A man can spend every Saturday with his buddies, watching the game, at ease on the outside, while his wife is weeks from walking out the door and he hasn't said a word about it. Not because he doesn't want to. Because he genuinely doesn't know how.
That's the loneliness I see most often in the men I work with. Not an absence of people around them. An absence of anyone actually knowing them.
I was a guest on The Affair Recovery Room, and we got into the real roots of why so many men end up in crisis in their intimate relationships. The culture of masculinity most of us were raised in, this idea that being a real man means being invulnerable, self-sufficient, stoic. You don't share weakness. You don't ask for help. You figure it out. The problem is that intimacy requires the exact opposite. You can't stay connected to a partner you can't communicate with. And if you've been trained from childhood to get out of your body, you can't communicate what's happening inside you, because you don't know. Emotion starts as a physical sensation first. Most men never get taught that.
This is where a lot of infidelity begins. Not from nowhere, but from years of accumulated disconnection. A man who never learned to name what he needed. A partner who stopped feeling him. A slow drift that neither one had the tools to address.
We also got into what men's groups actually do for all of this. I shared the Christmas lights metaphor, what happens when your intimate partner becomes your everything, your best friend, your therapist, your sole source of emotional safety, and what changes when that load gets distributed across a real community of men who know you. Not your highlight reel. Your patterns. Your wounds. Your blind spots.
My own group has redirected some of my worst moments before they landed. A cross-country move I was headed into from resentment. Fights I was about to go home and have. They knew me well enough to say, actually, you have a part in this. And I've had to sit with that, over and over.
What would it mean for you to be actually known, not just liked, by the men around you?
Read Full Transcript Full episode text for reading and search
Jason Lange: So many men do not know how to talk about what's going on inside them. So they hold it in shame, which then drives it even further inside and then creates a deep type of loneliness. Right. So I hear this all the time for. Oh, I do. Yeah. Well, actually, I spent. I just spent all Saturday with my guys, but they don't know my wife's about to leave me because we don't talk about that stuff. We watch the game. Even if they're spending time with other men, they're desperately lonely because no one knows actually what's going on inside of them and they don't know how to talk about it. And they assume everyone else has got it figured out. I'm the only one that's struggling. Right. And the beauty I'm sure you see in groups is when that facade starts to drop. What starts to relax in men when they realize, wow, okay, I'm not the only one. Maybe I'm not uniquely messed up. Men's groups provide this place for a couple of different things. For men to get a sense of deep belonging and connection, often a deep sense of purpose, meaning your presence as a man in a good men's group really matters. It matters to the other men. And they often get skill building. So this capacity to learn, to get more connected to our bodies, our direct felt experience, and being able to share these things in real time with men who know us, a good men's group, they're going to know us. They're going to know our wounding, our background, our pattern, our challenges. And they're going to know what we want the most in life to help us course correct if we're lost, feel stuck, or if we go astray.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): Most men spend their lives learning to be independent, but very few learn how to be really known. Today's guest, Jason Lange, is a men's coach and group facilitator who believes that we. What most men are missing isn't willpower or better habits. It's a place where they can finally tell the truth about themselves and be met with honesty in return. Jason and I talk about the hidden emotional patterns that shape men's lives and their relationships, often without them even knowing it. And we get into what happens when men come into a group after infidelity, whether they were the ones who broke trust or. Or the ones who had their trust broken. And we push past infidelity to the bigger question underneath. How does a man learn to show up, really show up in his own life and in his most important relationships? I'll tell you This I believe in the power of group dynamics. Some of the most significant shifts I've ever seen in others and in myself have happened inside of a group. This conversation will make you think about why. I'm Tim Teder and this is the Affair Recovery Room.
Jason Lange: Welcome to the Recovery Room, a podcast presented by affairhealing.com.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): Jason, you kind of have a unique focus in that you work with men and you really work in the context of encouraging men to be in groups with other men as they're working through their stuff. How did you even get to start doing that or have that passion?
Jason Lange: Yeah, my passion for men's groups really started because of my own journey. I was raised in the outside of Chicago, kind of lower middle class, white guy, lots of privilege. Basically all my security needs were kind of met growing up. But I had this experience, as I think a lot of people often do, became an adolescent into a teenager, started experiencing other families and realizing, oh, there's some things pretty different about how I was raised. And the main thing that became very clear to me was I was raised in a household without any emotional connection or physical connection, really any kind of touch. We all lived in the same house and my parents kind of took care of me, but they didn't know how to talk about things. They didn't know how to talk to me. We never really embraced each other and certainly did not model healthy communication. This awareness is happening for me simultaneously as heterosexual in my case. So I'm interested in women as a teenager. I'm getting, you know, hormones are racing through me and I would get around girls I was attracted to and my body would get sweaty. I wouldn't know how to talk. I would get really in my head and really emotionally uncomfortable. Physical proximity would make me, like, uncomfortable. And so it kind of kicked off a journey of I saw all my friends getting into relationships and having experiences, and I was kind of perpetually single and stuck. Essentially got so intense in my mid-20s that I was like, okay, there's got to be a different way to be because I feel pretty miserable in my body day to day. And I found somatic therapy and I found men's groups. And those were the two things that really started to shift things for me more than anything else. And even with being around other men, I started to realize, like, oh, wow, it's so interesting. Like, these guys, I, I like, they horseplay with each other, they, like, wrestle. They kind of, you know, not like in a aggressive way, but they'll kind of tussle, push each other and it just was not in my nervous system's wiring to do that. So it wasn't even just female touch, it was male touch. That was like so uncomfortable for me. And I found in men's group, it was a place where I got the opportunity and reflection from other men to start to learn what was happening inside of me and how to communicate that.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): You tie a lot of this back in your understanding and insight into, oh well, here's my experience growing up, here's the things that I had, here's the things I didn't have and understanding how that's affected how you experience intimacy, relationships, emotions and all that sort of stuff. When I especially working with men, trying to help them gain the same kind of insights, a lot of guys just resist doing that. Maybe it feels like, oh, I'm not going to blame my parents on my stuff, they just don't see the value in it. You've recognized the value in it. I've certainly recognized the value in that. And I want you to speak maybe a little bit more to that. But also the interesting take in your experience of not just realizing, oh, I need to learn about this. But you learned it very specifically in the context of being around other men and observing and being part of that interaction. It sounds like that did some things for you that maybe outside of that context you wouldn't have learned. Is that kind of a right take on what your experience was?
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. I mean in the parents thing, certainly what I work with guys on is it's not even about blame, but it's about acknowledging impact that our family system impacts us even in the best case scenario. And often our family systems system impacts us. So how our parents are raised, and if you're not aware of that, we will keep reproducing the same hurts and patterns over and over and over again. I see it time and time again with men and then yeah, for me, you know, my experience in men's groups, I think it dovetails into why so many men, I would argue these days have a real hard time in intimate relationships is the culture of masculinity we're taught is invulnerability. To be a man means to be invulnerable. I don't share weakness, I don't talk about what's going on inside of me and I never ask for help. I figure it out. If I'm a tough man, that means I'm stoic. I don't share what's going on inside. I'm totally self reliant. Right. Particularly here In America, it's this whole myth of the Marlboro man, the kind of rugged, cowboy individual that many of us boys and then becoming men are really assaulted with. And so this thing starts to happen. And, you know, I had some unique experiences, obviously in my family system, but we're talking more at the cultural level here, where from a young age, it's thankfully starting to change now. But most boys are trained to get out of their bodies. Oh, you fell down, you're tough. Just get back up. You can do it again. There's plenty of evidence that shows often young boys and young girls are parented differently around pain, around emotion, around tears, around toughness. But then this continues up and through adolescence. And, you know, our bodies are developing at different age. Bullying starts to happen in group, out group. And what we're taught as boys is keep it all inside, don't share any weakness, don't ever, ever, ever be tough, right? And then we get out into the workforce and, you know, we're celebrated for working 80 hours a week and sleeping under our desk, which the only way to do that is, guess what? You have to destroy your body. You cannot be healthy working that kind of way. And so there's this culture of men are taught and often rewarded in the professional sports world, you know, back in the day in the military, for being out of our bodies. And where this starts to impact relationships is, guess what? If you want to have a successful intimacy, you have to be able to communicate, and you have to be able to communicate what's going on inside you, what you want and what you're feeling. But for us men and in the work I very much do, I consider that all emotion starts first, is a physical sensation in our body. And so if we're not taught to even be connected to our bodies, guess what? It becomes even harder to be connected to our emotions.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): Give me an example of that. What are ways that our emotions show up first in our body?
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): If you appreciate the Affair Recovery Room
Jason Lange: podcast, we'd like to know.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): We'd like others to know too. Please take A minute to give us a good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify
Jason Lange: or whatever service you use.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): To those of you who do, thank you so much. Jason, what do you think are the changes you've experienced in your life that you suspect may not have happened apart from this experience of being in a group?
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): I appreciate Jason being part of today's show and sharing with you the power of the group dynamic when it comes to helping men gain insight into themselves and, and move towards significant change that affects their lives and their relationships. I especially want to encourage those of you men who might be listening to this and maybe a little bit confused on the other side of infidelity, about how you're supposed to see yourself and see your circumstance and what all of this means and what change might look like. It may be that a group setting is the very place you need to be in order to start figuring some of this stuff out. I've included Jason's information in the episode notes. I encourage you to look up what he does and maybe consider being part of his program or finding someone in your life who is willing to speak honestly into who you are and what your life is about. If I could be of help to you, reach out to me. I'[email protected] the contact information is there. Thank you for being part of our show today.
Jason Lange: Faith over failure Hope over pain Finding the courage to love once again in this healing place. In this healing place.
