Navigating Nice Guy Recovery | Insights from Jason Lange | Real Men Feel with Andy Grant

Jason Lange: So excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Andy.

Host: Yeah, I'm really psyched to talk to you. Back in 2020 and 2021, I facilitated groups at the appropriately titled website mensgroups.com mensgroup.com 1. No. Yeah, 1. Singular. So many men came there because of one book, no More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. It was practically like the bible of the organization because one of the things that book stresses is every man should join a men's group. Now, I know that you have worked with Dr. Glover and are a certified no more Mr. Nice Guy coach. So for people not familiar with that, that bible of men's work, what would you. How would you describe Nice Guy syndrome?

Jason Lange: Yeah, and kind of how I work with it, in a sense, is nice guys tend to be born into a context where, Right. We both, as humans, we have two primary needs when we're born. One is security and attachment. So human beings are very quite unique in the. In the world, in the sense when we come out of the womb, we cannot survive on our own. We literally, we will die if we're just left to our own devices. And there's all kinds of biology around that. Our brains got too big. So birth started happening basically a trimester earlier. But that. So we come out. And we need secure attachment, which means we need the people around us to take care of us. We also come out with this need for something called authenticity, which is our need to express what's true in ourselves. I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm sad. I want this, I don't want that, right? And those are two human needs. Now, the birth of Nice Guy syndrome in my book is what happens when those come into conflict. So in order to maintain healthy security and attachment, generally with some kind of caregiver, often, but not always, our mothers or a female figure, when in order to do that, we have to start to disconnect from what's happening inside of ourselves. So another way to think of this, Andy, is, you know, ideally, the environment when we're growing up as kids is our parents are attuning to our nervous systems, right? So they're. They're. The directionality of attention is them to us. With nice guys, something often happens where very quickly we have to attune to the nervous system of someone else, often a primary caregiver. So in order to take care of our mother or our father or keep the peace, there's a certain way we have to be to keep them well regulated, in a sense. And the cost of that is often us disconnecting from our truth in the moment. And so the origin story often goes quite young, in a sense. And then if we pair that with some of the cultural context right now of many men, I think, I imagine that you worked with and I've worked with over the years, were raised by seeing the impact of what I call kind of pathological masculine. So men disconnected from their hearts, that can hurt the environment, hurt their spouses, hurt their kids are checked out or alcoholics are volatile or whatever that might be, where you know, still kind of rounding out the tail end here of the MeToo movement and all of this truth coming to light of just the many ways different men in the world have abused their power and rank. But point of that is many men who often, but again, not always, were sometimes raised by women hearing about all the awful things certain types of men do or sometimes experiencing it themselves, right? With an abusive father or neglectful father or something. And so the other part of Nice Guy is often, well, I don't want to be that. So it's kind of the pushing away of the macho jerk in some sense, the. The kind of assertive, authoritative, aggressive guy who just goes for what he wants. So nice guys end up kind of having this paradigm of what's important to me is that whoever I'm with feels safe, supported and is okay, is not in some kind of distress. And I will mold my behavior to make sure that happens. What then often happens is because I'm disconnected from what I need instead of being able to ask for it directly. Nice guys, as Dr. Glover says, we create these covert contracts and try to get those needs met in other ways. So, you know, a typical one as well, I'll do this for you because then you'll have to do that for me. But I've never actually asked you if you were up for that agreement. And then when you don't do that thing back, I get really frustrated or resentful or passive aggressive about it. So the work, you know, I do with nice guys in a sense is. And I actually think in the long term view here, nice guys are an incredible evolution. We want men who are connected and have the capacity to attune to other. The problem is some of us nice guys throw out the baby with the bathwater and then totally disconnect from ourselves. Our truth, our, our wants, our desires, our sexuality even. And we don't actually get the things we want in life. And frankly we become less trustable because people can kind of feel we're not really being as direct as we might want to be because directness might cause conflict. And we don't want to cause conflict. We want to keep everything nice. Right?

Host: Yeah, yeah. That, that niceness can feel artificial and that I think that's what people. Something off there.

Jason Lange: Right.

Host: So I went back and so Dr. Glover was a guest on, on this show back episode 224. And I went back and one, one of my favorite quotes out of that was Dr. Glover said if I'm a nice guy then everyone will like and love me. And so that's the, the essence of that covert agreement. Like I'm, I'm being nice to get me something. I'm. I'm not nice because it's just my general affable nature there, there's something in it for me. So there's like a, almost an evil intent to, to the niceness of a, of a nice guy, at least at times.

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. And there's lots of ways nice guys can actually sometimes be not very nice because of all the COVID lack of truth kind of passive aggressive manipulation that I don't, I've done it before. Like, you know, I'll out myself. Like I've been there, I've done it. And it's like ah, in retrospect, yeah, that wasn't very kind, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Host: So I wanted to ask what got you involved in this work? So was it your own discovering your own nice guy syndrome or something else?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, before I even knew, you know, about the term of nice guy, for me, it started with just pain around women. I did not know how to connect to women. Got really awkward, nervous in my body, uncomfortable around touch, and that kind of on ramped me in my late teens and early 20s into, you know, just the general path of self discovery and personal growth. And then I got super lucky man in my 20s came across a men's group back in, you know, mid 2000s, when they weren't quite as prevalent as they are now. And that just radically shifted the direction of my life because I started to get feedback from other men about how they were experiencing me, how I was showing up when I wasn't being truthful. And they would sometimes dig under the surface and help me discover what was actually going on there. And then as I, you know, went into men's work, like a lot of men. Yeah. I discovered no more Mr. Nice Guy. And I was like, oof, ouch. You know, this is, this is. This rings pretty true for me here. And for me, the, you know, maybe there's two flavors of nice guys, one of which is kind of just desperately seeking approval from, from others and love. And for me, it was a little bit more on the spectrum of just total conflict avoidance. Just could not handle conflict in a sense, and it would just overwhelm my nervous system. And reading that book and starting to do men's work and learning like, oh, yeah, wait a second. Boundaries. These are a thing, right? I need to be able to identify them and set them. And as I teach guys now, you know, it's actually the quickest way to find out if you want someone in your life, you set a good boundary with them. If they respect that, awesome. They don't respect that. They just answered your question.

Host: Right. It's almost like that's their.

Jason Lange: It's.

Host: It's. You're giving people an opportunity to put up their hand go. Yeah, I have a covert contract with you. I'm. I'm not as nice, affable, supportive, whatever I might seem on the surface as perhaps you. You thought about that relationship. You. One thing you said back in one of your first lines, first sentences, since you're getting here, you mentioned authenticity as a basic infantile need. And I don't think I've heard, I've heard self expression, but I really like how you stress that it's our authenticity at the core of our being that is yearning for expression and recognition.

Jason Lange: Yeah, it's this. Right. Self expression, I think, is quite related to it in a sense of, oh, here's what I'm authentically feeling. And so I'm able to share that in my environment or relationships react to it. You know, in a sense, I need this. I'm feeling this. Like that's an actual capacity we need as human beings. I'm hungry right now, so I'm gonna cry until someone feeds me. Right? That's a basic authentic expression that unfortunately, you know, even as young kids will learn to start manipulating of like, oh, but if I cry too much, then I can tell mom isn't happy when she comes for me. So I'm not going to cry when I'm hungry. I'm just going to be a good little boy. Right. You know, there's so many ways this could manifest. And suddenly we're kind of, you know, in a sense, we start to betray or neglect ourselves in the process. And I think, particularly in relationships, this is somewhere it shows up because, you know, basically, if it. If the person you're with, you keep having the experience of they're not even willing to stand up for themselves, the easy leap of judgment is, well, then how can I trust them to stand up for me? Right? And I see this in romantic relationships a lot of like, wow, he is tolerating something that is pretty awful and he's not saying no, or he's not speaking back to me and setting a boundary, and it actually can create a, like a repulsion or I don't trust you or affect that. It's pretty often shocking to some of the guys I work with when they, like, learn to get in touch with maybe a little bit of angry anger or. No, in a healthy way, not in an aggressive way, but just like, hey, no, it's not okay to talk to me like that. Their partners actually end up feeling more trusting of them because it's like, oh, I can feel you. You're not going to be pushed around. In a sense, I can trust that you have this capacity to be here and stand up for yourself, which then again, by extension is. You could probably do that for me too.

Host: Right? If. If we value ourselves, we'll value other people too.

Jason Lange: Yes.

Host: But if we're lying to ourselves and lying about every relationship and doing everything covertly and, you know, being manipulative, whether, you know, consciously or unconsciously, like, like, energy is felt.

Jason Lange: Yes, it, it.

Host: Yeah. What we present to the world is not what the world perceives it truly. It gets our authenticity, and we can be authentically masking who we are, trying to hide that too. So it's. Yeah, it's. It's a trip. I've. I've found. I hear this from a lot of guys, and it was my experience, too, reading nor Mr. Nice Guy. It's a tough read.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: I don't. You know, I have not met many men that pick it up. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sure I'm a nice guy. I can't wait to identify myself in here. Like, no, it's like, I liked being nice. I didn't like being called a nice guy.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: And that was my experience growing up.

Jason Lange: And.

Host: What was it like when you first. First read the book? Did you just see truth in every chapter? Or was it, you know, just some aspects of it or.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think the experience I had is probably similar to what you've. You've noticed with Ben. It's. It's often like a. Ooh. And like a little bit of revulsion of like, oh, like, yeah, wow, did they read my diary? Like, is it really, you know. Which on the one hand is often like. And on the other hand is like, oh, wait, I'm not the only one. Okay. This is like, I'm not broken or something. It just hears for me. It actually eventually generated some compassion for me where it's just like, oh, this is just some habits of my nervous system I learned when I was really young that aren't serving me and aren't serving the people I'm around. So let's. Let's work on changing that. Right. And getting the tools from, you know, working with someone like Dr. Glover or getting into a group or men's work. Like, that's really, in my book, the Path Out.

Host: Cool. So one. One term that's been said multiple times already, and I just. In case it's new to someone or in case never. Like, how would you define men's work?

Jason Lange: Yeah, menswork. It is such a vague term in a sense, but it's really just the work. I say men because I work with men, but it's the work of becoming more whole and human, so just more whole and feeling complete and okay in ourselves. And for a lot of us guys, that often involves becoming more present and grounded in our bodies, more open and sensitive in our hearts, connected to our feelings, and then more clear and in. In a sense, control of our awareness. So we're not just getting lost in thought or rumination or regret about the past or fear about the future. And it's in a sense, all kinds of different work that just work those three muscles. So ideally we get to this state that, you know, I try to cultivate with men of.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Grounded in our body, open in our heart, and sharp and clear with our awareness and able to, in a sense, and I know you orient it towards what's most important.

Host: I know you call yourself an embodiment coach. So is. Is the essence of that, you know, getting men back. Back in their physical body and. And embracing all of their sensations and whatever it means to be themselves.

Jason Lange: Absolutely. So the idea is, you know, particularly for nice guys, but for a lot of men and, you know, culture and just lifestyle these days don't particularly help us in the sense of phones and commercial. Like just everything's trying to take us out of the moment generally. Right. Distractions, chemicals, whatever. But this idea of so much of so many men I work with, I think nice guys in particular get to this place where they think they have to figure it all out in their head. I'm going to. If I just thought of the right answer or mapped it all out, I would crack this and it'll be perfect and I won't get hurt or I won't do it wrong or whatever that might be and can heavily ruminate and are often missing. Nice guys in particular, like I say, I think that connection to our. The lower part of our body, our instinct, our drive, our desire, our impulse, quite quite literally in that the process of bringing that back online is so empowering for men and often includes not just connecting to our physical body, but our emotional body. Right. Like that. The name of your show, Real Men Feel. There's a way that. The way I kind of teach it, you know, pretty much all emotions start as sensations in our body, right. It's an actual bodily. Oh, I feel the heat going up my chest, down my arms. I'm angry. Right. Wow. There's this pit in my stomach. I just feel, whoa, I am scared. Like, I'm so scared. Or, you know, can just feel this heaviness in my face and my chest and there's just so much grief. Here it comes, you know, and so the more we get into our bodies, the more we get into our hearts, in my experience and why it's important is it makes us more effective. I think that's why I tend to emphasize the embodiment stuff. You know, the. You probably know the. The vagal nerve. Right. It's this collection of nerves that go from our brain down our spine. And it's basically what connects the brain to our body. It's kind of the central channel for that. And they've done research and wildly enough, if we consider that, you know, let's say a superhighway, 80% of the traffic, 80% of the traffic flows body to brain. Only 20% of the traffic goes brain to body. So when we're not in our body, we are actually missing out on an incredible amount of information we can use to inform our decisions and make better judgments and lead our lives. So getting into our bodies is often one of the best ways. Whereas I say it's like we kind of learn to surf the moment, you know, our body is the antenna feeding us. And that gives us information that then helps us make a decision that doesn't always come from up here. And there's tons of research about it. Right. Of how, how fast the body can make certain decisions. And then we'll like out, try to out think it above. And it's like, oh, I know that first impulse was actually right.

Host: Yes. So many insightful, powerful, truthful things being shared here. And I hope it's, it's landing with him because this is the really rich content. And you know, in my own experience of being alive and in working with other men so many, so many times, I must go, I'm like, hey, how you feeling? How you doing? Like, I don't know, I don't know. And so, so much of that is because we're trying to think our feelings and being, not being, not being present, not being in our body. You know, men truly don't know how they feel. And I've seen studies and research that men process their emotions by, through movement and that if you want to talk to a man, go, go for a walk. Don't, don't like for a spouse to sit the husband down. Like, I got to talk to you, it's serious. And you sit down and just stare at him like that's like the worst thing for a man in many cases. But if you go give him something to do, like, you know, while woodworking or while walking or chatting, while bowling, like anything. But if a man has some physical action to almost distract the mind, they can get more in touch with the heart.

Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah. And I would name that as, you know, the. What's the term they use? Right. Is interoception. So we have proprioception, which is awareness of, like how our body's moving through space on the outside. Interoception is the awareness of what's happening inside ourselves and us men in particular, Andy, you know, we're dealt a pretty terrible deck of cards here in that, as I say, you know, from a young age, most boys and men are taught and rewarded for being out of their bodies. So their body, their ability to disconnect from their body, right? So young boy, stop crying, Toughen up, you know, just get over it. Yeah, you're fine, right? You can just feel all that energy that so many of us received, which what it's really saying is ignore what's happening, ignore what you're having, what you're feeling, right? Override that. And then we get into school, right? And they do show, right? Boys, we have certain different biochemistry. We need to move. We're wild. We learn through moving, through action. Sit in this desk for eight hours and don't move again. We're taught, override what's happening in your body. Then we become teenagers, you know, locker room culture. Don't ever share a vulnerability, don't ever show weakness because they're going to use it against you, you know, and then up through, you know, in some sense, even though it might not connect with it. A lot of sports, a lot of professional sports in particular, it's push your body harder and you're going to pay for it later in life, but we're going to reward you right now for literally destroying your body and brain with some of these sports, you know, it's pretty wild. And then what we're rewarded for in our work oftentimes as men is, oh, he works 80 hours, he's such a hard worker, he doesn't even sleep right. And you're, and you think about it and it's like we reward men for being disembodied, for being disconnected. So many of the world's most dangerous jobs, men do that actually cause harm to our bodies. You know, it's certainly changing these days, but traditionally military service was mostly men kind of disposable bodies. It's just this whole thing is kind of weighing down on us. And then most of us, you know, I've met a few who were lucky, but most guys I know didn't necessarily, particularly in earlier generations, have parents that knew how to actually attune and slow down and be present with them and help them actually identify and label and know what the sensations they were having in their body are. Which to me is this is one of the, you know, primary gifts parents can give their kids. And I see it a lot now as a father of, you know, this thing my wife and I are trying to do of give my daughter language for the experience she's having in her body. So, you know, we're like, no, you can't have another cookie. I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it. Wow. It seems like you're really mad. You're angry right now, huh, that daddy told you you can't have another cookie. And then you can, you know, you can actually see it over time, sink in of like, yeah, I am angry. Yeah, I'm mad. I want another cookie. Lo and behold, that's how she learns to label that sensation in her body. Ah, that sensation, that's anger or that's sadness or that's an anxiety or, you know, whatever it is. We have books on this stuff that we're teaching our daughter and I'm like, oh, I learned something every time I read these, right? My capacity for labeling, my inner world goes up in that. You know, I think this is particularly for men. I work with a lot of guys in relationships and yeah, it's really hard when their woman's like, what are you feeling? He's like, and then she gets mad, you know, that he doesn't know what to say. And it's like, well, he's had 25, 35, 45 years of no. 1 teaching him that. And that's kind of putting him on the spot, you know. A great question I often do for men is just like, yeah. Can you name a physical sensation you're having right now? Yeah, my chest, it feels hot, feels tight. Great. That is fantastic information to share, even if you don't know the, you know, emotion necessarily correlated with it yet because our body tells us so much.

Host: What is it about men's groups that make them so?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think it's for one, a safe, like, honestly, a safe space where, you know, whether it's a men's group, a women's group, co ed group, gay group, straight group, the. The idea is what's important is something happens when we're in a group that has enough shared reality that we've kind of been raised in a similar context. And I think for men in particular, there's just this feeling of, oh my God, these guys get it. Right. I see this all the time. Of once a man starts to share something, relaxes of, wow, they get it. You know, I see this. It's kind of intense, but I've seen this and experienced this with men before of, you know, bringing forward like, just tremendous hurt and depression and even like A part of me sometimes just doesn't even know why I want to live. And I think sometimes other people can jump in, like, oh, my God. But sometimes I've seen just another man just be like, yeah, man, I totally know that feeling. And just that moment of, oh, okay. You know, that feeling creates so much connection and humanity in a sense. And it's that capacity to, you know, paradoxically, oftentimes what I see in men's group, Andy, is it becomes a safe place for us men to actually bring forward our feminine, our emotional selves, our feeling selves, in a very safe container where no one needs anything from us. They're not our spouse, our kid, our employee. There's no burden of how we should have to be. So we're allowed to just kind of bring ourselves forward and feel. And the relief I see that create in men is unbelievable because without it, you probably know this too. Most men walk through the world holding so much because they don't know what to do with their emotions. They don't know how to label them, and they have no idea where to put them. So instead, we just kind of clamp down internally. And then if things get too dysregulated, we grab a drink of booze, some weed, jerk off, go work harder, whatever that might be, to try to get away from those feelings. And men's group is often just a place where we're allowed to just be as men, where no one needs anything from us. And we're often guys just. They want us to flourish. I just want us to, you know, do well in life. And, you know, the other part I'll just add in there, that's just as important, I think, is the. It's the ability to get clear, loving feedback. I think something that many men, even though they can sometimes be terrified of it, actually crave. I kind of call it the spinach in the teeth thing, right? It's like when we discover we have some men in our life who will actually tell us when we have spinach in our teeth of like, hey, I'm seeing something right now, or I'm seeing a way you're showing up and it's not so great, man. And I love you, and I believe there's more here. You, you know, you could do better in your relationship or with your work. That actually, often for us men, when it's delivered in a caring way, it feels like love. Like, oh, my God, this person actually cares enough about me to kind of call me forward in what they're seeing in my life. And I think a lot of men just do not have that.

Host: Yeah. I can't think of a single men's circle, well, official or unofficial, that I've ever been in that didn't have. When that first guy crosses that invisible line and shares something vulnerable, perhaps surprising, and it gives permission to everyone else to do the same thing. And, and this is where I see the competitive side of men actually be of service to them. But, oh, we're going. We're doing. It's that kind of group. Oh, we're going to share. All right, well, let me find what's. What's my darkest thing that I never would have dare spoken about today had I thought about it, but here it is for me. And. Yeah, and I do know how you feel. We're talking about your depression, talking about your suicidal ideation. Talk about how much you hate your job, whatever it may be. But once when, again, when one man is willing to be seen fully, that authenticity we spoke of, it gives permission to every other man. And I think I agree with you that men are dying, literally dying, for that permission to open up, to share, to bring their femininity forward. Because before man or woman, it's human. And there's a lot of differences, but there's a lot of similarities, too. And having emotions is one of the similarities.

Jason Lange: Learn to safely work with those things. And honestly, for a lot of guys, to tie it back to what you were mentioning, one of the ways I often use men's group when I'm leading it or in it, and often see useful for guys is helping them get clear about what they're feeling or needing. Right. To actually get in touch. And suddenly it becomes like. It's like a light bulb goes on. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm actually pissed. I'm mad at my wife for doing that. That's what this is about. I'm mad at her for doing this. And that clarity then informs them to be able to go back into the world and engage in a clear and concise way. Right. Rather than acting out of some kind of deep resentment that they hadn't really been clear about yet. And they're kind of withdrawing from their partner. And then their partner feels it and, you know, it just gets sticky. But. Or, you know, I've seen it with guys in work, and it's just, you know, it's like you've been trying to do this thing for, you know, six, nine, 12 months, and it's not happening. Like, you know what's going on. You just dig them deepen. And deepen in with the man. And it turns out it's like I actually don't want to do it. You know, I actually just, if I'm really honest, I don't want to do that. I feel done or I'm just doing that because I thought it would make me more money or something like that. And then again it informs the action they can take back in life. So I often find men's group gets helps me get more into my bodily experience and get clearer about what it actually is. So then I have like a direction to go back into my life with versus just coming in of just like I'm not, I don't feel good, you know, I'm mad or I'm sad. Like is often I still all these years sometimes will come into that and then my group will help sharpen me up and help me get clear about what it is.

Host: What are some of the common challenges that have men coming to see you today?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I would say first and foremost, one of the reasons I focus on dating and relationships for guys is pain around dating and relationships. I mean, it's kind of woven into my story and how I started. But I've just found it's honestly not to be too crude here, but it's one of the only things that'll get guys asses off the couch is when their wife leaves them. Or they've been stuck online dating and first dates for two years and they're just so frustrated and burnt out that there's some kind of connection they're wanting in an existing relationship or one they haven't found yet. And they realize like, I need some help, this is not working. So oftentimes men who are struggling in intimacy or relationship, certainly men who are struggling with like direction and purpose, like.

Host: I don't know, I don't know what.

Jason Lange: I'm doing or kind of hate my job and I'm not sure what action to take next. Often get a lot of guys coming to that and then more and more. I'm also starting to get to work with men who are like, you know, I'm 50 to 60 years old, my kids have grown up. I kind of did the escalator of life, you know, I did the family, I got the high paying job. I've worked my butt off for, for 30 years and I'm kind of miserable. Like I'm kind of miserable. I did all the things they told me to do and yet I just, I'm not waking up feeling good in my body. What is going on here? Yeah. And there's that kind of.

Host: Yeah. Same things I've been finding for, for decades like that. I see that the biggest mask that men carry around is that everything's fine. Got all figured out.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: And then when they, when they're willing to get introspective and, and to share it to someone else, you know, I've done all the things I'm supposed to, but I'm still miserable. What, what did I do wrong?

Jason Lange: Right.

Host: And, and hopefully that, that pain of disappointment is enough to make someone speak up. A buddy, the, the bartender, you know, therapist, coach, men's group, whatever it is. But I, I, you know that that's when I, I, I wish men pain enough so that they crack open. Because I, I, I, I have not met a man in my life that didn't have some level of hidden pain, often hidden shame about that pain to begin.

Jason Lange: Totally. Yeah. It's part of that condition.

Host: And then if, if on top of that. Yeah, on top of that you're pretending to be nice and helpful and that everything's fine, that just, it, it does not inside.

Jason Lange: And you know, another one that maybe kind of straddles some of these that I also get is just a lot of men are just lonely. Just. Yeah. Such an epidemic. Desperately lonely. And again, you know, society isn't really helping in this part. Things are moving to work from home and virtual and public spaces keep disappearing. And you know, it's, it's hard if, you know, in a sense. And I think for a lot of men, you know, outside of that kind of K, through high school or university years, if they, many men, if they haven't gotten their guys by then out in the world, unless they're lucky with the workplace, they can really struggle to build those new connections, particularly later in life. And again are just kind of dying of loneliness inside, which then I've often found impacts their relationships because then they're so lonely they're willing to dive into things that are extremely volatile or with unhealthy partners because it's better than nothing. Right. In a sense. And what I've seen is men, you know, create this solid sense of community around them, particularly through a group. It allows discernment to come back in relationship and so much more nourishment through connection that you know, guys lives just tend to get really quite a bit better and that, you know, the other thing is they live longer. Right. All the research is pretty clear that yeah, that's, that being lonely, feeling alone is just as damaging as being morbidly obese. Poking a, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. You know, I can't think of what it was, which book it was, but there's a book that just had a documentary came out that just very kind of in your face research. It's like literally just being part of a club where you regularly meet up with people decreases your chances of dying in the next year by like 50%. Like just having some kind of community around you helps you live longer. And I think a lot of men are kind of coming up against that in our, in our world right now and really desperate for some kind of real connection and bonding that's not just based on triangulation, as I say, which many men fall into of doing things. So you and I bond by having our attention on this third thing, the sporting game, the fixing the car, the thing which, you know, there's a great time and place for that, but often misses. You can do that for decades and never actually look at each other and say, hey, what's going on for you? And have that actual interpersonal deep connection that I think just a lot of men are very malnourished on. That's a good way to put it.

Host: Being the ultimate malnourishment is that need for interaction, for humanity to have it reflected back to us. I've seen you talk about your work, call it nice guy recovery. So tell me a little bit about what nice guy recovery looks like.

Jason Lange: Yeah, nice guy recovery is, you know, really that process of learning to fully inhabit ourselves again as men and kind of come out of that nice guy shell of not of always prioritizing others above ourselves. So a lot of times, yeah, it's getting guys back into their bodies, teaching them what boundaries are, how to set them, building some actual capacity in their nervous systems to do that. So like, yeah, how do we actually train your body to be able to handle conflict?

Host: Right.

Jason Lange: What's some languaging you can use around that and in sense to get just clear about what they want and learn that it's okay to ask for it. You're not always going to get it, but it's a much healthier and honest and conducive to connection. When we start to learn to ask for these things, hey, I'd like to take you on a date because I'm attracted to you. Right. Versus I'm just going to keep doing nice things for her and hope eventually she realizes I like her. Right. That's like total classic nice guy kind of stuff that I used to do because you know, we don't want to get rejected in a sense, and we don't want to make her uncomfortable. But then, you know, we end up being miserable a lot of times or just learning, right?

Host: Yeah. If we never clearly ask, we can never be clearly shut down.

Jason Lange: Yes, exactly. Totally. For a lot of guys too, man. You know, sometimes it's setting boundaries with, like, family members or exes or spouses that it is just being in relationship with that person is disregulating. So it's like we can do all the coaching in the world to set up structures and goals, but it's like it's just opening the band aid every time they interact with this person. And so for some nice guys, it's learning to say, hey, you know what? I'm going to step away from this relationship possibly forever. I don't know, to take care of myself. And. And it's amazing how much vitality can come back to guys. But, you know, in a sense, I. I also kind of teach it as just learning to trust our impulses. So for a lot of us, impulsiveness has this negative connotation. Right. He's always out of control. He's so impulsive. But I mean, impulse in the sense of. Yeah, what is it that's actually coming through my body? What information am I getting? Oh, for whatever reason might not be rational, but I want that today and not that. So I'm going to move towards that and then see what happens in my life rather than overanalyzing it forever. And, well, I can't do that because of this or that because of this. That might upset so and so. So, yeah, nice guy recovery is really just the process of, again, learning to be authentic in our expression of who we are and ask for what we want and what we need and to trust that that's actually gonna help us find the realest, most authentic relationships in life. Because when we're doing the nice guy thing, people are in relationship with a figment. It's not real. It's not actually us. And so there's not actual intimacy there. But when we start to be authentic, you know, some people are gonna be a no. Like, hey, I'm just not a fit for you and your personality, your life. But the people who are a yes are going to be a yes to the authentic you. And it ends up being so much easier. So is.

Host: Is what women. Well, first of all, so especially a nice guy is going to have a lot of distorted thinking about what women actually want from him. So do women really want from men authenticity? Or is that just part of it?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think it's definitely a part of it. What I would share, what I would say in my experience is women want to feel authenticity, but they don't want to be your mother. And so I kind of, I see this show up in my guys as the mother lover conundrum. It's like, particularly if a man doesn't have any other male community, suddenly the only place he can bring his emotional self, his insecurities, his fears, is oftentimes his partner. So it's kind of like I'm scared about that. And what that often does is it kind of puts her in the mother soothing role of like, oh, wait, now I. You're not going to be okay. You're not going to be okay. So I have to soothe you in a sense. And there's a time and place for that in any relationship. I'm not here to say you never do that with a partner. The problem is when you mostly only do that with that partner. Guess what? That energy of kind of mothering and soothing you, that is pretty incompatible with I want to jump your bones and I'm attracted to you. It is very different energy, very different muscles. So men learning, you know, through men's group in a sense, to have a place to bring some of this, what I see is it allows them to bring a type of authenticity to their relationship where they can feel, you know, and I've had this experience in my relationship that the man is being held. He's being held. So. Oh, it doesn't fall solely on me to make him feel okay. Right. You know, there was an experience I had with my wife, maybe 2018, just become a coach and kind of rather ill advised. Burned all the bridges with my previous work and was like, I'm just going to dive all the way in. And, you know, it was a financial nightmare. Just nightmare in my tendency when I get stressed is I withdraw. I just stop communicating. I kind of go cold and it freaks my wife out. And we had gone through this dance enough. Enough that there was a time I was really hurting and I could feel it. And we were like having this ice cold dinner. And thankfully, because of my men's group and work, I had been doing like, I kind of knew the nugget underneath. And it literally just took two sentences. And I was just like, it feels really hard right now. I feel like I'm losing and at everything and I want to be winning. And what I'm doing is getting support from my guys to figure out what to do next. And I just wanted you to know. And her whole body just went. She totally relaxed because she got to know what was going on inside of me and I wasn't in a panic of like, and I don't know what to do. Like, you know, we're not going to be okay. Instead, it was this sense of, okay, he's got this and now I can support him along with the other support he's getting.

Host: I understand you have a podcast. Tell me about that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, so I do do my own podcast called Evolutionary Men. And it's really just kind of nuggets and wisdom I express every week of just things I'm experiencing in my own growth as a man, is a leader and facilitator of men's group and coaching. And, you know, I try to keep it short in that just as a parent, I'm like, I can't keep up with the three hour podcast every week anymore. Like, give me 10, 15 minutes sometimes. That's what I can do. And so, yeah, just short little wisdom teachings. I occasionally do have guests on that I've worked with or people I'm doing trainings with. So you can kind of check out me and all my vibe there. And it's part of why I feel was so excited when you reached out to me my. My second episode, which was something I created so, so long ago. Real men feel everything. And I was like, oh, this guy gets it. He's. We're right there with each other. So it didn't definitely did.

Host: Did you share the title?

Jason Lange: What's. Oh, yeah. The podcast is called Evolutionary Men. So that's kind of my brand of programs and coaching and the podcast itself.

Host: And Jason, what's the best way for people to learn more about everything you're up to? Podcast wise, coaching wise, group wise?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally, Andy. Thank you. Just go to Evolutionary Men. So it's not dot com, it's dot men. And on there you can see tons of podcasts I've done blogs, I've done programs I'm running, and there's a contact form if you're like, hey, I need to find a men's group or something like that. I love referring guys out or helping them find something in their local community or working with me. It doesn't really matter. You know, my mission is definitely every man should be in a men's group. So I will try to help get you there in any way I can. Cool.

Host: Yeah, I'm very much this same mindset where, yeah, I get inquiries and phone calls and emails all around and like, yeah, it's not about, oh, wait, I need to get this client. Like, no, how can. What does this man need? Exactly. And, and often you tell me if this is true for you. I hear from, from a lot of women, a lot of spouses, like, I don't know how to help my man. Can you tell him something?

Jason Lange: I hear it from women. And increasingly I'm getting a lot of female therapists who do, like, couples work. And they're like, you know, I keep telling this guy, you need some men. Can you, can you help? Because they're like, I can do a lot for him. And there's just, there is that something special that us men can give each other. It's like a, it's a very unique texture and quality of love of like, I don't need anything from you and I just want to support you in being your best.