As men, we're living through a time where the old playbook has been thrown out the window, but no one handed us a new one. That's exactly why I was excited to sit down with Ryan DeMent on his show Chasing Happiness. We dug deep into the crisis of purpose that's hitting so many men right now, and I shared some insights that I knew his audience needed to hear about navigating this masculine identity shift.
One thing I talked about is how the old paradigm of masculinity isn't enough anymore. Get a job, work hard, provide for your family. That was the formula. But something more is being asked of us now in modern relationships, as parents, in the world. And a lot of men saw the destructive side of disconnected masculine energy and said, I don't want to be that guy. So they swung to being the nice guy. Super accommodating, can't set boundaries, walking around with shame and codependency. That's painful too.
We got into masculine and feminine energy, which I know triggers some people, but hear me out. We all have both. The work isn't about being stuck in one or the other. It's about developing fluidity, knowing which energy to bring in the moment. Sometimes you need to step up and lead. Sometimes you need to soften and let someone else come forward. And here's the thing with couples, if you both stay in the same energy all the time, particularly if you're both in your masculine grinding through life, the erotic charge dies. You become great roommates, co-parents, but there's no juice. Learning to play these energies is crucial if you want to keep that aliveness in your relationship.
We also talked about nice guy patterns, covert contracts, sexual shame, and how a man's deepest purpose is often connected to his deepest pain. What knocked you on your knees might be exactly what makes you uniquely suited to help others.
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Host: Hey, guys. Ryan Dement from Chasing Happiness podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day today. On the podcast, we have Jason Lange, and Jason is a men's guide. And he thinks and feels, and I know I don't want to say feel. He thinks that every man should be in a men's group. And I agree. And we're going to talk about this wholeheartedly. So, Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Lange: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ryan. Pumped to be here.
Host: Cool. Thanks for coming on. I know it was a little bit of a wait. Good to have you on. So before we get into what you're doing, a little bit about who you are.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I'm a men's guide, I'm a men's group facilitator, and I'm a family man. So I'm happily married, have a four and a half year old, another kiddo.
Host: On the way, and congratulations.
Jason Lange: Thank you. My. My journey into men's work, honestly, is just my own journey, so it's work. I started in my 20s because I wasn't showing up and feeling how I wanted to feel in my life. There's a lot of pain there for various reasons. And men's work was the primary thing I found, particularly men's groups, to really start moving the ball for me in terms of evolving from a man who was extremely uncomfortable and disembodied and didn't know how to connect with women, uncertain about my career, my future, to. Yeah, now, someone deeply in love, raising a family, very much on purpose and stoked to be alive.
Host: That's awesome. Could, and I'm not trying to digress, but I already starting to digress is, yeah, bring it. Could you say that even if we're men or women, we were lacking purpose? It just seems. It seems like there's a lot missing in today's society.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I would say this can go for either gender in a sense, but I think it particularly hits us mentally hard. Right. Because we grow through challenge, through service, through feeling like we can provide, in a sense, even if it's not for a family, it's for our culture, it's for our world. And for a lot of men, we feel most on when we're like, here's where I'm going and I'm working towards it. When we have that sense of purpose, and for a lot of men these days, there's an extra level of. Even if they don't know their personal purpose, in a sense, a lot of men feel off purpose because we're not sure what we're supposed to be anymore. The old paradigm of what it meant to be a successful man. I get a job, I work hard, I provide for my family. That's not enough anymore. It is not enough. Something more is being asked of us in modern relationships, in the modern world, as parents, as whatever. And that leaves a lot of men pretty lost of I don't know how to be. Many I work with, Ryan, were raised seeing the impact of what I call pathological masculine. So men disconnected from their heart, can reap on the world, whether that's violence against women, abuse, environmental degradation, you name it. There's plenty of examples. Doesn't mean all men are bad, but a lot of men saw that and they're like, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be that jerk that just dominates other people. And so then there was a move to the more sensitive nice guy of I want to be safe. I don't want to overpower other people. And those guys are in quite a bit of pain too. I consider myself a nice guy. Not able to set boundaries, not able to ask for what we want, often walking around with a lot of shame or codependency. And so essentially, a lot of men are just left and like, what am I supposed to be? I don't know. How am I supposed to be in the world? And that, I would say, also attacks a man's sense of purpose, in a sense. And so a big part of, I think, why men's work, this movement I'm involved in, is really, there's like a tidal wave that's really starting to crest right now is because men want to know how to show up in the world, how we can be of service, how we can be more loving, how we can be valuable to our friends, our communities, and how we can know in our heart what our purpose here in the world is. Yeah, why should I even get up every morning? A lot of men don't know that. And that makes life really hard.
Host: That makes life hard altogether. If you don't have purpose, direction. That's, I've, I think we've all been there. And that that's tough. The, I guess I'll just jump right into. Gender roles are just, they're, I'll just say it, they're fluid, as they say, and I'm not. I, I don't agree. I, I, I agree men are good at certain things, Women are good at certain things. But where do you think we fell off the rails? Where do you think this all changed to? Where the struggle for men became a huge issue.
Jason Lange: Yes, I think there's a cultural evolution here in that. Yeah. For the majority of human history, to a large extent, our roles were predetermined by our biology. Men can do certain things, women can do certain things. And so your life was actually pretty constrained to that. You didn't have a lot of choice or freedom for much of human history about what you were going to do. In that sense, in the last hundred years, particularly starting in the 50s, 60s, we started to liberate from that. Meaning, did my camera just die? So there's a. There. There's been a cultural shift here. And in particular, starting in, like the 50s and 60s, we started to get liberated from our biology. Meaning, just because I was born in a man's body, I have to do this, and these are the expectations of me. Just because I was born in a woman's body, I have to do this. And these are the expectations of me. And to me, the work I do in the world, I call it evolutionary men. I think that's a good thing in the sense what we're wanting to do is take the best of what's been before, but liberate it from the constraints as well. What started to happen was women were empowered to not just be essentially mothers.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: We can actually have a world, a life outside of the family. I can have a career, I can have my own desires and wants, and I can move towards them. And that's a positive thing for us men. What started to involve is we're allowed to have an inner world. We're allowed to have feelings, we're allowed to have creativity, passions, pursuits, an artistic side. Some men did that, but in general, culturally, it was like you have to do. And both of those are positive movements. But the thing is, we can get lost in them in that you use this word fluid. And the way I teach fluidity is, yes, we are asked. We are being asked to be more fluid these days in these energies that are not constrained to biology. So in the work I teach, you can use whatever words you want. Some people are super triggered by these, but they work for me. There's masculine energy and there's feminine energy. And the truth is, we all have both. Even a man born in a man's body has feminine energy. Same thing with a woman born in a woman's body. She has masculine energy. Some of us are more resourced in one of those energies. So, meaning when we spend time there, we're able to bring our gifts to the world in a more powerful way. Let's just say, but all human beings have to play with both. And what's really being asked these days is that we can develop a fluidity to know which energy do we need to bring in the moment. So sometimes the best thing to do is step in to our directive energy and take charge. Other times as men, sometimes actually what we need to do is to soften and feel and let someone else come forward. And for us to acknowledge what's going on inside of us. You know, there's lots of different ways this stuff plays out, but in. In essence here it's like these energies are musical notes we can play. And we have to learn in any given moment what note here would bring the most love and the most consciousness. And so there is an actual thing that we have to develop some capacity in both. And in my work in particular, I don't think we can even truly bring like the highest order, let's say, of masculine energy until we've experienced in ourselves what it means to truly surrender, to know that is just as powerful and vulnerable, but in a totally different way than it is to lead and vice versa. I think for the. The wisest kind of feminine energy in the world, there has the people I know that embody that have. Have an inner masculine where they can hold themselves in a sense. So they're not surrendering because they have to. They're surrendering by choice. And so where we went off the rails is people tend to, particularly with men, criticize men for what masculinity was for the majority of human history. Right. It's just take it, conquer domineer power over and often in a sense, somewhat destructive if not careful. We've evolved quite a bit from that and it's way more complex now. And we need both of these energies in the world. The. In the Taoist tradition, we have the yin and yang. And it's actually not just either or. There's a little bit of each one in there in that beautiful diagram. You can call these energies whatever you want, but they're foundational to. To the world. Life and death at its most, simply consciousness and energy. It shows up in lots of different ways. And so where things have gone wrong is that us men lost track of the positive sides of masculinity, I would say, in a big way. And then culturally that's been lost as well. And what we're being asked to do in this moment is to bring that forward in a sense of no, not. I don't believe in toxic masculinity myself. I believe in Pathological, as I say, which just means something's gone wrong in somebody's growth and development as a man, and that needs to be addressed. And when that's addressed, masculinity is actually an incredibly powerful force in the world that we need more of in this day and age, frankly, not less. Because the feminine, whether that's women or anyone embodying it, they're doing their damnedest to hold this planet together, and they can't do it alone. They actually need us to get in there with them, so to speak, and for us to do this together. I don't know if that quite answered your question, but that's my first take.
Host: It does, but the. Where I wanted to go I'll keep going with it is I agree there's push and pull, there's give and take. I, I agree on all that. But when it comes down to roles, and I'm not trying to define them, but I'm trying to get to a specific point and see where it takes you. Men can actually, how should I say this, they are typically going to be a person that's going to be a little more dominant than a female in most cases. Am I wrong? Yes. No.
Jason Lange: Depends. And why I'd say that depends is you can put a little bit more testosterone in a woman and she's going to be just as dominant. Right. So a lot of it. So it does come down to individual personalities. But yeah, men tend to come in with a little bit more of that directive energy, is how I would.
Host: And, and people don't realize men have estradiol and so forth. And there's all these other things that are going on. But what I'm trying to get to is you said something. Was society in, in. I can't remember the other piece, basically in, in general, that we've lost that direction and being able to push and pull. What. And you went back to a little bit of history. But I want to go a little bit deeper is when you're. You're trying to work with the two genders and you're defining masculinity and femininity, there seems to be a lot of blurring and crossing over and there really isn't some fine lines that you shouldn't cross or that that should not be crossed versus everything seems to be very fluid. It all mixes. Do you get what I'm trying to get out of here is there's a lot of. There's a lot of. There's a lot of confusion where I.
Jason Lange: See a lot of troubles with modern Couples in particular that I work with is what we call reverse polarity. So polarity, again, it doesn't have to do necessarily with gender because you can generate polarity in same sex couples like it. It's not dependent on just literally sex organs, this masculine and feminine energy thing, but polarity, if you just think of it like magnets, right? If you have two magnets and they're both positive, they repel each other, best case scenario, they're just neutral. Like nothing happens when they're opposites, there's actually a force that pulls them together. That force in particularly in romantic relationships, is erotic energy, right? It's sexual desire, it's charge, it's this desire to be with. Now the thing is, erotic energy requires difference, meaning. Part of the problem we see in the world these days is, yeah, a lot of women have come forth into the world. Essentially they've developed an inner masculine. So they're at jobs, kicking ass, they make money, they're CEOs, they're taking care of business. So they're often in their masculine energy. Not all guys, but a lot of guys these days that particularly I work with are more than nice guys. Little not sure what our purpose is. We're a little more wishy washy in the world. We're super nice, we're not very assertive, but we have, we're really connected to our feelings, to our hearts. And a couple like that meets or over time, the, the juice disappears. There's. Yeah, I, I like you. You're my best friend and I am feeling no turn on for you. And so the I think what you're pointing to here is most of life these days for couples I know actually exists in a non polarized place. You don't walk around these days all the time being like, I'm in my masculine, telling my wife what to do. The truth is my wife has an incredibly powerful masculine. And sometimes she actually knows what to do around certain things better than I do. And I would be kidding myself in those things if I was like, no, I have to assert myself here. It's no, you're actually better at this thing, so I'm gonna let you do it. That's part of where we've evolved as couples. The trick with that then is if we want to keep erotic energy alive in our relationship, we have to know how to play these notes to create that force of attraction. Which means if I want my partner to soften, whether it's a man or woman, into their feminine, I have to step in to my masculine Energy, which is not a lot of the things people think it is. It's actually about grounding my body, about stilling, about becoming very present and suddenly, boom, there's a charge, right? With my breath, I can turn on my wife, right? Literally. How am I breathing in? Being here with her can start to turn that erotic charge back on. So it is in a sense, I think, to tie it together to what you're saying, things are becoming more fluid, which paradoxically makes it even more important to understand how these energetics work with each other. Because otherwise, and I work with a lot of men who get there. You're 10, 15 years into a marriage and your wife's. I just, I don't feel it for you. We have no, we don't have sex, there's no charge. We're great co parents, we really love our kids or we're really friendly with each other and there's no juice there. There's no juice there whatsoever. So learning to bring these energies back online is incredibly important for the sustainability of a couple long term in particular. Again, it's not that one is better than the other. It's wow, if we want to have this charge, one of us has to step into this one energy and the other has to step into the other and that can change. That's true. I'll tell you, man, I work with a lot of really powerful men and most of them love it a couple times a year if they just get to sit back and their, their partner steps into the lead and like plans the date or takes charge and they just get to sit there and receive. And they're powerful dudes and most of the time they like to be leading. But sometimes, you know, it's nice to feel that flip and to just, ah, okay, I don't have to hold the reins tonight. You've got it. Um, but again, if you're both trying to be the same, and that's where things really fall apart. So understanding the energetics underneath the roles is part of what's important here. So it's not that you have to be this way as a man or you have to be this way as a woman. It's more, ah, I have the capacity to step into this energy in service of generating this erotic energy with my partner.
Host: You've talked about it several times that most of the. It sounds like a lot of your clients are the nice guys that you work with.
Jason Lange: I would say probably about 60% of guys I work with are self identified nice guys. I'd say the other 40% are high achieving men who do not have access to their heart or feeling body. And so their work is not to get more shit done. It's to actually learn to slow down and be into contact with themselves and their relationships and vulnerability.
Host: For the nice guys out there listening, what would be three nuggets that you could actually share to help them if they're struggling and they're on that path?
Jason Lange: Yeah, nice guys. This term I'll just throw out there, which is often like a matrix moment term for a lot of nice guys. And I get this from my mentor, Dr. Robert Glover, who framed that term, wrote the book, literally is a start to become aware of where you're running covert contracts. So a covert contract is I am doing something in hopes of getting something back, but I have not actually explicitly asked for it or created awareness around it. So a covert contract means, ooh, particularly nice guys do this with women a lot or their wives. I'm going to run this contract. I'm going to do these things for a lot of men, not all men, but a lot of men. It comes down to I'm going to do these things so she has to give me sex back. That is a formula a lot of men write. But there's never been any actual agreement around what's being asked for. So a man is doing all these things. Nice guys tend to do a lot of things for women. Then they don't get something back and then they get frustrated, they get angry, they get resentful, oh, I'm doing all this stuff and she never appreciates me or whatever that might be. But the man has never ever actually asked for what he wants because to ask for what he wants is way more vulnerable and actually brings up possibility of rejection of she could say no, that person could say no. So men will run these covert contracts oftentimes because they're feared of, fearful of rejection or for some guys they're just totally conflict avoidant. They do not want to create conflict. And what that does to men over time is it makes them feel very disempowered, very frustrated and honestly to people they interact with, often very untrustable because people will start to feel it over time. I think there's something else happening here and he won't say it. So become aware of your covert contracts. You a big one along with that. It's really getting honest with yourself as a nice guy about where do you and do you not set boundaries in your life? Right. Where do you or do you not set boundaries in your life? Most nice Guys have a really hard time setting boundaries and sticking up for themselves or saying no to things that aren't aligned with their life and their vision and what they want. So that would be number two. And then number three, I would say is most nice guys I know, not all again, but most nice guys I know tend to carry a lot of sexual shame. So in their mind, the fact that I am turned on and want a partner sexually, whether it's a man or a woman, whatever, doesn't matter, is a source of shame. So my sexuality is not a good thing, which means I have to hide it. Right. So I can't actually be forward with the fact that, wow, I'm really attracted to you. And the paradox of that is when we feel shame around our sexuality, that's often what makes people feel creeped out by us. I can tell he's not. I think that guy's checking me out. I don't know if he's checking me out. He's looking down. He's not quite just open and. And enjoying me and letting him know. Letting me know he's attracted to him. So, yeah, three little nuggets for nice guys there in that. Most nice guys I know, for whatever reason, whether it was mom or dad, from a very young age, had to learn to attune to their parents nervous system versus their parent attuning to theirs. Meaning they learned very quickly how to soothe someone in their family and had to show up in a certain way in order to do that. And so from a very young age learned in a sense, to forego their own truth or feelings or needs in the moment.
Host: Very deep. Very interesting. You said something. And I'm gonna go back to. We're getting to the bottom of the hour, so I wanna be able to ask a couple more questions that we talked about earlier. Purpose. How anybody. It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to say men or women, just anybody in general. Human being. What do you do when you have somebody that has no purpose? How do you help them? What tidbits could you share with the audience on that topic?
Jason Lange: Yeah, for the masculine in particular, for men, which tend to embody most of the masculine, it is incredibly painful to not know this. Like it's an actual type of depression we experience. I don't know what I'm here to do and the journey to that. I could spend a year with a guy. Sometimes I'm covering that. But what I often see Ryan in certainly was in my own journey. And then I've witnessed in many men. I Work with is our deepest purpose in the world is often connected to the deepest pain we experienced. So whatever it is in our life that created the most adversity, challenge, hurt that we had to learn by, by choice or not to survive actually makes us uniquely suited to support other people in going through that journey because we've lived it and we can share with them and sometimes just offer them hope in a sense of hey, I was there and I got here and I know how hard it is to be there. I know how hard it is to be there because I was there. And so for a lot of guys, the path to purpose I often see is by getting men more deeply connected to their wounding. This doesn't mean being a victim, but it actually means getting right to the root of what was sometimes just totally overwhelming or hard about their childhood or their divorce or something that was like totally knocked them on their knees in a sense. And as they get in touch with that pain, there's wow, that was so hard for me. I don't want it to be that hard for anyone else. Here's how I can give back to the world in that capacity. That's one pathway I often see for a lot of men. And the thing I do a lot of work with men on purpose and what I love about it is sometimes it's these big lofty things, I'm gonna start this nonprofit or. But oftentimes when we really have our purpose dialed in, it's something we can live moment to moment just in individual interactions or relationships, so to speak. And when a man has that, which doesn't even always mean that's his work, right. This is another huge pain point for a lot of men, particularly in the men's work world. There's this thing that oh my God, my work has to be my deepest purpose. And if I'm earning money isn't aligned with that, I'm off purpose. And it's way more nuanced than that. Cuz I can tell you some of the most on purpose men I know what they have are like incredibly high paying jobs that fuel a ton of money and resource and energy into their lives that then allows them to actually live their deepest purpose. Which might be taking a couple of boys out on a rite of passage adventure in the wilderness or volunteering a certain amount of time or it's not always we like to romanticize, oh, I'm going to live my deepest purpose and it's going to be how I make my money. I oftentimes see for a lot of guys it's far more nuanced than that. And sometimes we do work in the world that gives us fuel to actually do our deepest purpose, which I'll tell you, I've met men who, I don't deny it one bit, their deepest purpose is to raise their children in a way that's more healthy than how they were raised. And so everything they have is. Yeah, is right. Is flowing towards that. And so their job is maybe doing whatever X, Y or Z, but that job gives them financial stability and flexibility with their schedule to actually be present in their kids lives. And that's a way where the job actually flows into the purpose.
Host: Love it. I love that. Are you currently bringing on clients or taking clients?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I work with men throughout the year. I have a evergreen program that I focus on with men that is about how do we cultivate this deeper masculine presence, particularly for dating and relationships. So if we want to repolarize our existing relationship or finally attract in a partner that we want to create something deep with. And then I do a shadow work program a couple times a year, which is the deepest work I do, which is the men's group where we really go in and look under the hood at a. Oftentimes what's been running the show for me that I haven't been conscious of, that, lo and behold, is often rooted in our childhood experiences. And then I take private clients and I do live retreats as well because. And the whole frame is as men in particular, don't do it alone. We are not designed to do this all alone.
Host: Which groups are online? Are any of them online or are they all in person?
Jason Lange: Yeah, most of my groups are actually virtual. My dating and relationships course, that's virtual. That's all virtual. The shadow work program I do with men is actually a hybrid. So it's a virtual program with a live retreat in it. Because we can go the deepest when we're in the same room coaching. I do mostly virtual and then my live retreat is obviously in person. So if you just want to get in the room with some other guys, which in itself is often quite revelatory for men.
Host: And the best place somebody can connect with you if they wanted to start working with you.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So you can check out me, my podcast, everything I'm up to at Evolutionary Men. So not dot com, but men. And you can see hours of podcasts I've done, articles I've written programs I'm running, and if nothing else, just hit the contact form and say, hey, what's a men's group? How do I get involved? And it. I may not even refer you to me. There's a lot of stuff out there these days, so I might point you to something local or something that's suited for where you're at.
Host: Perfect. Sir. Thank you for coming on. It's been a great conversation, but you being able to help men find purpose is huge. But also the conversation was a lot deeper, and I love that.
Jason Lange: Awesome. Yeah. Glad to be here. Thanks for creating the space, man.
Host: You're welcome. Have a good one.
