There's a moment when your partner's voice rises and something in your chest locks up. You go quiet. She reads the quiet as not caring. She pushes harder. You go quieter. The whole thing escalates into something neither of you wanted, and you're not even sure how you got there.
Melanie and I went deep on this one. It's a pattern I know from the inside, and something I've had to build real somatic awareness around in my own marriage. We call it the grenade in the wall. She feels disconnected, drops a grenade to break through. I freeze. The grenade has to get bigger. Something eventually explodes. And underneath all of it, what she actually wanted was connection, not a fight.
We got into the pursue-withdraw cycle that Sue Johnson's research identified as the number one negative pattern in couples, why that freezing response is so hard to move out of, and what the actual physiology behind flooding looks like. We also talked about orchid boys and what Dr. Luke Adler and I call the boyful flame. Emotionally sensitive boys don't just get hit by a nervous system that's more reactive. They also get hit by the cultural conditioning that tells them that sensitivity isn't okay. That gets trained out early, and then we land in adulthood struggling to give comfort to a partner partly because we never learned what it felt like to receive it.
We also named the DEER response, defending, explaining, excusing, rationalizing. I used to call it lawyering up. That's not presence. That's flooding in verbal form, trying to stop her energy because it's too much.
And we talked about the 20-minute reset, the difference between emotional intensity and abuse, and why investing in male relationships is the foundation that lets you actually hold your partner in those hard moments. The more held you are, the more you can hold her.
If her intensity floods you, what would it actually take for you to trust that you can stay in the room with it?
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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. 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?
