Here's the paradox that sits at the heart of masculinity today: men who desperately want to avoid being toxic often end up creating their own form of relational toxicity. I just got off a fantastic conversation with Sharon Pope on her podcast, Respected & Connected, where we explored this tension between men trying to be "good" and the unintended consequences of that pursuit. We dove deep into the nice guy phenomenon and what it actually means for men and relationships.
Sharon asked me to break down what a nice guy really is, and we got into how this pattern emerges as a reaction to toxic masculinity. These guys aren't trying to manipulate anyone, they're genuinely trying not to be jerks. But here's what happens: they end up prioritizing everyone else's needs above their own, operating through covert contracts instead of being direct about what they want, and constantly waiting for permission instead of taking initiative. The result? They become hard to trust because you never really know where they stand.
We talked about how nice guys often attract either very powerful women who end up having to lead everything, or sometimes volatile partners because they're the only guys who'll stay in dysfunctional dynamics long enough. They struggle to set boundaries, struggle to own their sexuality, and often get stuck in that endless cycle of pleasant first dates that go nowhere.
What really lit up the conversation was talking about how men can integrate their power with their heart. You don't have to choose between being connected and sensitive or being in your power and desires. You can hold both. I shared how transformative it is when men finally witness other men who can be deeply in their grief or fully in their anger without being collapsed or dangerous. That transmission, that felt experience of seeing it's possible, changes everything.
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Host: Everybody knows that intimate relationships can be really hard. But what do you do when the skills you have aren't helping you to create the relationships you want, when you want your partner to like you, but you also desperately need to feel heard and understood? This podcast is for you. I'm Sharon Costanzo, and you're listening to Respected and Connected. I don't think it's unreasonable or unrealistic to want a marriage that's healthy and satisfying for you and your partner, so let's dive in and figure it out. Today on the podcast, I have Jason language, and he's a specialist in men's issues, especially around this idea of the nice guy, which many of you who are listening may or may not be aware of, kind of this. This narrative around the nice guy. I'll let Jason explain that more, but I wanted to have him on to kind of give us a little bit of context on how this phenomenon has come about, maybe some of the benefits of it, and how us as women, if we might have a nice guy in our life, how we can understand that dynamic and. And maybe cultivate more of an appreciation and compassion for it and also explore some ideas of how we can have healthy relationships with men who identify in this area. So thanks so much for being on.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Sharon.
Host: And tell me, as we're getting started, I, of course, want to know more about how you would describe the nice guy. But before we dive into that, tell me a little bit more about how you got into this work.
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. You know, my journey into being a men's guide really just started because of my own journey to becoming a man in some sense. And, you know, I'm a white guy, raised in the Midwest, kind of lower middle class, so lots of opportunity and privilege that I'm super grateful for and had all my basic security needs met. But part of what I discovered as I started to grow up was there was some emotional and physical needs that I didn't have met in my family that they just didn't know how to do wasn't part of how they were raised, and so they didn't know how to know. My parents didn't really know how to raise us, so I lived in a. In a household where, you know, there just wasn't really any connection in terms of interiors and emotions and our bodies. And that really became apparent when I became a teenager and hit puberty and suddenly was interested in dating and women. And what I quickly discovered was, you know, would just get very anxious Clammy in my body. I would get very nervous, I would get very quiet. And it was really hard for me to connect and. And kind of speak about what I wanted or what I was feeling. And the pain around that kind of kickstarted my journey as a very late bloomer. It wasn't until later, in my 20s, I had my first relationships and became intimate with partners. And so my journey around that pain was, ugh, I don't feel good in my body. I don't know how to connect. And I know there's gotta be a better way. So what does that look like? And it first kind of took me in the more philosophical realms, as I think a lot of men are attracted to often. But then luckily in my mid-20s, I got exposed to kind of somatic therapy and men's work in men's groups. And that really, those two things in particular just completely altered the direction of my life and my capacity to understand what was happening in my body and share that with others. And then, you know, I just got so into that, just my own growth, that particularly men's work and men's groups, that people started asking me, you know, because I would talk about it all the time and. And then there was kind of a natural pivot to, well, that was a hard journey for me. I wonder if I can make it a little easier for others.
Host: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And the. The question that came up for me as you're sharing that is because. Because I. I even admitted this to you when we met, before we started on this episode was it seems like when men are looking for help in this area, it can go in some kind of different ways. It can go in the, you know, what I would call maybe more in the toxic masculinity type way of alpha male kind of stuff, or. It sounds like you found somatic work and. And I can't remember what the other word was that you used to describe it, that men's community. It sounds like you found a really healthy, fulfilling, uplifting place to land. Did you. Were you also introduced to some of that other work along your journey as well?
Jason Lange: I never was really drawn. And, you know, in some sense, maybe it wasn't there quite as much. The more toxic stuff, which definitely is present now. I think what did. What was emerging in my mid-20s, you know, which is a loaded thing, was that was when the whole pickup world exploded. So this idea of pickup artistry and then learning how to attract women, and there was a lot of darkness and toxicity to much of that, and simultaneously, for many men, that was their first exposure to any kind of idea of, oh, I can work on myself and I'll show up differently in the world. So it, it was a gateway, in a sense, for some people to positive men's work, but for many, you know, was more toxic. Um, so I, you know, I definitely studied a little bit of that in hopes of, like, kind of, you know, the, the fantasies, like hacking things. But really what it all ends up pointing back to is, like, how comfortable do you feel in your nervous system? If you don't feel comfortable in your nervous system, no one else can really feel comfortable around you to an extent. And so that then, you know, really was just pointing me to the deeper work I was already doing. But I, But I think that question and the prevalence these days, you know, a big part of, I think a big struggle that we can talk about is men don't really have many models of positive masculinity these days. So there is a lot of talk. Talk, and I would say rightly so, because there's plenty of historical evidence of toxic masculine, and there's plenty of it prevalent today. We're, we're told a lot what not to be these days, but there's not much modeling for. Well, well, then what is a healthy version of that? And in that vacuum, in that vacuum, I think is where a lot of people end up getting attracted to the more toxic masculine because there's somebody at least speaking to them.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: And a lot of men just feel like, you know, like, it sounds a little crazy, but left behind, like, I don't. I don't know how to be in the world. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And then there's no vision or modeling for them around that. So they just. They gravitate towards what they can find. But my hope in optimism is that as more positive role models and information get out there, that that's actually kind of the antidote to the toxic stuff. It's just once there's more information. Most men don't want to be jerks, in my experience.
Host: You. Yeah, yeah, I would.
Jason Lange: They don't.
Host: I would agree with that. And I think what you. What you're pointing to is so important, and I think it. It is what a lot of us are lacking in this whole narrative around what's wrong with the current state of affairs, what's wrong with that really dominant view of masculinity or that dominant model for masculinity is, well, what are we going to put in its place. Yeah, I think that's something that I think often we as women need to learn is how to, you know, how to reframe our complaints. All of the complaints we have of the men in our lives as well. What do you want from them? And we have to do some of that exploration ourselves of what does, you know, what does a healthy relationship look like? What are we asking for instead of just complaining about what's not going right? So I think that's a really great point. So tell me a little bit more about this nice guy phenomenon. What. What does that look like? And kind of, how does that. How do men come into that?
Jason Lange: Yeah. So the term nice guy was popularized by my friend and mentor, Dr. Robert Glover, who wrote this book, I think it was in the late 90s, no more Mr. Nice Guy. And it was based on. He was a therapist and he was running men's groups and just seeing certain patterns emerging. And that book, he was telling me recently, it sells more copies every year than it did the previous year. So it is probably one of the gateway books right now for a lot of men, into men's work and men's growth and waking up and realizing, hey, the way things are working aren't working. But the central kind of idea of a nice guy, and, you know, I kind of like to put this in an evolutionary context was, you know, traditional kind of masculinity, in a sense, for most of human history was kind of the, like, my way or the highway. I'm going to take what I need to survive and thrive. So my focus is on me, maybe my family, maybe my immediate circle. But the focus, the emphasis is on I getting my I, my needs met. And that has caused a tremendous amount of devastation in the world. Right. There's no lack of evidence for what happens and what can happen when men in particular, who are disconnected from their hearts are left unchecked in their power. Whether that's degradation of women, the environment, the economic system. Like, there's plenty of evidence there. So the nice guy, in a sense, Sharon, was kind of a reaction to that. So, you know, particularly in the last generations, you know, even culminating more recently in kind of Me too. This stuff has been illuminated in our culture. And so many men were raised by powerful women or mothers who, you know, were talking about some of the bad things that men could do. Don't be like this. You know, don't. Don't do this. Don't be this. We were starting to get examples of it in the culture. So many men then developed As a reaction to that, well, I don't want to be that guy. This is a phrase I hear all the time in men I work with. I don't want to be the guy who just sleeps with women or hurts them or whatever that might be, just takes what he wants. And so what they end up doing, what nice guys end up doing is they. They prioritize the other in relationship above themselves. So they start to prioritize other people's needs above their own. And this makes them really nice and pleasant to be around. They tend not to set very healthy boundaries, if at all. They have a hard time speaking up for themselves sometime, sometimes hard times speaking anything that might cause conflict. And they're trying to constantly, particularly in intimate relationships, appease their partner, so make them happy. And in that process, they will often dishonor themselves repeatedly committing to things they don't actually want to do or that feel out of alignment for them or just not getting their own needs met and getting burnt out, you know, per se. And so this tends to catch up with men. And, you know, another thing we found about nice guys is often, you know, the way I teach kind of some of the work I do is, you know, just three basic energy centers in the body. We have kind of our body based, our lower chakras where our genitals are kind of our power center. This is kind of the oldest part of us in a sense, and it's connected to the oldest part of our brain of just reactivity going what we want, being connected to our impulses. That's kind of what that first stage of masculine was. Second stage is more when the heart comes online, the, the. The relational space. I'm suddenly aware of who I'm with and care about their needs and care about us and whatnot. And then there's the head, you know, where a lot of men get stuck for all kinds of reasons. We'll talk, we could talk about later, but. But that nice guys tend to live in the heart space. A lot of times they're very safe. They can be very sensitive, but they can sometimes have a hard time advocating for themselves and, and even advocating for other people who really need it sometimes, like standing up in their power. And that includes for a lot of nice guys as well, their connection to their sexuality. Many nice guys I work with because they've been raised in a culture of just seeing what toxic masculine sexuality is like. They disown from it, they disconnect from it, and they're, they're afraid of it in some sense. And aren't really in touch with it. And what this often translates to is nice guys are like incredibly pleasant to be around. Generally we feel really safe with them. But particularly, you know, for a lot of women I've talked to, they can be kind of hard to trust to trust at a deep level because they're kind of constantly wavering to the place of least conflict in their lives or in their relationships. And Dr. Glover popularized this wonderful term that is like a matrix moment for so many men I work with called they tend to operate via covert contracts. So rather than owning their needs or wants, this is kind of the classic nice guy dating strategy. It's I'm going to be so nice and do so many things for you, you will have to do X for me. Whether that's be intimate with me, take care of me, buy me something like, you know, you name it.
Host: I dated a guy like that. Now that you're saying that. And I still remember it was like he was planning these elaborate dates every single week and just checking all of the boxes. But I felt like he didn't know me and I didn't know him. And I still remember when I broke up with him, he was like, what? I did everything right. Yeah, I think that's what you're explaining. It creates this very superficial, low conflict relationship.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And it's not very direct and it's not very honest in a sense. And so nice guys as a result of often operating by these covert contracts. Right. This idea that, oh, without saying it, here's the contract. I do this for you so you'll do this for me. What happens is because they're not direct in asking for it, they often don't get what they want or need back. So then they end up feeling used or frustrated or resentful and don't actually want to be there. And so they'll then they're just disconnected from their anger. So they can actually be really unpleasant to be around because you can feel they're irritable but they're not sharing why. And it's hard to actually, you know, in a sense love a nice guy because you, you don't actually know what they need. They're not being honest about it because they're so afraid that if I presenced it I would get rejected or it might cause conflict or whatnot. So this is the paradigm where a lot of nice guys are living these days. And I think the last piece I'll just tie in here is nice guys also tend to wait. So, and this is a really Subtle fine line here. I want to speak towards of. What I don't mean here is domination in terms of, hey, this is what's happening my way or the highway. But a lot of nice guys are constantly waiting for permission or approval before taking any action. So the trap they sometimes fall in, in the relationship is they're often letting their female partner lead. They're not taking the initiative to talk about, hey, what's happening in our relationship? Where are we going? What do we want? I'm making the plans for this, like, any of that stuff, you know, the, the guys more in the dating realm I often work with that are in this thing, you know, it's kind of the classic like, well, I'm not going to make a move until I know she likes me. And so they're just kind of, you know, it's on a date, it's like they're very safe, they're very pleasant, and there's no juice there because they're. They're not taking that lead to even just say, like, hey, I'm feeling really attracted to you. I'd love to kiss you. Right. And so they just wait and then nothing happens a lot of times. Right. So it can be frustrating for both the nice guy and often whoever they're with. And so this category of men is not, you know, all men, but it's. It's pretty prevalent these days. And this learning to overemphasize other people's wants and desires and needs really ends up having some pretty intense consequences for nice guys long term because they'll often get into inauthentic relationships or imbalanced relationships or rel. Relationships that just aren't healthy. They can be, you know, nice guys can also be extremely codependent in terms of, yeah, I need you to feel okay. Because if you don't feel okay, I don't feel okay. And I need to know you still approve of me or love me. And that can frankly just be exhausting to be around.
Host: Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. And I think kind of what you're describing is, I think what we have historically seen as like, like an accommodating woman, you know, and we're seeing that. It sounds like what you're saying, we're seeing that more and more with men.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Host: And it is, you know, as we were talking about this before, you were saying, like, it is an evolutionary step towards something better for men and women in relationships, but it's maybe just a little bit incomplete at this point.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Host: Like, we need to have room for Me and we in relationships, we can't be just emphasizing our own needs, but we can't also. It's. It's also kind of unsatisfying for both people and unhealthy to just be accommodating the other at our own expense.
Jason Lange: Exactly. And that's how I tend to work with men around it, where, you know, I'm like, it's great if you consider yourself a nice guy or doing this, because that's a huge evolutionary leap. I mean, if the whole world is full of nice guys, I still think the world would be a better place than kind of where it is right now in a lot of ways. And it has limitations that do catch up and that learning that, you know, another way to frame this is that it's totally possible as a man to be deeply connected to your power, your desires, what you want, your sexuality, and still be connected to your heart. To be attuned, to be sensitive to your needs, to your partner's needs, to your family's needs, and to hold those two simultaneously is often something very few men have ever known to be possible. That, wow, I can set a really strong, firm boundary, and I don't have to be a dick. I don't have to be mean about it, or I'm allowed to feel the strong desires I have in my body. That's okay, you know, my sexuality isn't something to be ashamed of. It's what I do with it that's important. Right. It's how I handle that. If I take that on responsibly. In a consensual relationship, most partners love to know that their partner is deeply turned on and attracted to them. Right. That actually feels good to many partners. So the work I do with a lot of men is this kind of integration work of, okay, I'm not asking you to let go of the heart or to be less sensitive. What I am asking you to do is include all of yourself in a more authentic way. And then that tends to lead to more trustable relationships and partnerships where you can really feel, you know, where the man's at and what he stands for and what he wants. Mm.
Host: It seems to me, and I'm not super familiar with this issue, I'm just vaguely familiar with it, but it seems to me like a lot of nice guys probably end up pairing with a pretty strong women. Is that. Is that the case?
Jason Lange: Yeah. If there's two patterns I see, it's that often, because they're so reticent to take the lead, someone has to fill that gap, sometimes their partners, that's just their, their natural essence and they love that. And it works great. Sometimes it's not though. And what's actually happening is the, the female partners having to take the lead more than she would like to. It's not that she's, you know, most women I know are like, I don't have a problem sometimes planning a date or da, da. But if I'm doing that all the time, it gets pretty exhausting, right? And so they often will attract very powerful, you know, direct kind of women. And then sometimes they'll also attract. This is a huge issue for a lot of guys I work with, very volatile partners who don't have a capacity to have healthy relationship. Right. They don't know how to set boundaries or respect boundaries, or they get dysregulated extremely easily. And the paradox for the nice guy is because they can't set any boundaries, they're one of the only men that will stay in a dysfunctional relationship long enough because someone else who has more healthy capacity to say, hey, this isn't working for me, I'm getting hurt in this and I set a boundary and you didn't honor it. They would just leave, right? They would actually leave. But nice guys often have a very hard time doing that. And that's where they can fall into that codependence. So those are two of the strongest patterns I see for, for nice guys that show up in relationship. The other one would be they just have a hard time getting into relationship because they can't. You know, many men I've worked with, you know, they're kind of stuck on that wheel of endless first or second dates. They're really pleasant, they get along. The woman's like, yeah, you're really nice. And I just don't feel a connection. And oftentimes that's because the man's not connected to his full self. And so if he's not connected to himself, she can't fully feel him and often isn't attracted to him.
Host: Yeah, yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. And I guess the question that I kind of. The follow up question that I have on that is if it is a couple where the man tends to be more of a nice guy and the woman tends to be kind of really strong and capable and comfortable in that energy, but also maybe feeling some frustration of do I have to be this all the time? Like, can he like, pick up the slack in any way? What advice do you have for a couple that's kind of in that Dynamic and maybe. Yeah. Trying to explore how to progress beyond that.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I would say two things that immediately come to mind, Sharon, are one, and this is where it takes a. I won't be. I'll be honest here. It takes a lot of generosity, you know, for that. The woman who maybe is in the lead and sometimes, frankly, is better at leading. You know, just, you know, we. I just moved and we had some renovations. My wife's way better at handling details and contractors. So, you know, that was. That was what she did. But point being, if you're wanting, you know, I'm speaking to a woman. Women here, if you're in a situation like that and you're wanting your man to lead more, one hard thing you have to be really generous about is initially you have to let him lead poorly. So if he does make a plan or take the reins on something, instead of coming in and. And re. Grabbing the reins to fix it, you kind of have to let it play out a little bit and let him lead poorly so he can get the experiential feedback and learn to start course correcting and developing his intuition. And that's a hard thing to do. Not everyone has the capacity for it in their relationship. It does take a tremendous amount of generosity. But, you know, leadership is a. Is a trait we have to practice and learn like anything else. And we need somewhere to do it right. So it can be really generous to. Okay, you know, I would have done that differently. And it's not that you can't give feedback about how it impacts you, but you can't necessarily try to fix it or change it. Right. That's because then you're getting back in the driver's seat, which then often re. Emasculates the man and makes him. He feel even more defeated, like, well, I don't even want to try now. Right. So that'd be one thing then, for specifically for the men in that scenario. This is where, you know, one of my prescriptions for everything is you need to start spending time around other deep men. Because the other place we can learn this is through the transmission of spending embodied time with other men. So we can feel and see and hear and witness and experience how they lead. Right. Many men I work with, when I do in person work, in particular, where we do embodiment work or shadow work, where, you know, men get more in touch with their bodies and their emotions. Many of them, it just literally blows their mind when they have the first experience of seeing a man. You know, usually in the. The polarity here of either on the one side, deeply in touch with and moving his grief, or deeply in touch with and standing safely in his anger. So for many men, when they see that, wow, I can experience and feel those emotions and not be collapsed, not be dangerous. Like, there's a way I actually trust that man more. Feeling him, feeling himself deeply like that. It starts to, like, light men up of like, wow, I didn't even know it was possible. I didn't even know that was allowed, you know, is what I hear a lot of guys say. Like, you know, either vulnerability or grief, you know, was shamed so heavily in my household on the one hand, or, you know, for a lot of guys raised by volatile dads, they didn't know it was possible to be in touch with your anger but not be dangerous. That, wow, that's a man who I can feel he is furious, he is angry, he really cares. And I don't feel in danger at all. I feel safe. I actually feel safer around him seeing how he's in touch with his anger. Right. And, you know, you might have some stories yourself or in some of the people you work with, but some of the women I've worked with, they're like, yeah, Actually, the man that freaks me out the most is the man who I'm around him, and I can tell he is pissed. And I ask him, like, are you okay? Are you angry? No, I'm fine. You know, when the man isn't even connected to it, that often feels extremely dangerous because it's like, wow, if he doesn't even know he's upset, how can I feel safe around him? He could just explode in any given moment. But the man who can hold that, you know, you seem, like, kind of mad and pissed off. Yeah, I'm furious right now. My chest is on fire. My whole body is radiating. I'm angry. That's actually way more trustable because that's a man who's aware of what's going on inside of himself. And when we're aware, we tend to have more agency and choice right over how we respond, rather than just reacting, fusing into that reaction. So getting around other men, you know, this is the thing I just emphasize more than anything else, can be so transformative for nice guys, because those other men can also often point out your blind spots of like, hey, you know, you're doing this thing, or you're saying this thing. Do you think that has to do with partly with what's happening in the relationship here? And we can start to see it and we can Often the other big thing I'll say about that, particularly for nice guys, the power of a safe group like that is it's a place where we can workshop difficult conversations and boundary setting where other men can help us dial in how we're delivering it. So it's not too collapsed, it's not too soft, it's not too aggressive, but it's right there. Here's where I'm at. This is my truth. Here's what I need in, in a way that often creates more connection. And it, you know, same thing. You know, sometimes it blows away. Guys I work with where they're like, finally set a boundary and they're like, like, that was too much, huh? And like, every man in the group is like, no, actually, you probably could have brought up the heat like, 25% more, and it still would have been okay. Your calibration is just so off. Or, you know, they finally have been holding this their whole life, and they unleash and it comes out a little too strong where it's like, oh, yeah, no, like, that's okay here. But, you know, when you actually get into that moment with someone, you got to dial that back a little bit, because that's not going to be productive. So that time with other men, I would say, is one of the most powerful things nice guys can do to start experiencing in their body these things. I'm talking about of what it means to be, you know, connected to our power and our heart. And it's pretty wild how when we're in person with someone or even over zoom and we feel it, it's like, oh, I get it now. That's what was never taught to me. That's what I never had modeled for me. But now that I know it's a possibility, I've felt I kind of know how to get back there in my real life.
Host: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That's two, like, great pieces of advice about how to kind of process all of this and, and move forward. And I really loved the advice that you gave to the women because I, I, this is something that I coach women on often because I, I am often coaching women who are really strong and capable and, and kind of have a hard time stepping back and letting that. And I think of it as, like, a developmental process. You know, right now, your partner is a beginner in this area. And what do you do with a beginner? You give them lots of grace. You know, you let them make mistakes. You don't jump in and, and take over. You know, you have Trust in their, their capacity to, to grow and learn and, and develop those capabilities. And I do, I think it's kind of a challenge for us as women to. Because I think we're also confronted with this, oh, you know, I was weak and now I'm strong and how do I do that? In a way that creates space for both of us in this relationship. So I think, you know, we are, we're looking at this, this evolution and still grappling with some of the, the ways that we both are reacting and responding to it.
Jason Lange: So true, you know, in just a broad generalization, obviously it's far more nuanced than this. But in a sense, you know, the women's liberation movement started in the 50s, 60s and 70s was women finally begin being given, at least in our society, permission to come out of the home, out of the mother role, to be active, to have agency in their life, to direct themselves, to have choice. Which, you know, these words can be loaded but to some extent is more masculine energy that I'm allowed to self direct myself, I'm allowed to take care of myself. I don't need to rely on someone else. I can guide the direction of my life. It's not just dictated by the fact I was biologically born away, you know. And then for the men, it started, you know, kind of around the same time, but it's been a little slower. Where the call for men for the last 20, 30, 40 years has been inward. Hey, you have a heart, you have feelings, what are you feeling? What's the status of your body? That was not something most men were tuned into. You know, they just drank it away, smoked it away, had sex, you know, whatever. Most men just get away from their bodies and feelings so fast and so simultaneously, right. This, this co evolution has been happening where men are, have been asked to become more sensitive, to open their hearts, to step into caregiver roles as parents and a lot more and are allowed to have feelings, right? You know, in a sense. And then women are allowed to come out in the world and not be reliant on men. And those are both like, we're talking about extremely positive things. That's a step in the right direction and it's caused some growing pains because then, you know, in the work I do, we call it polarity. The, you know, how these two energies are attracted to each other. And you don't have to even call them masculine and feminine. You can call them, some people say alpha and Omega, feeling and flow, yin and yang. There's structure and form, consciousness and energy, whatever you want to call it, it's a primary polarity of the world that works. But then for a lot of couples these days, what they're experiencing is that has been reversed. So the man is in that more soft, sensitive, less directed place, and the woman's out there just kicking ass in the world, taking names, and then that works. But then they come into a relationship and they're like, well, how do we do this? Like, I'm not getting what I want. You. You're not getting what you want. So part of the. The journey for a lot of couples right now is to not get rid of all of that, but to also be able to be flexible in terms of, yeah, sometimes I need you to step in and be the man and lead and have a plan. Because I've been working 90 hours this week, and I don't want to do that this Friday.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Like, I just want to feel held. I want to be guided. And so there's a lot more flexibility and choice, I think, is what we're being called towards. But the idea is, you know, we need to bring more consciousness. I think, in the couples I've worked with and my wife has worked with, the more conscious we are about, hey, there's these kind of two energies we can play with. And the system tends to work best when someone's playing one role in the other. And that can switch. It's not just because you're the man, you have to be this. And just because you're the woman, you have to be this. The fluidity is really important there. And most, you know, women I know who have done the outer work in the world and the inner work, they have no problem, like I said, leading sometimes, but they want to know, at least know their partner has the capability to do it and can sometimes do it and gift it to them. And then it can be really rejuvenating in a sense, for. For both sides. But that, that. That co evolution that you're talking about there, I think is. It is really a sore spot in a lot of relationships these days that are kind of breaking out of the conventional sense. And it's where a lot of men I work with, you know, a lot of nice guys in particular, come in confused because they're like, she doesn't need me. She doesn't need me to financially take care of her. She's like, got a system of support around her. So, like, what. What. What does she need me for? And that's some of the deeper work. I often work with men around of like, well, your presence. She just needs your presence sometimes she needs you to just be there. And it's remarkable how many women are just yearning for that because they're in their, you know, executive functioning mind all day, holding space for others, directing things. And that just experience of someone who's just here with you can be so nourishing. So nourishing. But a lot of us men do not have the training on how to do that.
Host: Oh, yeah. And I, I mean, I just. You just feel like it feels so aspirational, but also so grounding to be in a relationship where you get to choose to be together rather than that old model of domination and dependence. Yeah, but like you said, it does. It. It. I feel like it's. We're being called to. To be more conscious and more aware and more skilled and more mature in how we relate to each other so that we can have the capacity for that way of being.
Jason Lange: Yeah, exactly. But.
Host: Yeah. Well, this has been such a great conversation, Jason, as we're closing out today. What. What would you like. Where would you like people to find you if they're interested in learning more about the work that you're doing?
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. Best place to keep up with me is at my website, evolutionary.men. so it's not.combut.men. and on there you can find. I've podcast of my own that covers a lot around nice guy syndrome. I have some writing I've done. I have all the programs and events and social media and all that kind of stuff, and just know that, you know, it's never too late to start. Like, you just always got to start somewhere. And the. The wonderful thing is, as nice guys in particular learn to just reconnect a few of these pieces that got left behind inside of them can be such incredibly powerful leaders in their families and their relationships in their workplaces. Because, you know, I mostly work with nice guys because it's a lot easier to connect a man who already has access to his heart, to his power than it is to take a man who only knows power and to open him into his heart. So I say nice guys really have the advantage that you're in a great spot, and the work to kind of integrate you to that next level is, is. It's not that it's easy, but it's so doable when you have the right training and system and support around you.
Host: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. We'll. We'll post that link in the show notes as we. As we share this. Thanks again for being on.
Jason Lange: Yeah, my pleasure. Sharon. Thanks for helping get the word out to all the men out there.
