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?
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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?
Jason Lange: For many men, if we are allowed to feel an emotion, the one that is considered manly is anger, right? And so troubling thing for a lot of guys is they explode into anger, right? Explosive anger and aggression. Just, I lost my lid. I blew up. You never just blow up. Generally, what starts to happen is, and I work with guys on this is, oh, yeah, I felt my belly start to tighten. There was a lot of heat in my face. The sensation starts, and then the emotion is a part, a carrier wave of that, in a sense. And if we don't have any agency around that, we become fused with the emotion. And it takes us over and we have no agency or responsibility in it. Right? And it doesn't have to just be anger. It can be grief, it can be fear. There's totally different things that drive our behavior as men that we often don't realize. And then our right, our intimate partners are often like, I can't feel you. I want to feel you more. I want to feel closer to you. And we don't know how to talk about what's going on inside of us. And then that starts to dysregulate us. Maybe we feel uncomfortable about something at work or something going on with our kids or whatever. And no one's taught us to know what's going on inside or how to express it. So what do most men do by default? We reach to something outside of us to try to change our inner state. Alcohol, weed, porn and masturbation, overworking, food, video games, tv, you name it. And lo and behold, that actually generally makes us less available in our relationships and creating more and more struggles long term. So men's groups in particular, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about them as a tool to improve intimacy in relationships is it becomes a safe place where we get to practice getting connected to ourselves and sharing that, actually bringing it out of our insides and putting it outside and then getting feedback on it from other men. And so many men, I know when they start to have that experience, they realize, oh my God, I've been craving this all my life and I didn't even know. I didn't even know how much I was missing this. People who love me enough to challenge me, right? Terry Real, the therapist, he has a great word for, he calls it carefrontation. I confront you with my care. Hey, man, I care about you so much. And I see what you're doing with your co worker and I see where that might lead your life. So I got to ask you what's really going on here?
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): Most of the people listening to this have been affected by infidelity in some way. So let's talk particularly to the men. What do they bring into a group? What are the stuff that you see them having to work through?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I've absolutely worked with guys on both sides of this. So the guys that are the perpetrators of infidelity and the guys who have been on the receiving end of infidelity. When I work with guys who have been on the receiving end, the first thing I'm often working with them is just the grief. Just right. The heartache of why did this Happen. I feel shattered, I feel gutted. Once that's been metabolized as best we can, a challenging thing I often work with men on is in where do I need to take responsibility for what happened. Infidelity rarely comes out of nowhere, right. In the sense of our partner was wanting a certain type of connection or missing something. I have no idea. Right. I'm not here to excuse it, but usually it's driven by something. Right. And that's where men sometimes really have challenges. It's been a challenge in my marriage of my parents definitely did not model what healthy, open communication was and what ongoing intimacy and passion was. Right. They just kind of became two people living in the same house, managing their lives together. I didn't see them kiss, I didn't see them embrace. They didn't go on dates. And lo and behold, you know, they end up splitting up later on in life. Where a lot of us guys struggle is how do we create and maintain intimacy long term, both emotional intimacy and erotic intimacy. And that is a skill set we actually have to learn that I think our culture really drops the ball on, right. We're fed all this Hollywood stuff. They met and then they lived happily ever after. And it's like, well, actually that's generally when the real relationship starts, right. The real hard work starts when you're committed, you've moved in, you've got kids, whatever, and the hormones aren't there, the sexy dates aren't there anymore. It's, wow, we're both really stressed out, we're overworked, we're raising kids. How do we even find time for our relationship? And most men I know, by the time they get to me, part of them realizes I did not know how to create connection with my partner. And so I can kind of see why they disappeared. I don't agree with it, right. But I can see I wasn't bringing something to the relationship. And that's a painful thing for, you know, these men to realize. And then on the other side, yeah, a lot of times it's, they didn't know how to talk to their partner about what they weren't getting or wanting or desiring. And so instead of being forward and rocking the boat or disrupting things or potentially causing some conflict, they kind of covertly try to get their needs met. They don't get met, then they feel resentful, so then they go get them outside of the relationship.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): If you appreciate the Affair Recovery Room
Jason Lange: podcast, we'd like to know.
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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?
Jason Lange: No. I credit my men's groups with really all the great things that have happened in my life, including helping me get more embodied, helping me understand what I'm feeling, helping me make choices to go after the things I really wanted the most in my career, professionally, in my marriage, etc. I can't tell you how to even more micro level how many times a men's group has prevented me from having a pretty rough fight with my partner because I come in all charged up about she's doing this thing again, it's all her fault. They listen, they hear me out and then they know me. Not all the time, but often they can push back and say actually you realize you have a part to do in that. And I'm like, no I don't. They're like, yeah, no, you did it. And then I have to see something I maybe didn't want to see and acknowledge that, oh, this deep issue in my relationship, guess what? It's not just her fault. I'm co creating it. So I don't have control over her behavior, but I do have control over how I'm showing up. So instead of going home and having this fight, now I get to go home and share an insight I've had about myself and attention I've been feeling in the relationship, which almost always creates more connection, right? Or for me, I'm more of a so called nice guy. I've had a harder time bringing forward my desires, setting back boundaries in my life, etc, dealing with conflict in my men's groups have helped me get really clear about if you don't name what your truth is and what your desire is, you're gonna move more and more into resentment in your relationship. And you know, all the research shows there's no greater poison for intimacy than resentment. And I've literally had groups help me get clear about, you know, I made a cross country move with my family a couple years ago and the timing of it was really challenging and I didn't feel quite complete where I was at and I want my daughter to finish school and I was sitting in group sharing all this and it just became super clear with their feedback if I just stay quiet on this, I am going to move from such a resentful poisonous place, resisting every moment of it. And as I acknowledge that, I realized, oh my God, and that is going to destroy my wife. She will be devastated because she won't get to enjoy this experience of building a new home and a new life. And so I had to, I went home that night and I was like, hey, here's what I need to be able to do this move so I can just be a hell yes to the whole process. And I needed four extra months, which meant we had to pay a double rent and a mortgage. And it had a real cost. But emotionally it meant I was all in for the ride. Yeah, I got very excited and we got to wind down our life. And that would not have happened if I wasn't in my group, knowing my, my system, in my history.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): I think what's really important to kind of hook onto and what you just said is that learning how not to be that nice guy, you know, and I, and I think what's meant by that is I'm not going to be the person just withhold saying something that's going to come off as critical or maybe upset you and so forth. The solution to that is I'm going to stop being a nice guy by being someone who's selfish and demanding. What you described is, oh, I realize when I take that posture it actually hurts, hurts the relationship that turns into resentment and being critical. And I don't want that. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want that for my relationship. So if I'm going to love, well, I've got to show up, I've got to be real, I've got to be honest. I've got to take that stuff that's hard to say and speak honestly, be authentic, be real. And being in a group taught you how to do that better 100%.
Jason Lange: And Dr. Glover is one of my mentors and, and friends and I work with a lot of so called nice guys and you just hit the nail on the head. And what I teach guys is you don't have to stop being nice. The only shift means what nice guys, what we tend to do is we abandon ourselves in order to keep the peace with someone else. It doesn't mean we stop being nice to other people or caring about their desires. The commitment is, I'm not going to abandon my desires in service of that. I'm going to try to hold both. I want this, you want this. That right there is the essence of conflict. That's it. I want this, you want this. And so learning that, okay, conflict isn't the enemy. The more honest I am, the more truthful we can start to be in our relationship. And what we do figure out and build is going to be on a much stronger foundation. And yeah, my men's groups have really helped me, helped me see when I haven't been setting boundaries in my life where I needed to professionally or with my kids or different things that I didn't want to see, I didn't want to acknowledge. And they're like, no, actually that's your responsibility. Rather than complaining all the time about working, like you actually have to set a boundary and say, I'm unavailable for this. My group helps me see that and brings that forward. So it's an incredible place for skill building and also just as men having a place to bring our burdens and stress. The other thing I see really impact intimate relationships in particular is because so many of us men are or taught this culture of emotionality is weakness. We have nowhere to share that. We get into a relationship with a partner, she becomes maybe the only place we feel comfortable sharing a little emotion or vulnerability or fear. And if she's the only place we're doing that, guess what? She can feel it. It feels like she has to become your mother or your therapist. And it's often a turn off, not a turn on. The simple shift of we don't have to stop being vulnerable with our partners, but when we're being held in a larger context of men who she knows and can feel. I'm really stressed out because they said my job might be over next month. I'm telling you that, baby. My guys are helping me figure out what my plan might be. It comes across totally different because she's like, oh my God, your, your wellbeing isn't solely on me. I often use the visual. The old strings of Christmas lights back in the day, right, Were single series circuits put up your whole thing of Christmas lights, right? And if one bulb went out, the whole thing went dead. That's how a lot of men approach relationships now. Their intimate partner becomes their everything, their best friend, their lover, their therapist puts so much stress on the relationship. What a men's group does is it distributes some of that. So, okay, if things aren't going well in my relationship right now, that's okay because I have all these other connections that can hold me and create some space for me. And it creates. What I've seen is just a lot more durability for men in particularly in their intimate relationships.
Host (The Affair Recovery Room): Boy, if that's Something that they could cultivate. It's not just a benefit to them, but what they get from that is also going to impact their marriage and other, even relationships with children and so forth, because of the balance it brings into our own life and the things that it brings out in our life. So let's imagine that guy that's listening to this going, well, he's describing me. I really don't have close connections with other men especially. What he's describing is something that I think would be really good, but, you know, it's kind of scary. I've never done anything like that. Not even sure what that looks like or how we get started. What can they do if they're interested in finding out more from you?
Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, you know, you can come to my site, evolutionary.men and I have all kinds of programs on. I have something called the men's Group experience, which is just like a 12 week. Okay, you want to experience what it's like to be in group with five other guys and you go on a virtual journey together. I have men's groups that are specifically around wanting to cultivate more capacity in intimate relationship, to become a better leader in your marriage or if you're single and attracting your partner. And then I also have men's groups that are about doing the deep healing work of processing emotional trauma from earlier in our lives that are shadow work men's groups that are like, okay, yeah, most guys have this experience where there's this thing, I keep doing it. I don't want to be doing it. I try to not do it, yet I keep doing it. It's almost always pointing to some kind of shadow material we need to heal. I train guys as well on, okay, you want to create a group in your community. Like, here's how you do it. Here's how you pull together some friends at the most simple. What I tell guys is you just start with a buddy. Someone you have a sense, has some depth and has some yearning for connection. And the new leadership I teach men is we don't wait to go first. We go first. So we pull a buddy and we say, hey, here's what's going on in my life right now and what's hard and where I'm in pain. What's going on for you? And turns out what I do see in men's groups, and I imagine you see this too, is once men have a safe space to talk, they actually have quite a bit to share that they've been holding inside. And it's like a Floodgate of oh my God, just the very, very act of speaking it out loud often starts to re regulate their nervous systems and create some space and some well being again, that allows them to take more of the actions they want to take to create more of the life they want to create. I do work with men in person. I do work with men virtually. Ultimately my dream would be every man has a local men's group. They're physically going and sitting in circle with guys in their community. Depending on where you live, that can be challenging. And for some guys, virtual is actually a little easier because of scheduling. With kids or jobs, you just, okay, I can squeeze in 90 minutes here and not have to leave my house. Or for some men, I work with a considerable amount of men. Some of their deepest trauma actually comes from other men being heavily bullied as kids, being assaulted by older men in their lives. And so just the physical act of being in a room with other men can be very dysregulating for them. So starting virtual actually creates a lot of safety because I'm just, I'm in my space, you're in your space. And we get to start to rewire things at a nice pace to build up some trust with people and then it often becomes easier to do it offline as well. You know, there's so many different ways to do this now. I'm by no means the only man leading men's groups. You're leading groups. There's kind of a tidal wave, I think of them coming right now because it's a, it's a real challenge in our culture right now, right, that loneliness rates. I talked about suicide rates for men. It's like three out of four suicides are men. This kind of stoic thing we're taught, it has real repercussions on our health, on our well being. And my argument is a men's group is one way we can really start to reformat that and get men connected to themselves, to each other and, and frankly to just a loving place where they're allowed to share themselves fully without judgment or shame and receive feedback to become sharper and more accountable and actually move towards the things they want to move towards in life.
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.
