, is there some kind of disconnection she's expressing? Right. I don't feel connected to you, I don't feel safe with you. You're not leading, you're not showing up, you're not doing enough around that, whatever, Right. And right on the surface that looks like oftentimes, certainly in my relationship, my partner's angry at me or not happy with me or something like that. But the interesting thing is underneath that almost all the time is she's feeling disconnected and she's wanting connection. And this is the way to start to bring that now where it starts to get really interesting. And I do see this in the shadow work we do. Absolutely true. For me, it's something I've become more and more aware of that people around me have often been aware of. But receiving comfort is actually often a struggle for me to receive comfort. Right. Like when someone wants to soothe me, it can, it can be challenging. So there's this huge dynamic that I think can sometimes start to happen in these moments where on the surface, surface it looks like our partner's upset with us, but what they're actually wanting is reinsurance and comfort, right. We get flooded and we can neither give it nor receive it then from that moment. And I think that's one of the big challenges that I've certainly had as a man. And there, there is a little bit of research that shows, you know, one of the things that often does change early on is it's not that boys are touched less by their mothers young, but it is a different kind of touch. Boys are often more directed in their body. It's like functional move here, don't do this to the boy versus like comfort, touch. They don't receive as much. And you know, there's all kinds of reasons physiologically masculine, feminine, you know, mom boy stuff and how that breaks down. But that I do think it's very common that boys have less experience receiving comfort and touch in co regulation in these ways, which lo and behold, I'm as literally just thinking out loud as I say this means they're going to have a harder time giving it because we're not as wired to know what it means to receive it. So if we don't know what it feels like to receive it, sometimes my wife's coming at me with something, I can feel there's a need, but I don't know how to give it to her. Right. She's expressing something and part of my freeze, part of my overwhelm is. I don't know what to do right now. Right. This is, I think, a key thing that hits like, what, what. What do you want? Or what. What do I do? When you come at me with this disconnection or anger or frustration, and I think that doubles down then on top of what you're talking about, this flooding and reactivity. And sometimes I'm aware of it, sometimes I'm not, and it's often just escalates from there in some pretty intense ways. And, you know, is something that we genuinely help men with that oftentimes there is nothing to do. That's like one of the big shifts is there's nothing to do other than to be present and resonate with your partner in that. And that can often start to unwind some of these very stuck patterns.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I'm glad you spoke to that. Let's. I want to come back to that. That. That feels really important to me. I want to first name something that's pretty loud for me in this conversation, which is homophobia, particularly in North America and other parts of the west, that I think prevents boys in particular from being affectionate and close and receiving that soothing comfort from other boys or men. Homophobia is still a major part of our cultural reality, and it has gotten better, but it is still very loud. And I think that we tend to center ourselves because we are both North American. But I want to say that there are lots of places in the world where it's actually really normal for men that are not in a relationship, in a romantic relationship. Men are. That are friends to hold hands, walk arm in arm, hug, you know, stay hugging. There's the man hug, right as you grasp. You don't touch belly to belly. You pat each other on the back. That's not normal everywhere. I was rewatching love, actually, and there's a scene where two men do that, and they're both British. So this is not just an American thing, but there are lots of places in the world, the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia, parts of Southern Europe, where it's actually pretty normal for men to be physically affectionate with each other. And I think the reason that's important is this is one of those invisible things where again, you're. You're not aware of it. You're just kind of like, well, that's just how it is in my life, right. I didn't. I didn't receive comfort from boys or men. And if I. If I went for that, I was. I was punished. I mean, I was socially Punished, you know, and so you learn pretty fucking fast, you know, that that's not okay. And it's said explicitly, it's said implicitly. You know, we pick up on the social cues. We are social creatures. We want to fit in. It's actually we need to fit in for survival. You know, there's plenty of research about social interaction and how important that is in the. In the job market. You know, we're talking about your. Your living is. Is partly dependent on how well you can socialize. And that means that we all pick up on these cues. So I. I just. I feel a lot of compassion for men. And I. I think what you said was important about soothing, receiving soothing, and that is also something that you can learn, right? You can actually expand your capacity to receive soothing and to be soothed in different ways. And all of this is malleable, right? The brain is incredibly plastic, meaning changeable. We can change, we can expand, we can grow. Human beings can grow. And I think that you and I see that repeatedly in our work, which we'll probably get to. But yeah, I. I'll just name, for example, one. One client story real quick where, you know, we're talking about intensity. And this. This man has had a lot of intensity happening in his relationship and in his family life, things going on with the kids. Massive, big shit. Not every surface level. Oh, there was this incident at school. No, I'm talking about life or death, right? And he said, if I hadn't been in this program, I don't think my marriage would have made it. What I. The way I was able to show up, the way I was able to relate with my partner and her coming with all that intensity, that made the difference. And that was within a few months, right? And I'm not talking about six years of work. I'm talking about a few months. But it was a few months of working on the right thing, which we're talking about, right? Like, this is the thing. This is the moment. If you are a man in a hetero relationship, this is the moment when she comes with emotional intensity, what happens? Are you able to ground? Are you able to stay present? And I'm not talking about doing it perfectly. I'm not talking about doing it all the time, but I'm talking about, this is your MVP moment. This is the crux of the situation. This is. This is it. This is the. This is the moment. And when. When a man can respond well in that moment, when he can ground, when he can stay present and ride the wave and be there that builds trust. That builds connection. That is pretty incredible. And I know that I'm saying a lot at once, but I also want to be clear that we are not talking about a man tolerating emotional abuse. This. This conversation, I think, can sometimes come across as, I should be able to take anything. I should be able to stay regulated in the face of crazy behavior that's really vicious and repeats itself. No, I'm not talking about that. If you have a partner who is so emotionally volatile so much of the time that it repeatedly scares you or scares the kids or feels out of control, you need to listen to our episodes about borderline personality disorder right now, because that's not normal, and that's not what we're talking about. There's a range. You can think of it kind of like a scale 0 to 10. If you're up in the 8, 9, 10 range, that's out of normal. That's not a normal range. Two to six, maybe. That's more normal. And I think it's hard because sometimes, you know, people like you and me, we're not present in the home. We can't see what's going on in someone's experience. But, man, the stories that we've heard from our guys, my heart goes out to them of just that level of rage and intensity, and it just. That is not. That's not okay. And I think that often what happens is none of us really knows what happened in other people's families of origin. Right. We weren't present in other people's homes. And often what we do is we tend to repeat the patterns that we had in our home in some capacity, particularly if we haven't done any personal growth work. And then we sort of think it's normal. Right. We grew up with a really volatile moment. We now have a really volatile partner or dad, by the way. We grew up with a really emotionally volatile dad, and now we have an emotionally volatile woman partner. That also happens. But we're kind of like, well, this is just how it is. And then they start. People start working with us, and we're like, that's not. That's not normal. That's actually. That's actually not normal. We need to talk about that, and we need to get you out of this relationship, and we need to protect the kids. Like, this is not. This is not normal. Um, so, yeah, that was a lot. I'm curious if you have any comments on that. And then there's another study I want to bring in.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Just to double click, you know, the difference between emotional intensity and abuse. And that if you are not sure, it's probably more on the side of abuse, honestly. And that's where coaches or peers or people, you really want to start to check in and get a temperature check. Because there really is often a frog and boiling pot thing that as things escalate, sometimes we lose touch with like, whoa. Actually, diet is intense and it can be really sober to have that validated from trusted third parties in a sense. So that's a really, really important one. I, I was also just struck by. Right. You and I. Dr. Glover is one of my mentors. He's been on your show. I'm a nice guy, coach and all that. So we work with a lot of nice guys. And there's one thing I also want to tie in here, that flooding, right. This. Her intensity floods me. Like in my case, that would often show up kind of as more the freeze withdrawal going still. But one of the things I would also do sometimes that I do want to name is another version of that is the verbal version of that, which is what he calls his dear response. Right. The defend, explained, excuse and rationalize. Because what's really happening there, whether I'm flooded and overwhelmed or I'm doing the deer responses, I'm trying to stop their energy because it's too much. But I'm not actually saying that. And so I just want to name that. That's another really common pattern we see. Right. I used to call it lawyering up. Right. I would lawyer up and make a case as to why what she was feeling was not valid. Because the thought was, if I could explain her that, then the feeling goes away and the intensity goes away and I'm going to be ok, okay, and she's going to be okay. So it's really important to note that this can manifest in different ways and that. That, you know, as we, as. As we'll get to, you know, there's some important ways you can work with this in the moment that are part of what we focus on with men that are really going to help differentiate you from the majority of men and really create some motion and movement potentially in your relationship.

Melanie Curtin: I'm really glad you spoke to that because, yeah, the. The man that I was talking about before, he said, you know, often when she comes to me with intensity, if I'm resourced, I can ground it. Yeah, I'm not resourced. I shut down. Or I. What is the word that he used? Basically minimize. I minimize her experience. Yes, because. Which is a version of. No, you shouldn't be upset that I was late because there was traffic. You shouldn't be upset I was late because I didn't mean to be late. You shouldn't be upset that I was late because I didn't get the email till later. You shouldn't be upset that I was late because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's all that gonna do? It's gonna piss her off even more. Right. And that's usually true. That's not just true in a heterodynamic. That's true in a lot of different dynamics. I remember I was with a friend and we were going to an event, and I was late for some reason, I don't remember, 20 minutes late, something like that. And so she'd had to wait in the car, and as we were going to where we were going, she said, listen, I just have to tell you that that was really, that was upsetting to me. I felt kind of like I wasn't important. You know, I have a story that I'm not important. And this triggered that. And she was really responsible in the way she communicated because she's done a lot of work. You know, she wasn't like, I can't believe you did that. She didn't give me the silent treatment for six hours. You know, she was very responsible, and she told me directly. And I could have said, well, you know, this thing happened with my housemate, and I really had to deal with it because otherwise, dapa dappa dapp a doop a dapp a doop a doop a doop. And I didn't, didn't do that. I said, you're right. I'm sorry. You are important to me. And I see how that was really frustrating. I would be frustrated too, and I'm sorry. And then we moved on.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: And the fact that we were able to have that exchange was the result of a lot of work on both of our parts. Right. So the reason I say that is I, I, I guess I just want to emphasize that there's something about emotional attunement in those moments, because you can hear in my voice, I was sorry. And another way that could have gone is, well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You know. Well, that's not gonna work because you can feel that actually what the person is saying is, I'm defensive. I'm defensive. The words are I'm sorry. The feeling is, I'm defensive. I'm not taking in what you said. I don't agree. I am doing my best over here. And There' just this, this quality of rigidity that goes along, goes along with defensiveness. And the person can feel it. And then the quality of, I receive that. I receive you in this moment. I'm still here with you. You know, your intensity is not too much for me. I'm right here. And you can kind of. You get the sense that there's that. There's that attunement that was missing for so many of us when we were young of just, I'm here, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. I've got you. I'm right here. And when we're activated in a situation, for most of us, many of us, that's really what we're looking for. But the words out of our mouth might sound very different. What we're looking for is for the person to be with us, to really, really be with us, to really be with us, to really hear us. And in a lot of cases, yeah, to kind of ground. Ground the energy, ground the moment. And I think that's what I have seen in, in our work that's been really encouraging. And the men we've worked with is the success stories around. Wow. I, you know, my wife and I had a conflict last night and I stayed present and it went in a totally different direction than it has before or. One thing I hear a lot from men is this thing happened with my partner. I wasn't able to speak up in the moment, but I did bring it up the next day. We talked about it. And a conflict that would have lasted for 12 days lasted for 12 hours, or a conflict that would have lasted for a month lasted for three days. Right. We weren't able to do it that day, but we did it that week. Right. That the amount of time gets shorter and shorter. I've heard that from a lot of our clients. And to me, that's a huge win. Right. Any amount of time that you're spending more connected than disconnected is a win. And it's also usually a departure from the patterns of your family of origin. Right. If you do the silent treatment or you withdraw, probably someone in your family system did that. If you get reactive and you explode, probably someone in your family origin did that. And so you're growing beyond these patterns. These patterns are not inevitable. We are not stuck forever just because we inherited something or just because we had dysregulated parents or whatever. The brain is plastic. The body mind can learn. If you are training in the right ways, you will grow.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: Comments on that?

Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, I think this ties into like, so what do we do about it right in this moment? And, you know, there's literally we have a whole course on what you do about it and how you build the capacity. But the long and short of it is we have to build the capacity to be able to respond, right? To come back to conscious response and not let the flooding over, the overwhelm take over. And there's very real ways we train our men in that. But, you know, one key takeaway that I'll speak to here, that's, you know, in some sense what it's all about is having that circuit online of just being able to register when I'm flooded and being able to name it. Right. So in our course, we would, I would often talk about this as it's better to tell her you can't be present right now than pretend like you can or not acknowledge what's actually happening. Right? And in the Gottman research, they talk about like 20 minutes. It takes 20 minutes minimum for a man to be able to come back when he's in this flooded state. And so if you as a man, again, this takes some resilience because it might actually activate her more. And she has to learn to trust you when you say this, say, hey, I'm, I'm flooded. Can't actually receive you the way I want to receive you right now. I need a 20 minute timeout and then I want to come back. Right? That can totally change things. Totally change things. That said, it's very easy for me to say that on a podcast. Oh, you just do that thing. Because in the moment your nervous system is hijacked and that's where the actual skills and capacity and expanding the will and will of tolerance and knowing how to even lead these conversations with your partner ahead of time. So you can say, hey, next time I want to get flooded, I'm going to try to say this thing and do this thing and you could, you know, and then you become a team around that. But it's really that, that's kind of the crux of it, to know when I'm no longer able to receive or be present and name it, don't avoid it, don't pretend, don't override it. Which is the other thing that even the work we do can, can sometimes, oh, well, I should just get more grounded and more present and barrel through. No, like, it's okay to take that recovery period and just go, reset. I'm going to go walk around the block and in 20 minutes I want to Come back. And I want to get right back to this in a way that I can fully receive what you're sharing here, because I care about you, and I acknowledge I'm triggered, I'm flooded, whatever you want to call it in that moment. That's really our great work as human beings, but particularly as men, because that's what we're focusing on here. To be able to. To. To move from that triggered, flooded, fused, reactive state back to, okay, here I am. I'm here consciously. I'm here breathing as part of that, and I'm ready to actually interact with you around what you're saying.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I'm thinking about a friend of mine who is. Is. It's a long story, but is sort of in a relationship with this man who's been doing a lot of work. And they recently had two conflicts, which in the past would have escalated. I mean, just really escalated. And this time, he said, all right, you know what I'm noticing? I'm getting defensive. I need a break. I need to take a break. And she said, great, yes, whatever you need. And then he took a break, and then he came back, and then he was actually able to hear her around her hurt, her disappointment, what was actually happening for her. He was able to actually hear. Hear it instead of automatically defending there's a threat, and I've got to defend myself against the threat. And it worked. It worked in both cases, similar to what I was saying before, something that would have escalated and become a major rupture. You know, we're not sleeping next to each other. I'm going to a hotel. It lasts for three days. It's just a fucking mess. Became maybe an hour and a half. Maybe an hour and a half. I want to read another success story. This is from one of our clients. He said, my current partner and I got into an argument about six months into the relationship. She said she was done with the relationship and walked out of dinner. And we shared a silent taxi ride home, followed by lying in bed for an hour in silence. It was our first fight, and I stayed present and calm while she went through her emotions. When the time was right. When the time was right, I told her I wanted to talk, but not at night when we were tired. Instead, we just held each other and then had very connected, beautiful sex. In the morning, we talked and both really understood where each was coming from. I think that night was a profound. Had a profound impact on our entire relationship and set the tone. In the past, I would have made things worse by trying to solve Engage, debate, whatever. I learned that just using stillness and grounding goes a long way to get through the storm, and it is easier to repair when both people are in the right mindset. That really struck me because I feel like part of what he was describing was the transmission of presence. The transmission of presence that he was able to stay present and breathe and be with her, really be with her. And that changed her nervous system. It changed her state. And they actually. They ended up making love that night. That's not always gonna happen for every couple, but it can. It can. Because I will say, as a woman, when I bring intensity and a man is able to meet me in that moment, wow. I feel loved. I feel loved. I feel loved. I feel held. I feel safe. I feel connected. And I think it's important what this man said, which is that in the past, I would have locked horns. Right? I would have locked horns. I would have, you know, debated. And that's. That's not a fun night. That night sucks. That's not a sexy time night. You know, that's. That's. That's. That's not a fun night. I think a lot of us have been it. That night. That night sucks. And this was a total departure. And I think it's really important what he said about, you know, in the past, I would have made things worse. And this was a new experience. And his partner was able to meet him in that moment. He was present, and she was able to soften. She was willing to soften. She was able to hear him the next day. They were able to hear each other the next day Again. If you feel like your partner can literally never hear you, and it is always your fault every single time, and she's not able to take any accountability ever. You need to listen to our borderline personality disorder episodes. Any comments on that part?

Jason Lange: Yeah, that for one, as you're a man and decide, like you want to learn how to do this, part of what is the grander context? We haven't necessarily talked about here, but what's going on in that couple's moment is, as a man, the more held you are, the more you can hold her. So. Right. This is an episode I did in my show a long time ago. There's an important question that often gets missed with this idea of grounding. Are you grounded? Are you grounded? Are you grounded? And the context of that is, what are you grounding into? And if you don't have healthy and, as I would continue to argue, male relationships around you, you aren't grounding into the full potential of what can help you hold a partner through that. So that can be your men's group, that can be your coaches like us. The regulation you get from there is part of what allows you in those moments to work through the fight in a different way and just stay present or take the space and then you can come back to the actual connection. That, like I said, is often the thing that's driving the tension in the first place. Right? She's the, you know, if she's coming at you with intensity, it's often an expression of some need or fear or vulnerability or disconnection underneath. So that's where we want to get. But if we freeze or try to fix or, you know, all the different things, we're often not getting to that connection. But if we can stay grounded and present, like I said, and realize a lot of times there's nothing to do, right? There's just to be in it, acknowledge it, resonate with the intensity. When I say resonate, I mean allow yourself to feel it, allow her to feel you feeling it so she feels gotten. And that this is so key in you do your best effort for this kind of stuff. And this is the reality of. As we bring this into relationships, we see how does our partner respond if we start to make shifts as men and how we're showing up around this. But the dynamic doesn't shift and our partner continually makes it our fault or never takes responsibility. Those become red flags, Right. That you have to genuinely acknowledge. And here's the deal again. Working with coaches like us or getting into supportive men's groups, it's going to be easier to see those with neutral third party eyes. Right? We're just calling balls and strikes. It's not our job to say, hey, you should be in this or not. It's just, hey, here's what we see. Like that's a red flag that, you know, she hasn't taken any accountability yet, or you really have been showing up with presence and grounding and it doesn't seem to be moving the needle in the interaction and how she responds. And that's really important for you to acknowledge as a man because like we said, it's not about becoming this invulnerable robot that can handle intensity forever. If moving through the intensity isn't leading to deeper connection and more trust and repair long term, it's not what we're talking about.

Melanie Curtin: Well said. That was very well said. And back to the kind of differences between men and women. There it, there was a study that Actually showed that men were more prone to what's called in literature, diffuse physiological arousal, which just means you're upset, you're triggered. And so men were more physiologically prone to that and they required less negative intense affect from a partner to trigger withdrawal. Meaning their, their threshold. A man's threshold is actually lower. So a woman looking away, casting her eyes down, making a face, making it a sound, you know, that, that whatever experience of disapproval or disappointment or whatever your trigger is, that threshold is actually lower for men. And you can expand it. It's, it's like that's the thing is I think sometimes we're like, well, this is the way it is. No, this is the way it is right now. It's, it reminds me a lot of going to the gym. It's kind of like, well, here's my body. This is the way my body is. And we all understand inherently this is the way my body is now. If I work out, if I get a trainer, if I change my diet and exercise habits, my body will change. The brain is the same. We are one unit when we train. And I think that's a lot of what quality personal growth work is, is training, training. And one of the ways that you train is through connection. One of the ways that you train is through connection. It's not just meditation and breath work. It's also connection, particularly connection with other grounded men, with other men who are growing with other men on their path, with other conscious men. And I think that's one of the unique things about the way that you and me work, Jason, is that our program is a men's group with a woman involved, right? A woman who cares, who is able to speak to the woman's experience. But it is primarily a place for men to come together, to feel safe, to tell some of their stories for the first time ever and be held, be held not to be put down or bullied or denigrated, but actually held and loved and witnessed in their truth. And that changes the body mind, it changes the neurobiology. I will never forget this. One man at our live retreat last year had a very profound experience coming out of a breathwork situation where another man was holding him, was able to actually hold him and attune in this way, right? This non verbal attunement of I am right here, I've got you, I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here. Words were not used, but just that, that level of presence at that moment. And he, and the man receiving that said, I swear to God, I feel like, my life changed in that moment. I had. I had never experienced safe love in that way before. And I thought to myself, yeah, that was an actual brain shift. New neurology, new neural networks were established in that moment that had never been in this person's body, mind. And now what's possible from there also shifts. So I think there's a lot of focus in couples work on the couple. He's looking at her, she's looking at him, how's their communication, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff about the two of them, well, who's standing behind them, who's standing around them? What is the greater context for that? And bringing in those resources we repeatedly see totally changes a man's life, right? It shifts things into a different direction. It shifts them into a different direction. Then they. Then it would have been shifted. And again, you can invest in all kinds of things, you can go in all kinds of places, you can try all kinds of stuff, but until you establish that, you're not going to see the same kinds of lasting results, in my opinion. And I'm curious if you can. If you can speak to that as a man who has grown up in this culture.

Jason Lange: I mean, I tell guys all the time, investing in other men is the single best investment I think you can make in your life right now as a man. It will improve your health, it will improve your relationships, and it will improve your purpose, work, your capacity to earn money. It's all right there in terms of what it builds up and the type of social capital it generates for men is absolutely indispensable in this day and age. And it. It's like a compounding interest. Right? That's the key thing here, too, because these types of relationships can navigate all of life's ups and downs and challenges for you. And as I've said, and I think Violet's even shared here as well, you know, it's not. As men become more part of your life, the container they hold around you is also held around your partner, and so she gets to relax into the men. You surround yourself with that, oh, wow, we are held, right? He's held and we are held. He's held by his men, and that means we are held more that if we ever got into a crisis, we have support. And that is just such a huge thing that so many guys just totally discount. And the somatic experience, you know, particularly in some of the shadow work I do with guys I. And that you were speaking to in our client's experience, after some breath work and this experience, he had in with another man. Really being present is. It's like plugging in to a source of clean energy you didn't even know was available. That once you have it, the experience is, how the fuck did I live my life without this? It was like running on fumes. And now I have this clean burning energy source which is really just love and care and presence that vitalizes me and makes it easier to handle everything in life. Right? This is the shift I've sometimes talked to. It's even beyond resilience. It's, you know, this great term that was big a couple years ago. It's antifragile. Or when we have this community of men to ground into. It's not just that we can endure challenge. It's that the challenge comes in, the group, helps us metabolize it, and we become more capable of responding in the future. We actually become more in the process. We don't just grunt our bite our teeth and endure it, which is what a lot of men try to do. It's, wow, I learned to work with it. And I can actually become more responsive in my life. And your woman's going to appreciate that, guys, trust me.

Melanie Curtin: I will verify that. And I wanted to say, as a woman who has been in relationships, I've been in relationships with men who've been in men's work, who've had connections to quality men that are doing their work. And that made a big difference to me. That made a big difference. My lived experience was that overall I felt safer because I knew this man is getting good advice. When we, when we conflict or we're going through something, I know who he's going to and I respect who he's going to. And I have a sense that he has meaningful connection outside of our love relationship. Like, he is grounded. He is plugged into a network that is trustable. And that made a big difference to me as in my felt experience of that man. And then I was with a man who did not have that. And you know, when you're in a relationship, especially over time, you get to know their people, you get to know their best friends, you get to know who they're going to. You get to, you know, know that. And this man had almost entirely women friends. And he. And that was mainly who he went to. He did not have brotherhood. He did not have trustable men in his life. And part of the reason for that was early experiences of bullying, which is a very common pattern in a lot of the guys that we work with. That and I think pretty Much like I would say, probably a majority of boys growing up in our culture are bullied in one way or another. It's more than we think. It's more prevalent. It's worse than we think. It's a lot. And there is healing work that needs to happen. And a lot of the guys in our program go through that. Right. That's part of what they're healing, is can I trust the men in this space? What's going to happen? So in that relationship, I knew this guy doesn't have any men in his life that he really trusts and that he's going to. About this stuff in the same way that I've. That, you know, with other men that I've been with. And that made a real difference to me. That made me trust the relationship less. I felt less safe in the relationship. I felt like, you know, he's just, just. He's just not as grounded. He's just not. He's just not as grounded. And I. That was one of the reasons that I ended that relationship because I felt like this isn't gonna shift until he has brotherhood. I know what brotherhood does for men because I see it over and over and over, and I want that. I want a man who has brotherhood in his life. It makes our relationship stronger. It takes a lot of pressure off of me and. And I have this kind of intuitive sense of. Part of the. Part of the idea is that we talk about polarity. We talk about alpha and Omega and being able to embody Alpha, which is also known as masculine, being able to embody Omega, also known as feminine. Both people need to be able to do both. Both people need access to both energies. And healthy Alpha energy is stillness. It is the mountain, it is spaciousness, is consciousness. And healthy Omega is flow. It's energy, it's vitality, it's movement, it's mystery. It's. You know, you need both in a relationship. And what I found with that man that didn't have brotherhood was his capacity for stillness and regulation was. Was more limited. It was more limited. And I think that's in part because there's almost like a transmission effect when you're around mentors that are holding that grounding, that are holding that space, that are providing that space to you as a man. Right? Where you're. To your point, Jason, where you are held, you are held. You get to be however you are, and you are held. That's. That's irreplaceable. There's no other way of. Of getting it. It's relational It's. It's what you were supposed to get, get from your parents that a bunch of us didn't get because they didn't get it from their parents, and their parents didn't get it from their parents because somebody went to war and blah, blah, blah. You know, we've had a lot of ruptures. There's a lot of shit that's gone down. We've had really weird cultures for a long time, particularly in the west, and so that capacity has been limited. Restoring that, I think, is what happened in that moment with the man I described at the retreat. There was a restoration. This is what it feels like to be held. This is the experience of. You don't have to have it together right now. I've got you. I'm regulated, I'm grounded, I'm here. You can just be however you are. You can be a mess, you can be dysregulated, you can be bawling, you can be whatever. And I'm right here, not going anywhere. I'm not overwhelmed by you. I'm more spacious. I am holding you. We all need that. And so many men in our culture have never had it. And to your point, they don't even really know what they're missing. What they know is, I feel emptied. My relationship. I don't know how to approach my wife about sex. Our fights are bad, and I don't know how to get out of it. I. I feel like shit, or I'm depressed or I'm anxious or all of the above. That's what they know. And they don't know that this is part of what helps with all of that, because it feels indirect. It's kind of like, well, I'm in a relationship with a woman. I should probably know how to communicate. Blah, blah, blah, blah, women. No, actually, it's actually brotherhood that is the medicine.

Jason Lange: That's the bell. We're just gonna keep on ringing. And just one last thing. I'll share that. I hear this from so many men. I think oftentimes one of the reasons men keep their emotions, all this stuff inside, is they do. They have internalized this story, that it's going to be too much. My grief, my anger. I don't want to burden any other man with it. When they have the experience of a man, like, it's all good. I got you sad today. Be sad. Angry today. Be angry. That too, actually starts to reformat the circuit, which teaches a man that, oh, that's what's possible for me to be for my partner, right that it's actually okay. This guy's not trying to fix me. He's not coming at me with, oh my God, here's a 10 point plan for how we're going to solve this problem. It's just, wow, that sounds really hard. And I'm here with you, man, care about you. And as you have the experience of how impactful that is, guess what? It gets easier to start to close that circuit on. Oh, sometimes that's all she wants from me.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. As we start to wrap here, I'm, I'm mindful of, you know, we've talked about a lot of different ways of going about this, and I just want to say that skillful men are applying all of these at the same time. So it's, it's about having community. It is also about taking a break in the moment, having a proactive conversation with your partner and saying, here's a pattern. I've noticed when you come with intensity. I have a tendency to minimize your experience, to tell you you shouldn't be feeling that way, or to shut down. And I might look like I'm present, but I'm pretty shut down. You can probably tell. I would like to experiment with me taking a break during those moments. I would like to experiment with me taking a break and then coming back. Because what I want is to receive you. I want you to be able to come with your intensity. And I'm also wondering, do you have any ideas on how we can be a team around this on this pattern? And a healthy partner might say, you're right. I do come with a lot of heat and fire sometimes. I could probably also use a break sometimes. Or maybe I could try going for a walk around the block before I come to you with something really heavy or intense, especially if it's right after work. If you're just coming home from work, I can try taking a walk around the block first. You know, how do we work as a team on this? It's both. And it's both conversations with a partner. It's both taking breaks and getting into community. Meaningful community. Meaningful, healthy community. Personal growth. Work works. So work it. And if you're interested in our community, you can go to evolutionary men. Apply. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da.