There's a particular kind of hell in trying really fucking hard and still not winning anywhere, and that's exactly where so many nice guys live. It's deadening and frustrating at the same time, like a tea kettle that's vibrating but never actually lets off steam. I got into that with Melanie Curtin on this episode of Dear Men, and we spent the hour on three ways men actually outgrow Nice Guy syndrome, not by becoming less kind, but by learning to stop abandoning themselves in the name of being kind.
First we talked about community, because a lot of the loneliness nice guys carry isn't about having zero friends, it's about having friends who don't actually know what's happening inside you. I used the old single strand Christmas lights as the picture here. If your whole sense of connection runs through one relationship, one bulb going out takes down the whole string. Healthy male brotherhood builds you a parallel circuit, so you're not white knuckling a relationship just to avoid being alone.
From there we moved into boundaries, claiming your no, and why no woman can trust your yes if she's never once heard you say no and mean it. Then we got into sexual shame, claiming your yes, your desire, your wanting her, and how a man who's collapsed around that becomes flat, unreadable, friend zoned. I talked about the sun and moon dynamic there, how she can't shine if you're not bringing your light.
All three of these work together. You practice the no and the yes inside community, and community is what gives you a place to land when either one goes sideways.
Where in your life are you still abandoning yourself just to be seen as a good guy?
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Melanie Curtin: We live in a culture that keeps boys apart, that tells boys it's not safe or acceptable to be close to other boys because of homophobia. And this permeates our whole culture. And so when you take that and then you add in the systemic stuff around the nuclear family structure of just all these single family homes where we live in a very isolated way, when you combine those, it's not your fault, is what I'm trying to say. It's not actually your fault. The loneliness that you feel isn't that there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with our culture and there's something wrong with our structures. The structural systems of our lives do not support human flourishing. Hi everyone coming to you live from Northern California. I am sitting in a beautiful backyard, gazing at a lovely sky, thinking of you all, listening wherever you are, doing dishes, on a walk, walking the dog in your car, commuting, whatever's going on for you. I'm thinking of you and wanted to make a few quick announcements. First, we currently have eight spots left for our live retreat in September, early September, Labor Day weekend. That is also in Northern California, not not far from where I am now, near Napa Valley. You would fly into SFO or Oakland Airport if you're traveling by airplane. And we have eight spots left at the moment, but we're talking to some folks and we will likely only have six spots left very soon. So please, if you're thinking of signing up, please do. You can find out more at Evolutionary Men Retreat. And we have a flirting workshop this month. Monday, July 26th or sorry, July 20th, Monday, July 20th in the evening. So Pacific, , Pacific, to Eastern. We are doing a flirting workshop and you can find out more about that and sign [email protected] Flirting Remember, there's no A in my last name. It's just C U R t I n. Melaniecurtain.com Flirting we would love to have you. You are welcome whether you are partnered or single, whether you are male, female, non, binary, however you identify. We would love to have you and do some flirting. Y' all do some flirting right in time for a hot summer. Okay, I think that's it. And you can always get [email protected] if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for an episode, idea, etc, I would love to hear from you. Hi everyone. We are very happy to be back with Jason Lange, fan favorite. And yeah, just one of My favorite people. Thanks for being with us today, Jason.
Jason Lange: Excited to be back. Here we are again.
Melanie Curtin: All right, so today we're talking about when you want more out of your love life. Often, not always, but often you are experiencing some version of Nice Guy syndrome. And if you haven't heard about this yet, there are lots of episodes on it. But we really wanted to kind of highlight three patterns that we've seen in terms of men that are outgrowing this syndrome. And if this is true for you, if this has been true for you, one of the signs is that you just feel like you've been getting crumbs. Like, you just don't. You don't receive enough. You don't. You're not getting enough back. Whether that's, let's say, on the dating apps when it comes to messages or you're getting first dates, but you're not getting second dates. You're just. You're not getting enough back. And it's really frustrating. It is sort of the classic definition of you're spinning your wheels. You're putting. Putting in effort, and so you're. And you're so the. The car is trying to go forward, but it's just spinning the wheel. So it's not actually moving forward, but there's a lot of energy being put out. It's exhausting. It's frustrating. It's just. It can be demoralizing. It can be kind of demoralizing. Is there anything that you would say sort of quickly to set up what Nice Guy syndrome can feel like for guys before we get into kind of how to outgrow it?
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, I think it's two things simultaneously. It's. It's both deadening and frustrating. There's, like, a lack of connection to vitality, certainly in my times. Times in my life where I've been most in my Nice Guy and what we've seen in our clients. And it's almost like all that vitality then gets pooled in frustration, which is. You know, frustration is different than anger because frustration is, like, stuck in the tea kettle. It's just the whole thing's kind of vibrating, and it's. It's not even coming out. So it's not a particularly pleasant place to be as nice guys because there is this sense of, I'm trying really fucking hard and I'm not winning anywhere, and it doesn't feel fair.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, it's so interesting. I heard the other day, I heard a man present an art piece about this. I'm not going to go into the whole details. But I could feel through the art piece, I could feel his resentment, his resentment of women that go for fuckboys or spiritual fuckboys. He was talking about, you know, men that are in the world of tantra. And anyway, it felt to me like, yeah, he. He's very frustrated and feels like, why aren't you picking me? You should be picking me. I'm the good guy. I'm a good guy. You should be picking me. Why aren't you picking me? And there's, and, and there's a lot of truth to that. Meaning, you know, there's a lot of ways that he is a good guy and that he wants to respect women and he wants to do right by them and he wants to respect. He wants to. I just said respect. There was another word. Make them feel safe. Have them feel seen. Like all of the things. So it's like I'm right here. I feel like if I imagine being this guy, it's like, I don't understand. I don't understand. Like I'm right here, but you're going for that guy. What the fuck? I don't understand. And it keeps happening and I don't know what to do about it. I just don't know what to do about it. And I feel like there are some men that come to us that have been living in that place for quite a while. And there are also a number of men I've talked to recently who say I've looked at some stuff on dating before, but it's all gross, it's all pickupy, it's gr. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel. It doesn't feel respectful. It doesn't feel respectful of women. It feels like some kind of disgusting, manipulative game. And that's just not me. I'm not that guy. So then it's sort of like, well, where do I go? What do I do about this? So that, you know, I've tried looking stuff up and it's felt disgusting. And then I've tried doing it the way I've been doing it and that's really not working. And I think that what we're kind of sharing here today is this is what actually works and what isn't gross and actually does have women feel safe and have you feel much more empowered and. And honestly just get better results. Just really get better fucking results. Anything you'd add to that?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, how I've been bottom lining this lately and I think I've even shared it on the podcast. Is to outgrow Nice Guy syndrome. Here's the thing. You don't have to stop being a nice guy. All the three things we're about to talk about come down to. You just have to stop abandoning yourself so you can be a nice guy, as long as you don't abandon yourself. And all three of the things we're going to cover here support men in not abandoning themselves. And I don't wanna be a dick, right. I like being a person that's kind in the world, but that. That circle of kindness has to include myself. Right? That's really what we're talking about here for Nice Guy syndrome. And that something we've witnessed many men step into at this point.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, it's pretty inspiring. It's very exciting to witness the transformation. So let's kind of get into the top three ways. These are not in order of importance. These are all equally as important. So we're just gonna do 1, 2, 3. But it's not about that. The first one we're gonna. And the way we're gonna present these is sort of what this looks like when it's not in your life, and then what this looks like when it is in your life. So a lot of the guys we work with come in and they. They don't have any of these three. None of them are dialed in. And they dial each of them in and then they get magnificent, tremendous results. So the first one is, what does it look like when a man doesn't have conscious brotherhood? What's going on? What is his world like? What's his dating life like? Can you sort of walk us through the picture of that? You can use some client examples. But just what happens when he doesn't have conscious brotherhood in his life?
Jason Lange: Yeah, he's lonely. I mean, that's the number one thing, right? He spends time feeling alone. Which, you know, the real key thing I have now been experiencing and guys I work with here is this covers a much broader spectrum than men listening may even realize. You may have friends, but they're friends of a certain type that only relate in a certain way. So I had this. And let me be clear, in my case, it was less about my friends. They would have met me here back in the day, but I hadn't done the work yet. Where I have friends, but they don't know what's actually going on inside me. And I don't necessarily know what's going on inside of them. It's very common for a lot of guys we know where it just stays surface Level or. Yeah. Increasingly, many men we work with are like, I don't even know how to make friends. Where do I do it? Where do I go? My job's remote, yada yada. They don't know where to meet it. So they don't have a lot of social connection in their lives, which in itself is often depleting and leads men to spend more time online and fantasizing and ruminating and all the things I've done, for sure. And as a result of that, oftentimes they also don't have a very full calendar. Right. So there's just not a whole lot necessarily happening that gets them into the world. And that's kind of, you know, what I would say, more the single man side of things. But we also work with a lot of partnered men who have this same problem. And I'm a married guy. I have kids. I totally get it. Defending the territory of my male friendships in particular takes a lot because my. I want to. I want to spend a lot of time with my kids. I want to spend a lot of time with my wife. And that's on the healthy side of things. But we see a lot of guys who just. They are completely absorbed into our family, and there's no time, and I can't do that kind of stuff, or I've let all those relationships just completely wither away. So basically, I have my family, work, and that's it. And there's nowhere else for me to go. And I, you know, can't necessarily talk about my personal stuff at work. And, you know, if I bring all my work burden home, you know, you can just start to feel there's not really a whole lot of space for it. So I think it's a pretty lonely place, pretty isolated place, even though you might have people around you in both these cases. And it's a place where, in particular, men just don't feel known.
Melanie Curtin: Oh, I like that. That really hits. Not feeling known. I'm thinking about. Actually, I'm thinking about two of our clients that when they in. I think were definitely in this category of feeling, feeling isolated and feeling alone. And one of them was single. And he. He was divorced. He was pretty recently divorced. And he just didn't have a lot, like you said, he just didn't have a lot going on. And I want to name a couple of patterns here that are systemic, meaning this isn't anyone's fault. It's just the way that our world is structured. One of them is the nuclear family structure where you move in with A spouse and children, and that's it. And you don't really know your neighbor. You're not walking distance from people that you're close to. We don't live in those kinds of ways anymore. I'm doing a very extended series on community living, which I have some exciting episodes coming up. Stay tuned. But the actual structure of our world doesn't support ongoing relationships with friends and neighbors. Neighbors are kind of a special, interesting role that a lot of us don't really have anymore. But to your point, this guy, he had acquaintances, and he had people that he saw at work, but he didn't have the depth of friendship and the depth of conscious brotherhood that we're talking about here. And so part of what would happen is there's this really lonely moment for a lot of people when they get home after work, or if they work from home, it's even worse. But there's kind of the. I call it the Netflix moment of, what am I gonna do with my evening? What am I gonna do with my evening? And I remember one of our clients would basically use marijuana to numb every single evening. Because there's this sense of, well, who's. Who's here with me? Who's around? I'm just. I'm just alone. And there can be that, especially if you are. If you were in a nuclear family and now you're divorced, or if there was some kind of transition that you went through and you used to have more connection in the home and now have less connection in the home. I think that's a unique and, frankly, dangerous position. Just in terms of emotional health and mental health is not feeling that sense of connection and. And. And depth. So it's you. You can be around people, like you said, but it's the depth and the ability to be vulnerable, which. The ability to be vulnerable and to be able to say, I'm lonely today. I'm feeling lonely. I'm having a moment. Or I'm scared. I'm scared about. Fill in the blank. It might be. Yeah, I'm. You know, now that I'm divorced, I'm. I'm worried I'm gonna die alone. There's a part of me that's worried I'm gonna die alone. And I. You know, I tried getting on the apps. They're not really working for me. I'm not really sure what to do. And so there's this. There's this sense of, you know, you named that word rumination, of all of this is just happening in the man's head. And he's not actually sharing it with anyone, so it's not held by anyone else. He's not actually moving through and getting support and feeling loved in his process. He's just alone, trying to figure it out by himself. And what we've seen repeatedly is that, you know, I'm going to start to shift to the other side. Is that what I've seen? And I think what you've seen as well is it actually doesn't take that long to move out of that patterning. So you can be in that patterning for years and then you can make a shift and bring in support. Right, bring in support. That's the key thing, is not doing it alone anymore. Not doing it alone anymore. Really want to emphasize that. But bringing in the support man, things can shift really quickly. So I'm thinking of that man in particular came into the program, and at the time that he came in, he was kind of hung up on an ex. So he had. He was divorced. And he had seen a woman, I think the previous fall or something hadn't worked out. And he just could not stop thinking about her. He just could not stop ruminating on this one love relationship, which is something that we often see, particularly when a man doesn't have conscious brotherhood. He doesn't have a lot of other connection in his life. His landscape is fairly empty. And so when this one point of connection comes through, he grasps onto it. There's this grasping effect. And so by doing the work, I would say within three months, three months, he had made friends in the program, right? In our program. He had made connections in our program, but he had also learned a lot about what we're talking about, of developing conscious brotherhood. And one of the things that I would say a lot of our clients do is they end up deepening friendships or connections that they have in their real life environment. So they make connections in the program, which is a big deal. And they witness other men being vulnerable and being real, and they kind of drop in. They're like, this is what it feels like. This is what real nourishing connection feels like. And then a lot of them, I call it activating. They kind of activate friendships in their, you know, IRL in real life. And yeah, this man had at least one. I think it was either one or two men that he worked with that he felt like, yeah, this guy could. He might be available for deeper friendship. And so they went to lunch and he went first. Our guy went first. He shared something that was vulnerable. And then he saw, does this man Meet me. Will he go there with me or will he shame me or withdraw or whatever he wants to do? But he felt met. He felt met by that man. So he essentially activated conscious brotherhood right where he was at. And a lot of that is, I would say, definitely assisted by being in the program. But my point is, within 90 days, he was very much. I would say. I wouldn't say he was over his ex, but he was well on his way. He was developing conscious brotherhood. And then within the next, I think it was six to nine months. I don't remember the exact timeline, he met a really wonderful partner that he feels deeply met by, and he's continuing to develop conscious brotherhood. I would say a lot of our men, when they graduate from the program, that is very much on their mind. They are. They are committed to developing conscious brotherhood in their lives, in our community. It's just. It's part of their world because they. They sense the value and they sense the connection that. That. That has to a healthy relationship. That basically, if you're a man who's isolated and you don't have any brotherhood in your life, you're much more vulnerable to get into a codependent dynamic with. With a woman partner. Way more vulnerable. So it actually serves your love relationship for you to have conscious brotherhood in your life. Any comments on that?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, how I would just summarize that most concretely is when you get into male. Strong, healthy male community, it's easier to get out of bad relationships, frankly, or not get into a bad relationship. And. Right. I've told this analogy, the analogy I use all the time here. I never know if it's analogy, metaphor, whatever. I get that wrong. You probably know you're much more linguistic, but is the old Christmas lights thing, Right. So this is the string of lights. Right. Back in the day when I was growing up, you know, single series circuit, you had the whole string of Christmas lights. And if one bulb went out, the whole thing didn't work. And what that really means is if there's only one node in your system and that node isn't there, the whole thing goes down. So if I don't have any connection in my life and I only have one source of it, I'm going to kind of take what I can get, even if it's a little dysfunctional, because the story I've told myself or the lived experience I have is, wow, to be lonely without that is too overwhelming. So at least here, you know, we have sex once a month or, you know, whatever it is. The shift we're talking about when you get into relationship is you're making the system of your life bigger and more redundant. You're shifting to that parallel circuit where suddenly your intimate relationship is part of a web of relationships. So if that relationship isn't great and you pull that out, you still got a lot of connection flowing in your life. And it makes it a lot easier to look at that in a more discerning way. And that's what we do see so called nice guys that shift into healthy male community. Really do they get out of the marriage, they get out of the relationship because that moment after when they're broken up or they've signed the papers, they now have connection in their life. Yeah, maybe it's not the intimate connection they most want, but it's brotherhood. It's people that get them and validate them and let them know, yeah, you know, you were suffered, you really tried, it was worth getting out of that. You're not fucking crazy. And it totally changes the game for
Melanie Curtin: guys a hundred percent. And I really want to emphasize that that sense of being known, that sense of being seen, that sense of being validated, we're really talking about love, feeling loved. And I know we've said this before and we'll probably say it again, but I just really want to validate how many boys are bullied and don't feel safe with other boys and by extension men as they grow up. And that again is systemic. We live in a culture that keeps boys apart, that tells boys it's not safe or accept to be close to other boys because of homophobia. And this permeates our whole culture. And so when you take that and then you add in this systemic stuff around the nuclear family structure of just all these single family homes where we live in a very isolated way. When you combine those, it's not your fault is what I'm trying to say. It's not actually your fault. The loneliness that you feel isn't that there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with our culture and there's something wrong with our structures. The structural systems of our lives do not support human flourishing. They don't. And they don't support connection beyond the nuclear family. I have, you know, done an episode about how I live in community. I have fought hard and spent a lot of time and money and energy and resources to live in community. So I live in a house with five other people. I've done that for most of my adult life. I've done that because I don't want to live alone. I don't want to be lonely. I want there to be connection built into my environment. And one thing I've witnessed is, you know, at least twice, two vivid times I can think of, I've been in a love relationship with a man who lives alone. And I've lived in community. And then when we break up, I think to myself, man, that is rough for them. They are having a totally different experience of their life right now. Yes, I'm sad, I'm processing, I'm grieving, I'm doing that. But I'm also doing it with people. I have people to give me a hug, I have people to watch a movie with. I have built in connection in my life and they don't. There's a big contrast between those two experiences. I really believe that it is easier when you have people around you that care. I'm not talking about random people, but even one caring person around you in your living environment, that makes a really big difference. And most people don't have that. Most people don't have that. The vast majority of people don't have that. Rather than have that. I mean, especially in the sort of industrialized countries, industrialized nations. So connecting with conscious brotherhood is absolutely the first way to outgrow nice guy syndrome. I would argue that it's absolutely necessary that you, you can't do it without that. It's a, it's a foundational element. And really I would say all of these are sort of critical. They're mission critical. You really gotta have all three of these points. But that's absolutely the first one. And it's more doable, I think, than you think that it is. But it does take the kind of the right groups, the right mentors, the right environments, the right places to really be able drop in and actually get real and be vulnerable. Because what I have also seen is that, you know, I was talking about the guy who kind of tested the waters, tried it out with this person. Work, it's, it's not always going to work. Some men are not ready. Some men don't want to go there. Some men are not prepared. And so it's sort of, we say stretch, not tear. This is the kind of thing that I do feel a little bit protective of men out there sort of trying it on their own. It can help to have a little bit of guidance and to have some support and to know that there's a place where you are totally accepted and supported as you're Going out and taking these risks and trying things. Because what we don't want is for you to go try something and feel really hopeless or rejected or dejected because it didn't work and then have nowhere to go process that to go have a group of men say, that wasn't your fault, dude, he's not ready. That wasn't about you. You know, you're not doing anything wrong, you're golden, you're great, you know, we've got you. So I just wanted to kind of of explicitly say that because I can't emphasize enough how much it matters to have a place to go back to, to process things when you take risks. Any quick comments about that before we go to number two?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, it's the. Exactly. It's the safe ground to return to where you have connection to return to. Which makes it easier to try things out in the world and get feedback too. You know, like, like we said, one of the greatest things about being in a group is temperature check of, hey, I have a story. This is happening. Could you guys, you know, just kind of give me your outside viewpoint? And that changes men's lives when they start, you know, it's like the moment so many of us experience when we really start entering other family systems when we're young. And it's like, oh wait, what I thought was totally normal is a little different elsewhere. That's eye opening. There's a version of that when men return to community in terms of what they've normalized in relationship that often can get shaken up. And then it gives you that safe place to just start to practice from. So it's absolutely essential. And it's. Of these three, it's the one you can't do. You literally can't do it alone. I mean, it's just foundationally, you can't get better at community without actually being in community.
Melanie Curtin: That's a great line. That's the line of the episode. You can't, you can't get better at community without being in community. In order to build community, you have to be in community, as it turns out. So that's a really important one. And I think it's worth highlighting because I do think that our culture also in the, in the sort of healing arts, when you think about like a question that I think a lot of people say is, are you in therapy? And when they say that, they often mean talk therapy, not somatic therapy. And it's a one on one container that can be very helpful. It is also often a place where we see men plateau. We see a lot of men that plateau. And I can't tell you how many men we've had who come in and they say, I've gotten more in the six weeks of this program than I have in the last two years of therapy. And the best part is sometimes they'll. So we have people do assignments, we have people do exercises. We know it's a pretty active program. You're doing things. And sometimes they'll share those with their therapist and their therapist will say, holy shit, I didn't, never knew this about you. You know, I'm learning new things and wow, you're taking more risks than you've ever taken in all of our work together. And you know, things are happening. Part of the reason for that is the momentum and the vitality and the vibrancy of the group. When you see other men taking risks, you start taking risks. There's a virtuous cycle that happens that is not possible in a one on one container. There is something about groups that is a necessary medicine in healing, particularly I think, for men, because men are kept apart because of the culture that we're in that keeps men apart. It's especially important, I think, for men to come back together in healthy, safe groups. Okay. Number two is related to your fire, your spine, your directive energy, your capacity to claim your no, to be able to say no and develop strong boundaries. This is a very common step that most of our guys have to go through that is pretty uncomfortable and they've spent a long time avoiding. Can you speak to that in kind of your own lived experience of what if someone had said are you able to claim your no in your 20s? What, what would you have said?
Jason Lange: I mean, I know I absolutely couldn't have and I didn't even know how to do it. And you know, I've shared embarrassing stories before of getting scammed by telemarketers and staying on the phone and just not not knowing how to get out of that and finding myself in situations I didn't want to be in. And that's one of the quickest ways to build resentment in life. And that frustration often is directly correlated to not being. Not being able to say a no. And that's where the shadow of nice guys often comes out, where they're actually not that nice because they're kind of crunchy and a little pissy, even if it's not on the surface, because they resent something that's happening. And, and oftentimes there's a direct line to some no they didn't set a boundary. They didn't set. And I mean, it's so important. And this is kind of what creates the nice guy pushover mentality of I'm just gonna do whatever it takes to try to make you happy. Right. And it's, you know, it's a platitude in our culture, and I think it's a very poisonous one, particularly for nice guys of the happy wife, happy life thing that, I mean, it just decimates men long term. And deep within that, this one is so important because it also touches at the root fear of conflict and fear of partners, big emotions, which is often means fear of us feeling big emotions. But that capacity, you know, again, it's another platitude we often tell our guys is no woman can trust your yes. If you do not have the capacity to say no, your. Your yes means fucking nothing. Can you pick me up at the airport Saturday morning? Yeah. Oh, wow. He's excited. No, you don't know that's a real yes. Unless you've heard that man say to you, no, I would love to support you in that way. And I need to take care of myself Saturday morning. Cause I do. I'm gonna be out late Friday night or, you know, whatever. I don't know. Just make that shit up. But this is actually the biggest, I would say, trust leak that causes damage in nice guys in their relationships, where the capacity for a woman in particular, if you want your love life to improve, she has to trust you. She's not going to open to you if she can't trust you. And trust comes from you having well defined boundaries, in a strong sense of self, in a displayed willingness for you to say no and protect yourself. Why that's important for trust is if you ain't protecting yourself, she's not gonna believe you can protect her. I don't mean like, you know, from someone beating you up. I just mean in terms of space, energy, time, boundaries in the world as well. So this one leads to so much pain for men in terms of just going along with things to either avoid conflict or because we're just trying to do what we can to make our partner happy, in hopes that they'll, in the COVID contract sense, eventually give us back what we want.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I want to slow that part down. Covert contracts, if you haven't yet read the book, no More Mr. Nice Guy, and you're out there listening and any of this conversation is resonating, we definitely recommend that book as well. And part of what Dr. Glover goes into is covert contracts, which is essentially, for example, if I'm really, really nice to you and I do the dishes and I pick up the kids and I do all these things, then you'll have sex with me later. It's a covert contract. It's. I'm not saying this out loud. We haven't made an agreement. But I'm doing things or saying things or making moves towards something because I want something back, but I'm not even necessarily aware of that. I'm just trying really hard to do all of these things because I'm hoping that if I do enough for you, you'll meet my needs. That's a covert contract. And I really liked your. Your airport pickup example. Cause I can feel in myself the kind of stress or anxiety of, oh, my God, what if I say no to her and she's pissed at me? And then I don't get my needs met? I don't get my connection needs met because she's angry with me. And. And this is something I kind of want to point out of. Often before we've done personal growth work. We are unconscious. We are not aware of how much we're repeating patterns with our spouse or whoever we're dating that we had with our parents. So a lot of it is, oh, no, if I don't do it, mom will be mad at me or dad will be mad at me, and then I'll be alone. I will be alone. They'll take their love away or they'll actually physically punish me. But the patterning is a parent child patterning versus a partner partnering patterning. Right. And so I remember a man in the program years ago who was. He was doing the work. He was doing the personal growth work. He was. He'd been out of a relationship, and he was dating a new woman, and they'd been dating for a few weeks. And she wanted to spend time with him on Friday night. And he didn't want to do it. He was tired. He wanted to rest. And this was a big moment for him because he came to the call and he said, I don't know what to do about this. You know, in the past, I would have just said yes, because that's what I was, quote, supposed to do. She wants to spend time, therefore I will spend time. It's almost like my needs just get skipped over. I just skip over my needs. To your point, Jason, about abandoning oneself, he would just routinely abandon himself. And we counseled him, we coached him on how to say, I can't wait to see you Again. And I'm noticing I need Friday to recharge by myself. How does that sound? And the how does that sound? Part is important because part of what you're gauging when you're dating is how does this person respond to boundaries? How does this person respond to boundaries? Do they say, fine and then give you silent treatment? Act weird the next time you see each other? Do they say, oh, that's kind of disappointing. I'm sad to hear that, but it makes sense. How about Sunday? How do they respond? So one of the things that happens to nice guys is that often they don't stand up for themselves. They don't set boundaries. They just, just. I'm just gonna use the word cave. They just cave. They just keep caving. They just. Yeah, whatever she wants goes. And then they get into these. I'm just gonna say it. Marriages. They just get into these decades long marriages where that becomes the reality, that becomes the pattern. Then if they ever try to set a boundary or assert themselves, oof, man. A lot of these guys, they either attract avoidant partners or they attract volatile partners. And if you're with a volatile partner and you try to set a boundary and it's going to go really poorly, and that is going to reinforce what you think. See, I tried to do it. Everything blew up. The whole thing was horrible. She's pissed at me. I'm not getting any of my connection needs met. Everything's awful. See, I tried to do it. It never fucking works. It's not worth it. That's really different than, you know, basically having healthy boundaries in the first place and seeing how the other person responds. When you do that, when you assert yourself and you see how the other person responds, you get important information and you also set the tone for the relationship. And to your point, Jason, I have been in relationships where when a man said no to me, and I'm talking about skillfully, I'm not talking about sharply or jabbingly, but just clearly and directly like I did. I'm really excited to see you again. And I'm noticing I need to take Friday to myself to recharge. That does have me trust him more to your point. I really do feel trust because I can feel this man has worked this edge around boundaries. This. This is an earned behavior. Most people, I'm just gonna say it. Most people aren't very good at boundaries. Most people were not raised in healthy family systems where both parents were skillful with boundaries, didn't abandon themselves. Most of us didn't get raised in that home. So we're just perpetuating these dynamics for fucking ever until we do the work and then we change them. So when a man skillfully asserts boundaries with me, I know he's done work. I'm like, ooh, that's attractive. Because that's earned, you know, I mean, unless he came from the perfect home, which most people didn't, it means that he's done something. It means that he's grown. It means that he's. He has earned that boundary. He's earned that boundary setting. And so it helps me relax into the container. Because to your point, Jason, one thing for me as a woman is. But when I ask you something and I can't trust that you can say no, then I know that you will get resentful of me. I know you will. So if I ask you to pick me up from the airport and you do it even though you don't want to, you're going to be resentful and I'm going to bear the brunt of that. You're going to, you're going to be weird in the car. You're going to. I'm going to have to pay. I'm going to have to pay for you not asserting your boundaries. I hate that. That's so uncomfortable. Comfortable. I'm like, please just say no in the first place. I can get an. I can figure out. I'm a grown ass woman. I can figure myself out. But only you know your limits. You are living in your body mind. I don't know your body mind. I don't know where your limits are. So if you go over your limits, if you overextend, I'm not always aware of that. But then you give me the silent treatment or you're, you just. It's crunchy. It's like I can feel the sort of. And I then am angry. And I'm not angry because you picked me up at the airport. I'm angry because you're acting weird and I couldn't have said no for you. I need you to be able to do that for me to deeply trust you. And it does. It takes a lot of work. It takes some getting used to. It takes practice. And in the case of the client I was mentioning, he did, he set the boundary with this woman he was seeing and she responded really well. And he came back on the call the following week and he said my heart was racing. I was really nervous. You know, it was, it was scary. It was a new thing for me to try. She responded. She was like, okay, no problem. Like, literally. And it wasn't an okay, no problem, but it really was a problem. It was like, genuinely, okay, no problem. Like, Friday doesn't work. We'll do something else. It's totally fine. And he was like, that has never happened to me before. That was a completely new experience. I mean, new neural nets. Like, I didn't even know it was possible for me to set a boundary and for the other person to just be okay, to not freak out, to not get resentful, to not act the way my mom would have or the way my dad would have, to actually have that new experience. And then this whole world opens up, right? This whole world of possibility opens up where he thinks to himself, wow, maybe I really can be myself with this woman. Actually be myself with this woman and actually assert myself, not abandon myself, and kind of have it all basically, right? I get to have my needs met and I get to be with this partner. It's not like I have to sacrifice my needs in order to be in a relationship. It's. I get to have my needs and be in a relationship.
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally.
Melanie Curtin: It's.
Jason Lange: It's. What's so key about this is this is the other dark side of nice guys that shows up here when we're not bringing this forward. We're in control. We're actually trying to control the situation by not asserting our no. Or setting a boundary. And in a weird way, it's actually quite demeaning to the people around us because it's assuming they can't handle themselves if we share something that is what we need, but they don't like. And the other thing, I'll just share that. I imagine maybe you've experienced, like, the other example you gave of, hey, I need to take some time Friday night.
Melanie Curtin: If.
Jason Lange: If said person hadn't said that, and you go out together and you can tell something's up. You know, I'm just curious for listeners, like, what would be happening in your body when you felt he wasn't really there or something was on? Right? What, What, What? Where do you go as a. As a feminine partner in that moment?
Melanie Curtin: I feel unsafe. I feel like I'm missing something. I've missed something. I've done something wrong, and it feels unsafe in my body. My stomach is clenching up. I don't feel happy. And then I have had this experience sometimes, and sometimes I've actually kind of called the person out on it. It's like, where are you? What's going on? Because my experience is they're not really present. They're not really present. I don't really want to be there. They're not really present. And then what most of the time has happened is we've had a fight about it. We've had a fight about it because he hasn't been able to actually kind of own, like, I didn't really want to be here in the first place. I overextended. I. I didn't set a boundary when I should have. He doesn't say things like that. He says other things. Or he's like, no, I'm here. I'm here. And it's like, no, you're not. You're not, though. You're not really here. Like, I don't. I can. I can feel it. I'm not. I'm attuned. I can feel your energy, and you're not really here. So then it's a fight. Then it becomes a fight. We're more disconnected than we were before. It's just. It's. It's not a pleasant scene. That's been my experience.
Jason Lange: Yeah, well, I. I just want guys to really hear that that, a, it caused, like, literally bodily discomfort in you is something that can happen. And B, then there's like, a. A, a closure and a stress of, did you even want to be here? Do I even want to be here? And just contrast that to, hey, I need to take Friday night to myself. I'm super excited to see you. I'd love to see you Sunday instead. I'll be a lot more resourced then. There's, like, excitement going into that. Not this kind of flat. You get in there and you spend. I imagine you spend a date like that with a man, you're probably not super compelled to want to see him again. It's like, fuck, this wasn't really worth my time. I didn't feel good. So this is the power of being able to own your no. And set boundaries, guys, that it has a real impact on the omega and feminine partners around you.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. And I would just sort of stress again that it's easier to learn and practice these skills in community. It's easier to learn and practice these skills in community. It's easier to have backup, to have the resource of a group of mentors. It's easier to make these stretches and to try new things when you have that. When you have that sense of team, when you have a team with you and behind you, it's easier to take risks and stretch. And like I said, that man had never done that before. He'd never sent a message like that. And it felt like a huge risk. And he was really scared. And we said, we're gonna be right here with you. No matter how she responds and if she responds poorly, that's important for you to know. And so he was able to take that risk because he had tribe, he had community with him. So I just wanna again emphasize the critical importance. Okay, number three, this is a fun one. It's actually maybe not fun for some of you, but number three is really, really, really important for attraction and for polarity and for sexy time. And that is processing sexual shame. So nice guys have a lot of sexual shame in a lot of different ways. And a lot of it comes from, I don't want to burden her with my needs. Or I'm ashamed of wanting sex because I think that it makes me a bad person, a bad man. Sometimes this comes from religious programming. Often it comes from religious programming, but not always. And I think that part of it has to do with a sort of perception of a mismatch, meaning I want sex more than she does. And sometimes that's a real thing. I mean, sometimes that shows up in dynamics. But I just mean in a general sense of just sort of, I want sex more than she does. What does that mean? And it can bring up. Bring up shame, but also just the sort of fundamental. I'm disgusting because I want sex. I'm fundamental. There's some fundamental flaw in me because I want sex. And the transformation that's possible here is pretty drastic. And it's one of the things that we work with our guys with a lot is how to actually move, Move through and past that belief that lives not just in the mind, but also in the. In the body. Can you share a little bit, kind of from your perspective about your Maybe your lived experience and some clients around this?
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, as I was sitting here, I'm like, oh, it's right there between two and three in a way I hadn't considered. Two is claiming your no. 3. This one, your sexual shame, is about claiming your yes. So your desire is your yes. Yes. This is what I want. Yes. This is what I desire. Yes. This is what I vision for us. This is how I want us to feel. This is what I want to feel. This is what I want about you, about your body, about our sex life. That's all in there. And for so many nice guys, their wants and desires, our wants and desires get dropped to the bottom. And a lot of times in intimacy, it's because of sexual shame. It's this feeling that my desire her literally the pleasure I see in seeing a woman's naked body, my desire to touch her, to feel her, to have intercourse with her, that's bad. That's a bad thing. And even beyond that, not only is it bad, she doesn't want that. That's not something she wants. And so I gotta hide that or stuff that until it's super either explicit that it's safe and she wants that or forever in some guys cases where literally I'm just going to kind of unplug that cord and live months, years, decades of life without owning what I really want inside. And then I'm having to pretend I'm someone else. So the sexual shame can come from so many different places, right? It can come from our family of origin, right. We've worked with guys who had very specific experiences that at a young age taught them what just happened there. Your desire, you're just natural arousal, that's. That's bad. And then that light goes off. It can come from religion, you know, sex is just for making babies. It's not a good thing. It's actually a bad thing. Don't ever touch yourself alone in the dark or you're going to go to hell. That's a pretty heavy message to grow up in the container of. And now it can also just come from secular culture, right? This kind of post me too moment where, where thankfully a lot of the dysfunction of male sexuality and objectivity, objectification has been surfaced and the power structures that support that. But there is a little bit of baby in the bathwater with a lot of the men we work with. That then, okay, I'm never gonna do any of that because it's all poisonous. Whereas one of our simple teachings we talk about in our program is your desire. Your sexual energy is sacred and, and it is not the problem, it's what you do with it. Are you bringing it forward in a safe, consensual, attuned way? That's it. And most of the guys we work with, they over index on the safety part and they completely collapse around the bringing the want, the desire, the yes forward. And without that, it creates a vacuum in relationships where either they just go dead or you polarize a pretty much an asexual partner who has no desire in sex. Because if you have no desire in sex, that's very comfortable for them. So you're going to make a great partnership if you're not comfortable bringing that forward. And it causes so many downstream problems for guys because they're not living their truth, you know, in a lot of ways. And they're actually losing out on one of the, the most powerful sources of creativity, inspiration, rejuvenation, all of these different things that sex can be in a man's life. And when that desire isn't there, you know, if it's not an asexual partner, it often means they just don't think you desire them. She doesn't know you want her unless it's clear you want her, unless you're enjoying her. And I don't just mean her body, I mean her whole self. Right. Things we work on with guys, but so many nice guys hide that, hide that stuff, that stuff that, and that's what goes right into, you know, one of the first things we would talk about on this show is the so called friend zone. And really what it is is it's just some part of you is offline and she can't feel it. And now nice guys in particular want to offline that because they don't want to be seen as objectifying or evil or all the things that can happen for sure. And they don't want to get rejected. So if I just get nice enough, well, then eventually she's going to see what a great guy I am. And it's, it just does not really happen that way. She needs to know you have access to your desire and that you don't feel shame around it. Right. She, in a lot of ways, most of us human beings, we don't know we're beautiful and desired and attracted unless someone tells us, right? We have all these ruminations in our head. And so reflecting that is so, so important, right? In, in many, in many cultures, right, Male masculine energy is often associated with the sun and lunar moon energy is often associated with the feminine. And the sun is actually what lights the feminine up. Literally, it would, that's how it works. It reflects that light. So if you are not in touch with your desire, if shame is getting in the way of that, she doesn't have a chance to shine.
Melanie Curtin: Ooh, I really like that she doesn't have a chance to shine. Yeah. My experience is, is that when I feel that desire from a man, when I feel his desire, I feel lit up, you know. And I want to acknowledge that there is complexity in this whole equation partly because of trauma. You know, one in three girls and one in six boys is a survivor of sexual trauma when they're young. So there, there is, there is complexity here. And, and when I'm talking about, or when we're Talking about a man owning his attraction, a man being right with his desire, a man being in touch with his sexuality. We're not talking about him willy nilly going around hitting on everyone and being irresponsible with that sexual desire. We're talking about healthy containment where you can contain your desire, but you can feel it too. It's not tucked away forever like you're talking about Jason. It's, it's available, it's available energy. And you can bring it, for example, on a date when you are wanting her to feel wanted that you, when you are right with it, you have choice around it. When you are not you, you don't have any choice. So it's just, it's off all the time. It's never on. The switch has been turned off. It's just not on ever because you don't want to come across as unsafe. So that's not exciting. It doesn't generate excitement. You know, for some reason, the movie Wuthering Heights is really loud for me in this conversation. And, and it was pretty popular. A lot of people have seen it. But one of the things I noticed about that movie was part of what was attractive about him was his wildness. His wildness. The fact that he was wild, he was in touch with his desire, with his, with his fuck energy, right? It's like, ooh. It was right there. You could feel it. You could feel how much he wanted her. And he was forward about it. That's part of why it was hot, was. It's not just about sexuality. It's about, about vitality, it's about life force. It's about power. And I don't mean power over dominating power, but I mean just, oh, I want this yes. Like you said, it's the yes. It's being able to claim your yes. And it comes from, you can hear it in my voice. It comes from my womb, it comes from my pussy, it comes from my belly, it comes from down there. It's legs, it's hips, it's butt, it's the down there energy. And energetically, when I feel a lot of men, I feel them from about the shoulders up. I don't really feel any. They're kind of like bobbleheads. Like a lot of men are bobbleheads. And as we work with guys, I notice, I feel the sense of their power settling down. It goes actually down into their hips, down into their, down into their power source to their root. And then they start having a lot more success with women. So it's funny because as we work with men and they actually start to make these shifts and they actually, you know, do the, do the things that we share with them. Right. Go through the practices, actually develop themselves in this way. One of the things I hear from them a lot is, wow, this is a lot easier. Like before I was trying to think it through and I was trying to basically gain like I was trying to figure it out and it was exhausting and it never worked. And now I'm feeling into my power, I'm doing this thing where I'm actually breathing and feeling down into my balls and, and wow, I've never gotten this response on a date. I've never had this experience before and it was so much easier. I didn't have to do all of that work that didn't even fucking work. So can you share a little bit about that from your perspective because you lived through this transformation as well as guiding men through it now?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, it's in for me. It was like I've talked about before, the golden key of like, oh, I literally just have to move towards what I want when I don't let the shame get in the way. If I want, want to touch her and we're in a tuned moment where she's sending me the signals, she's open for that. Which are obviously, which are usually pretty obvious. Right. And we can, we teach men to, to look for those kinds of things and we'll be teaching them more. Literally, I just have to walk through the door and that's bringing forward what I want, what I desire. And as we've talked about a lot lately on our, in our group program, even before that, it's just giving ourselves permission as mentioned to, oh, I'm turned on right now. I'm enjoying feeling attracted to this person. And that's not a bad thing. I don't have to hide it. Right? It's not like a boner shame moment in class where it's like, oh God, it's like, hey, wow, I'm really turned on right now. You look incredible. Or the way you're moving your hair, whatever that might be. And the process of getting back there and unwinding that sexual shame is so potent and so powerful for men. And frankly, it can be a gift.
Melanie Curtin: Right?
Jason Lange: We talk about this a lot because it also, if you are in a place of non sexual shame, you're a man who has touched that fire in his belly and what he wants and can name it and bring it forward in a consensual desiring moment. Guess what? You're also doing. You're creating the safe space and culture for her to be okay with her desire and sexuality, too. If you're kind of tiptoeing in shame and sex is this kind of. I don't know, thing, guess what? That's gonna reciprocate. It's gonna reciprocate a partner. Partner who doesn't feel fully comfortable sharing maybe the scary desire or kink she has. Like, hey, I'd like to try this thing, but I'm worried if I tell it to you, you're going to think I'm some kind of slut or something like that. But when we can own our sexuality, our yes. Life changes and it creates momentum for us as well. Right. No. Tends to move you away from something. Yes. Is about moving toward something when you can rock both of those and at the same time, you are not stuck as a man. You are moving through life. And that is masculine, that's directional. That in itself is a tailwind. She'll feel of. This is a guy who moves towards his desires. I want to be around that. And the more authentic you are with your desires, the easier it is for her to just quickly say, do I want to be part of that? Right. Do I want to catch the drift of this sale and merge it with my own? If you're not clear about your yes, which goes all the way back to your sexuality and your shame, you're going to be just adrift at sea. And she's going to be like, I don't. I don't know if I want to get in that boat. Are we just going to float for a while? Like, I don't know. And you can change that as a man. And a lot of it starts with learning to reclaim your sexuality and know that your desire wanting is okay, your authenticity is okay. And to bring that forward will work deeply with these other two to make you a much more trustable man.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I really want to highlight here as well that I think it really is important to receive the right support in this area. I'm thinking about multiple clients that have said something to me. Like, it was really healing for me to hear from you, from a woman, that my sexual desire is okay. Okay. It was a really important part of my process. I needed to hear an attuned woman, a woman that I knew cared about me and knew me, say, you're okay. Your sexuality is okay. That's a healthy part of you. It's okay. And I. I remember actually there was a man on retreat within the last few years. And he was so nervous, and he came up to me and he was so anxious, and he was like, oh, we kind of want to talk to you about something, but I'm a little scared. And I was like, I've got you. You know, we went and. And it was after lunch or something, and he said, I'm really. I'm pretty scared to share this with you, but I think you're attractive. And I was like, that's great. Thank you for sharing. There. There's no, like, there's no. Nothing bad is going to happen. There's no bad thing that's going to happen here. Because I think he was really afraid if I tell her this, I could be rejected. I could be kicked out of the retreat. I could be, you know, something really awful could happen, happen. And it was such an important moment for him to see, I'm still with you, you know, I'm still here. It's okay, you know? And I think he was actually partnered. I think this was a married man, which was another layer for him of like, oh, my God, am I a bad husband because I'm attracted to someone else? No, you're a human being. You're a normal human being. That is your life force. That is your vitality moving through your body. It doesn't mean you have to do something about it. But it was a really important moment for him to be witnessed in that and to be held in that. To not be shamed. To not be shamed. And just like, yeah, it's okay. We're all good. You're safe, I'm safe. I don't feel unsafe because of this. You're okay. You're okay. So I think there is something about receiving the right support and. Because I think what I'm trying to say is there are a lot of women that have a lot of stuff around sexuality. There are a lot of women that have a lot of trauma around sexuality. So not all women are going to be able to hold that position that I held in that moment of, I'm safe, I'm grounded, I'm here. I didn't just dissociate because you said that, right? I'm still with you. And I approve of you, and I approve of your sexuality. I'm still here. I think that what happens for some men is that they bring their sexuality to a woman who's not ready or who's been traumatized and hasn't processed that trauma or whatever it is. She has an adverse reaction of some kind, and then he makes that about him. He says he. I'm bad. My sexuality is bad. I hurt her, I harmed her. I fill in the blank. I did this thing, this bad. I did a bad. When it's not really what happened. Part of it's a complex situation, and part of what happened was she wasn't ready or she has a trauma background that she hasn't. That hasn't been processed yet. And so she dissociated or something happened. Right. So can you slow that moment down? Cause I think that's actually pre. A pretty common thing for a lot of men.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, this is. It shows up in a lot of ways for guys, you know, like we've talked about plenty of times on this podcast. If you're, if you're a man dating women, you're likely going to encounter women who have sexual abuse or assault in their background and some kind of trauma. It's. It's going to happen. And knowing that that's going to. Can depersonalize it sometimes, right. If you bring your desire forward and maybe make a move and your partner's not ready for it and has some kind of closure or sets the brakes. What nice guys tend to do is collapse that as, oh, my desire is bad versus she needs more time. Or this moment wasn't right. Or I need some feedback from her about how I can help her feel even more safe and relaxed in that posture of collapse, which we do see with a lot of. I mean, this just shows up sexually for nice guys, is around PE or ed, right? If my erection goes away too fast or I can't get it up, if I haven't handled my sexual shame, I am going to collapse around that which then collapses the whole intimate moment, because there's nowhere to go because I'm not in it anymore. If I've worked my sexual shame and that happens, yeah, maybe that's not optimal, but I can say, hey, hey, you know, my little man's not working tonight. I'm a little embarrassed, but, wow, you're so hot right now. And I would like to still do X, Y or Z. You can keep rolling forward, and she can have the best night of her life whether you can penetrate her or not. But a lot of nice guys haven't done that work. And so the collapse really, really takes over. So this shows up at such a core foundational place, and it's, it's, you know, when it's online, that is when our vitality, our life force, our just urge to create in the world, it moves us. Right? This is the Part of us that. That moves us across the room, moves us through our lives. And a man who doesn't have access to it often feels flat or unsafe or friend. Zony and. Right. You named it, like, in popular media. You know, there's. There's. Obviously it's the fictionalized version, but it's like a man who's, like, bursting at the seams with his desire for the specific partner. And that lights things up. You know, in the real world, it can be a little more nuanced or complex, but you have to have access to it. She doesn't need you to be there 100% of the time, but she needs to know you can go there, and she needs to feel that that's a real place you two can get inside your interaction. So this is such a key. Big one for nice guys. And it will change your marriage. It will change your dating life when you can get in touch with your sexuality and learn to again, you know, in a lot of ways, not just live from your head, but also center yourself lower, literally lower in your body. Where this energy comes from.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, And I want to slow down that moment about, you know, if you are in a sexual encounter and she has a reaction that one of the best things that you can do is slow down and stay present and get curious. How are you doing? What's going on for you? I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. Because when there is a reaction, you know, I'm imagining a man doing something sexually that doesn't feel good. And I clench or I cringe or I close. I don't want him to abandon me in that moment. I don't want him to emotionally go away. I don't want him to collapse. I want him to stay in the room. I want him to stay with me and for it to be okay. And I've definitely had circumstances where I felt like he just went. He just left. He just left. He just. He wasn't. He was physically present, but he wasn't really there in the room anymore. And I didn't feel like I. I could lead the conversation, but if he had led and made space for me, I probably could have shared more than I did. And then it just. The whole thing was really awkward. So we do have a whole episode on this. I'll drop it in the show notes that I did on basically a girl talk about what would feel good in moments like that. So if you have ever been with a woman with trauma, which, if you've been with more than three women, you Have. That might be a helpful one for those that are tracking that part of the conversation. And I also wanted to say that, yeah, there's something really exciting about a man's desire. It's exciting. You know, when we talk about polarity, it's like, ooh, it's. That's what generates sparks a lot of the time, is his desire. His. You know, I can't tell you how many times my women friends and I say, I don't, like, truly know whether I'm attracted to a man until he comes towards me. I need him to come towards me. I need him to come towards me, which doesn't literally mean crossing the room, but. But, you know, just bringing his energy towards me. If, when I feel that part, then I have more of a sense of who he is. I have more of a sense of him, his essence. How does he. How does he do it? You know, is he able to kind of. Yeah. Come towards me? And. And I really also wanted to kind of point out you were talking about the. The boat drifting and things like that. When. When he is not bringing direction or leadership. I feel like I have to. To. And then I'm now setting the tone or leading, and it. And frankly, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. Like, I have people in my life like this, and I'm like, I'm tired. I don't want to lead all the time. I don't want to figure it out. I don't want to make all the plans. I don't want to, like, do all the work. I want to be able to receive. I want to be able to be led. I want to be able to be led. And I think that's another thing about polarity, about the attraction. I don't just mean polarity in terms of physical attraction, but just if you want to be in the energy of leading, you need a partner who's willing to be led and who likes being led. And if you aren't leading, you won't be able to see, does she like being led. So you'll often get into dynamics where you're the one that's being led, and that frequently doesn't lead to great sex. Just from what we've seen, that does not tend to be a recipe for awesome, hot, connected sex. As we're starting to wrap up here, I'm curious, you know, is there anything else that you would share in terms of connecting these three or what you've seen as a pat, overarching, overarching pattern in terms of kind of. Yeah, Growing beyond nice sky patterning.
Jason Lange: These two are like three legs of the stool. They work synergistically in particularly getting in strong community with men in the ways we, we talk about and promote. That's also where you get to practice this stuff. So you get to get clear about your no in your yes, which makes it a lot easier to move through the world with it. It's really, really simple. And other men can help. You know, the platitude of men's work is iron sharpens iron. And it's true. Right. Men can help us get clear about our yeses and no's and they make it easier to express those because then we have a place to come back to in connection and safety, no matter how that yes or no request goes. So if we express our sexual desire and it's not met, okay, I got a place to decompress that with. If I express a boundary and it blows things up and it's really challenging, I have a place to come back to to co regulate. And so they, they really work together and you have to train in them. Like it's not as simple as just listening to the episode and okay, here we go. And now I read about it in a book. This is like going into the gym and doing a rep. It's doing something with your body you've never done before. Now the good news is, is you don't only have to do that on the, on the, on the ball field. You can practice in other environments which make it easier to hit that muscle memory back in real life. And that's what our program is about. That's what our retreats are, and that's what we're really passionate about.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And speaking of our program and our retreat. So we have a live retreat coming up at the end of. Well, that's actually the beginning of September. It's usually the end of August at early September, Northern California, it's in Boonville, which is not far from Napa. So you would be flying into SFO or Oakland Airport if you're flying. And then we have folks that are driving as well from Pacific Northwest, Northern California, even Southern California. I will be driving from Southern California. So if you are interested in that, you can go to Evolutionary. And then we also have our flagship program, Pillars of presence. If you can't make it to the retreat or you can do both, but that is available Evergreen, all the time. You can enroll anytime. And that is essentially a boot camp for everything that we're talking about here. You will develop conscious brotherhood. You will process sexual shame and you will learn to develop your healthy. No. Including processing anger. Healthy anger. We didn't get into that a lot in this episode. We've got other episodes on that. But that's a really critical element. And you can find info about that also at Evolutionary Men Apply.
Jason Lange: Exactly. And we'll teach you everything you need in that program. And the beauty of the retreat is we can be literally in the room with you as you get your reps in and you get to have some meals with us. It's pretty fun.
Melanie Curtin: It's so fun, you guys. The meals are incredible. Incredible. What was it? Chocolate banana bread pudding? Obviously, I go first. It's outstanding. Outstanding. And it's beautiful nature. It's a really, really great time. We would love to have you. I think we have eight spots left. Is that right?
Jason Lange: We have eight spots left as of today. That's correct.
Melanie Curtin: Eight spots left. Come and get.
