Unmasked: Him — Jason Lange | For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Hello, welcome to my podcast. Today I had with me my first interviewee. Actually his name is Jason Lunch. Hello, Jason, how are you?

Jason Lange: Hey, I'm excited to be here. I'm doing well.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): I'm super excited to have you here. I have been checking your experience and who you are and is impressive. You actually are well known figure in the men's work space, especially immense personal development and immense group. The founder of Evolutionary Men based in Colorado. You have more than 20 years experience working with men. Is impressive.

Jason Lange: Thank you.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): And actually you are certificate coach in the no More Mr. Nice Guy method based on Dr. Robert Glover's book, is that correct?

Jason Lange: That's correct.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Wow. That name, that, that actually the name of that method, Mr. Nice Guy. It caught my attention because I'm pretty sure there is a differentiation between Mr. Nice Guys and actually what the world needs.

Jason Lange: Very well put. Yes. Dr. Robert Glover, who wrote that book, he's a friend and mentor of mine. I've been in a men's group with him for a while and he wrote, you know what's kind of one of the most popular self health books for men back in the early 2000s and every year it sells more copies than the last. So he, he really kind of hit gold with this term. And really what he's pointing to in what you're talking about is there's a type of nice guy which this book is about, which I've had to do a lot of personal work around, which is actually more about a certain type of codependency. So it's a man who constantly is abandoning himself to try to please and appease other people. Could be a spouse, could be his boss, could be his kids, right? Where he's doing whatever it takes to kind of keep the peace and keep other people happy. Now the, the dark side to this kind of nice guy is it's actually pretty untrustable. It's not trustworthy because what it is is it's a man who keeps putting himself into the kind of inferior or one down position saying whatever you need is more important than what I need. And in fact is actually most nice guys don't want to, you know, think this, but in its own way it's a type of manipulation or control. Right. So rather than me being my authentic self with you and seeing where that leads us in relationship, I'm going to change my behavior and be a certain way so you have a positive experience of me and then hopefully I get something back from you. And so the impulse for a lot of nice guys, you know, is good. It's to care. It's. They. They want other people to feel safe. They, they want other people to thrive. The challenge is they do that by withholding themselves. So they're not actually in a real relationship, they're in an unequal relationship. And what you're talking, I think, speaking about is how me and some of the people I work with frame it is. We don't just want nice guys, we want kind men. And the difference is a kind man doesn't abandon himself in the process of showing up or supporting or connecting with other people. And a kind man is willing to say the difficult and challenging truths in service of deeper connection, trust, love, vulnerability, etc. So a kind man is a man who also has boundaries. Right? That's really the big distinguisher. And I would argue that right now the world needs a lot more men who are kind, who will step in, yes, with care and concern, but also are willing to say when something's really messed up or out of alignment or harming someone else, and is willing to actually push back with boundaries around all of this.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): This nice guy you are talking is actually the guy that is not in touch with himself. It's actually is losing himself for someone else. As you say, it could be the spouse, it could be the child, the partner, always someone else is not authentic. So I love the differentiation you actually said about the nice guys and kind guys. This world needs more kind guys. That I believe is exactly what you are doing, trying to get deeper and helping them to see.

Jason Lange: Yeah, exactly. This is, I think, a large part of what our role as men right now in training other men can be. That, you know, for a lot of men, a lot of the pain right now in the world is we don't have a good model of what modern healthy masculinity looks like. And most men are playing between kind of two poles. They're either the old school kind of macho jerk my way or the highway, you know, dominate everyone, or they fall over into the nice guy a little bit too much of a pushover, a little too nice. And you know, the work I'm really inspired by and many other men are also leading the torch on right now is the middle path of what it means to be in our power, have the capacity to say no, to create boundaries and be attuned, sensitive, caring. As two men, I know it, really being able to blend that strength with heart together.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): How do you think that idea of masculinity has evolved in society? And actually you have made already a distinction of Two kind of men. The one that is like the macho man, if I can say that word, like a little more aggressive. Yeah. And. And the one that is like, yeah, the nice guy, but it's not. It's just more like pleasing. A pleasing guy, but it's not really like talking from who he really is and being able to be vulnerable, but at the same time having boundaries, that

Jason Lange: is so important, so, so key. And again, it's just not something a lot of men have modeled, which is what makes it so painful for them in terms of, hey, I know I want to be something else in the world, but our cultures don't really provide too many models of this and examples of this in right now, kind of the men's work space that I'm in seems to be one of the places that's trying really hard to create some of these new positive visions for what boys and men can grow towards. Because in the vacuum, we've seen the emergence of the manosphere red pill, all of this kind of regressive, macho jerk energy that is unwilling to actually engage with the world as it is right now and instead just wants to, you know, rewind the clock 150 years where the patriarchy dominated even more than it does now. And the truth is, you know, there's no going back. Men have to evolve. And we're being asked to, yes, be in our power, but also be in our presence and be emotionally attuned. These things that so many men just never had training on before in their lives.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Yeah, exactly. They don't have a good role model, actually. Who was your male role model when you were growing up and what did you admire about him? Jason?

Jason Lange: Sure. Yeah. You know, my challenge was I didn't have a lot of great male role models growing up. And a lot of boys, I think, fall, fall into this now. And, you know, I had an okay relationship with my dad, but I wasn't super close. And, you know, he gave the best gifts he could to me, but there was a lot he didn't know how to, how to teach me or guide me in. So I was adrift for a long time, really, until I started getting into this work. And it was very personal. Right. It was actually getting into men's groups and meeting mentors with older mature men who had really taken the time to do their inner growth work and healing. And, you know, I remember I sometimes tell this one story. I was doing a men's group with someone who became one of my mentors and did a lot of deep Work with me. And, you know, I was 26 at the time, but I'm sitting there, I'm watching him facilitate in a room, and my body had the experience of, oh, that's what I want to be when I grow up. You know, like I'm a six year old kid, like, ah. And, you know, it turns out I'm doing the same kind of work as him now. But at the time it was more about how he was being. And so this mentor, Robert, was a man who deeply transmitted a new way of being to me. And then, you know, for me, I got a lot of. As I became a teenager, where I did find that kind of inspiration was a lot in media. So for me it was musicians, Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, it was Jim Henson who created the Muppets, it was Martin Luther King, you know, who really changed our lives quite a bit here in the States. People who were advocating for a new type of culture and way of being were the ones that I just found myself magnetized towards. And then I actually got to get into the room with people who were doing that in, in this space of men's work.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Are you a person of faith, Jason?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I'm not a denominational man of faith in that. What inspires me is right in the title of the organization, this idea of evolution. And really what I mean by that is it's the movement and continual unfolding of love, you know, and that there's some kind of spiritual impulse. You can call it God, you can call it spirit. I've called it all of the above. You know, I've studied Buddhism, I've studied Christianity, I've studied a lot of different things. And underneath there seems to be this core of an unfolding of something of love and consciousness. And it is that which engages me the most that, you know, we're all called into this world and we have some part to play. And often one of our biggest ways to contribute to that is to look at the karma or the patterns we were handed in our culture, in our family lineage, in our very body or nervous system itself, and do the work to become more whole, quite simply. And that process lights me up in so many ways and in a lot of ways gives me the benefit of being able to work with men of all kinds of different backgrounds. Because the. The type of, you know, spirituality, I guess you could say I identify with is really kind of core underneath most traditions.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Yeah, yeah, different. Different kind of men have different kind of spirituality and evolve. Evolution. I completely agree with that. There is a phrase in your website, every man should be in a men's group. It's actually the. The first phrase when I open your. Your website. My audience is, of course, mainly masculine. So I would like to ask you why to be in a men's group? And how would this have made a difference for you when you were a young adult?

Jason Lange: Sure, yeah. So, I mean, there's so many layers to this, but one that I'll just start with, I'll kind of go backwards there in terms of the experience I had as a boy in that more and more boys, you know, around the world, I would actually argue right now are experiencing is a lack of guidance. So in most, you know, indigenous cultures around the world, there's this term, this idea of a rite of passage. And a rite of passage is something we go through to mark transitions in our lives. In most traditional and indigenous cultures had rites of passage for boys along the journey to becoming a man. And all that really means is young boys were kind of taken by older, mature men in the community and taught how to be useful, productive, harmonious members of their culture, community, etc. They were taught about what responsibility in their life might look like. And a lot of that has just evaporated in modern kind of cultures where boys are mostly left alone to kind of be raised by the Internet, in media. And I was a good example of that. Like I said, I didn't have a lot of guidance from my father, and I didn't have a lot of strong male role models around me. So, you know, the first 20, 25 years of my life, I was just kind of wandering around, stumbling through life with no guidance and not sure what to do or how to do it. And, you know, it comes from a different etymology, but, you know, we use the word mentor like we need people to mentor us, to guide us. And men's work in men's groups is one of the space we're starting to recreate that in modern cultures that there's a huge push right now for. Wow. Young boys are lost. And part of why they're lost is they're not building deep relationships with other boys and other men. And there's actually a process we can take them through that helps prepare them more for being adults. Now, a men's group is one way to do that. And part of why I argue every man should be be in a men's group is while it's different in individual cultures, globally, there are some overall trends in terms of these ideas of what it means to be a man and what masculinity is, you know, some of this kind of old macho jerk energy of which from a young age most boys are taught the number one thing you need to do to be a man is be tough, is to not ever be vulnerable. Never cry, don't share any kind of weakness or vulnerability. And whatever you do, don't ask for help. Figure it out by yourself, because that's a real man, right? Tough as nails, doesn't need anyone. And this is like imbued in our culture. And so from a young age, men are taught this, boys are taught this. And as a cost of that, we don't learn the relational skills for how to connect deeply with other boys and men, nor do we even often learn the basic skills of how to connect to ourselves. Literally, what am I feeling in my body right now? What emotions am I feeling right now? How do I want to share or express those with safe people in my lives? And the downstream consequence of this is men tend to bury everything. Try to numb it, try not to feel it, don't share, don't ask for help, and often are then in a lot of pain, right? Suicide rates for men tend to be three and a half to four times higher. And I think it's part of this. Men often feel so alone and so ashamed of anytime they're in any kind of pain, they don't share it. So they stuff it or they try to numb out to it with, with alcohol, weed, porn, food, tv, video games, you name it. So a men's group, what it does is it says, you know what, let's do it a different way. Let's create a space where men can come together and get real about what's actually going on in their bodies, in their hearts, in their relationships and, and in their lives. And instead of having to put on this fake armor and pretend like we're always okay, we have a place to admit when we're not okay and when we need help or we need guidance. And we also, in that very same space, then have men around us who know us, know our history, and know what it is we're trying to do with our lives, the kind of man we want to be, the kind of relationship or career we want to start. And because those men know that they can give us that real kind man energy and give us the type of feedback and accountability we need to stay on track in our lives so they support us when we get knocked down and they help us stay on track to move towards the things we most need. So what I see, a men's group does for men is it gives them a space to feel, to get connected to themselves, get connected to others, to learn how to ask for help. And frankly, with all of that behind them, they're able to accomplish way more of what they actually want in life.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Absolutely. I think one of the differentiation with women, of course, we have different problems, but this is having always a sense of community. From the time we were children or young adults, we were able to talk with our mothers, with our sisters. It's always allowed for a woman to be or to feel vulnerable. We didn't receive the same message that men's young men receive cats. And they don't open up. And now in the modern world, it's very difficult. Everyone is very isolated. This sense of the community, especially in big cities, is very difficult. What do you think about the manosphere?

Jason Lange: Yeah, manosphere, red pill. It's all very alive in the world work I do in terms of being aware of it. And like I said, the very real problems, that whole world space, it's a masculinity that's afraid of. Of evolving and adapting to the current world. So they just want to rewind the clock and get back into these kind of places of power, patriarchy and domination and further isolate men in terms of not really getting connected in the ways we want. And you know, the brunt of it, of what I say is these guys are just afraid. They're afraid to change, they're afraid to grow. And more than anything else, they're afraid to feel vulnerable. And it doesn't work. You know, it just causes harm. Most importantly to the very man himself who continues to armor up, who continues to push things down, who continues to have to play power games versus what we're talking about, which is getting into relationships and community, of mutuality, reciprocity and support, where men actually take responsibility for their pains and wounds and traumas instead of pushing it out and pointing the finger at other people. We say, hey, you know, a lot of lot of stuff happened to me in my life. Some of it I contributed to, some of it I didn't. Plenty of stuff happened to me I didn't ask for. But guess what? Only I can take responsibility for my choices and behavior moving forward. And that's a lot easier to do in community. Now. The only positive thing I'll say about the manosphere, so to speak, is I think one of the reasons it kind of took off is because a lot of men have felt invisible over the last five or 10 years, meaning for a lot of good reasons. Our culture has surfaced. The damage the patriarchy and men have caused in the past and frankly, in the present. And there's been this thing, well, because you're a man, you have power, and you're not allowed to feel pain. And when guys feel that, it doesn't feel good to them. So that's when they turn to these. To these voices, these kind of demagogues that are saying, oh, hey, hey, hey, I see your pain. And guess what? It's actually this person's fault or this person's fault or this group's fault. And they actually try to weaponize it, and they take advantage of the very men they think they're trying to help. But the important thing is men feel recognized in their pain. So part of my job, part of the work of those of us in men's work, is to provide an alternative to that that says, hey, we see the pain you're in, and check out this path forward, not that old crap, because that's just going to take you back to a place of even deeper pain. We want you to be thriving in the modern day, which means you have to build new skills and you have to train yourself in things that us men often are trained on of. Yes, how to connect in community, how to be relational, how to handle our emotions and feelings, how to be vulnerable and, yeah, be powerful, set boundaries, have goals, all of that kind of stuff. But, you know, my hope is we've kind of seen the apex of that movement. And it seems like, you know, things might be changing a little bit in terms of the shadows of all those guys keep getting presented to our culture. And more and more, I think we're starting to see healthy voices from men's group, men's work, rite of passage start to show up.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Yeah, definitely this differentiation about men that actually don't want to evolve. Because the truth is, nowadays women have evolved really quickly. Women changed so much in the last probably 15, 20, 15 years. And we need men to evolve with us. I'm talking about heterosexual relationships. Of course, there is all other relationships that are absolutely great, too. But in this case, men and women, we need men to evolve as well and not to stay rigid in ideas that actually are not beneficial for anyone. I was reading a little bit that actually you work with your wife Violet, on couples as well. Women have a lot to say about masculinity, and men have a lot to say about femininity. What do you think men wish women knew about them in your experience?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that's probably surprised me the most, despite everything we're talking about, is way more men than ever admit. And that I think women sometimes realize are actually quite sensitive. Like they feel a lot and they have deep emotional intuitions. We're just taught that that's weak, so don't show it. And so guys bury it and put on this facade. But so many of the men I work with are actually incredibly deep feelers and do have the capacity to be quite vulnerable and emotional once they're in a safe place where they don't feel like they're going to be beat up, judged, shamed, ostracized, etc. For that. So us men actually are quite vulnerable. And obviously I have a biased view because I work with the type of men who are interested in growing and changing. So, you know, I have to acknowledge there's plenty of men out there who don't want to do that and aren't doing that. But the men, you know, that come to me. They do want to be more. They do want to evolve and grow and change and be able to really show up for their modern feminine partners in a way that's meaningful. They often just don't know how. They often feel a lot of shame around it, and they're often trying really hard, even though they don't have the skills to do it. So one thing, you know, that can be an incredibly generous thing, from the feminine to the masculine in these kind of situations that goes so far for us men is just to acknowledge our effort. So, hey, I see you tried something new there like we talked about. Yeah, you know, it didn't quite work, maybe perfectly, but I really appreciate you trying. That's like gold for the heart of a man when you acknowledge the effort he's putting into life, even if he's not getting the outcomes he wants yet. Just the acknowledgment of that effort can really fill a man up. So he'll stay in it and keep doing the tough work to get the relationship or the family or whatever it. Whatever the context is to a really thriving place.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Appreciation, definitely. Appreciation, exactly. Probably. Social media, unfortunately, is teaching so many women, particularly the young ones, not even giving appreciation. That's my perception sometimes when I open social media, especially on young women. So this particular loneliness crisis that men are living, what do you think is regarding this lack of appreciation? Maybe some of them prefer to be by themselves. Maybe it's a real crisis out there that men have hard time communication with women.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think it's a real thing. You know, there's there's some mixed research that's been coming out lately that's like. Well, actually, there's not as big a gender gap as people think between loneliness between men and women. But, you know, my lived experiences, I actually think all of those kinds of surveys require self disclosure. So they require someone to admit, I'm feeling lonely. A lot of men, I just don't think will even admit that. They just say, I'm fine. Right? And sometimes they don't even know that they're lonely. Because many men I've worked with have never even known what connection actually feels like. It's a real, real thing. Right? All they've ever done is been achievement or goal oriented in everything they do. And they've never actually had the experience of dropping in and being fully connected to someone else. So I think it's real. And it's real for all the reasons we talked about that us boys and men, often from a young age, are taught to isolate, are taught that our pain isn't welcome, are taught that we should just toughen up and stop crying and get over it and get back out there. And what that does is it teaches us to not share what's happening inside and actually build the skills to do that. And then we get out in the world. And like you said, culture, technology, everything has changed so much that even our opportunity to just physically be in community with people is so different than it used to be. So there's a lot of men that I think are just getting lost in this and that can. You know, I did a lot of work with men during COVID and the lockdowns, and there were many men I worked with virtually that if they weren't on a virtual call with me and the men I was working with them with, they weren't seeing anyone. There was no one in their life to go see or be in community with. Right. Because they were so isolated. And I think it's a real thing in our culture. Or even. Here's. Here's the other end of this. I get all the time. It's that it's not even the stereotype, just that, oh, this, you know, this man has no friends, right? I had one client recently who told me, he's like, yeah, I just got back from a weekend ski trip. I do every year with a bunch of guys I've known since I was about five years old. But here's the deal. He was in the midst of a really painful separation and impending divorce, and only one guy even mentioned anything about it. The whole Weekend, he was like, we just don't talk about that stuff. So he got home from a whole weekend spending time with guys he's known since she was 5. And he actually felt lonelier than ever because while he saw them on the outside, they did not see him on the inside. And that's the real gap I think men in particular are experiencing right now that while obviously it's different on an individual basis, I think women in general have the skill set a little bit more to keep relationships alive and just kind of talk about things, you know, even if my wife's busy and we're raising kids and she doesn't have much time to get out, she's got like, connections and threads going with different women in her life where she's kind of knows what's going on with them. Where so many men, it's like, oh, yeah, I haven't talked to my best friend in two years. It's very common, right. That they'll. This is just kind of what we default to. And I think the downstream consequence of all that is this loneliness that you're talking about.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Yeah. I think one of the most difficult things for men is actually that step. The step that. Yes, I wanted to break all this loneliness. I still don't know how, but I. Yeah. And probably most of them, they are. They are, they are frozen in the shame, like thinking, oh, everyone have a beautiful, lovely, great life connections. They are doing so well. And I feel in this loneliness. And I do not how to get out of here. In the men's group. When you work with men's, there is any kind of moment that you see men open up the most. Like there is a specific kind of question or a specific kind of silence that finally breaks something loose.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Well, what I see and why I love working so much in groups is there's often what I call the domino effect that it usually just takes one man getting real and being vulnerable first. And once he does that, other men start to feel emboldened to do the same. And oftentimes, in a lot of the work I do, all it takes for that first man to open is to just slow him down and actually get him connected to what he's feeling in his body in the moment. That's it. It's just slowing men down. Direct felt body experience. And they start to actually get in touch with their grief or fear or shame.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): So is there something a particular part of the body like the stomach or.

Jason Lange: Yeah, for each man it's going to be different, but this is. This is Exactly. It, it's slowing a man down, getting him connected to his body, where then he's like, oh yeah, right now my body I actually feel just really heavy in my shoulders. And then we create space around that. And almost always something unfolds right when he's actually with the feeling state. Then where the domino effect happens is other men, as they experience that man becoming more real and true to himself, feeling what's actually there, it starts to unwind and unlock it in them too. So, you know, a man goes in, he's feeling heavy about something he shares about some grief he, he's feeling because of a disconnection he had with his son or, you know, who knows what it is. And that'll start to rattle something in another man who's like, oh my God, you know, I actually experienced that, except I was the son and it was my dad I felt disconnected from. And then he gets to start feeling his thing and the attention goes with him and it just keeps cascading down and down and deeper and deeper. So every man becomes more fully present to what they're actually experiencing and feeling in the moment. And there's all kinds of techniques and strategies obviously to invoke that. But the thing that does it more than anything else is I would argue, the structure of a group where that slowing down and getting present and getting real is really the main reason to gather in the first place. So once that structure is there, once men feel safe, then they'll often start to feel.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Yeah, absolutely. When a men feel safe, all you are telling me about men's group, how you work with them, how they are in contact with the feelings, they are able to open up, they're able to be vulnerable, they're able to express their emotions. We need brotherhood for a healthy and better masculinity, being better parents, brothers, partners. So to conclude, I would like to ask you a final question. Where can people find you, Jason? And what's the best next step for someone who maybe want to explore being part of a men's group, but it's a little bit concerned, like yeah, don't know where to start.

Jason Lange: Yeah. For best way is to just head over to my website, Evolutionary Men. So it's not.com but it's.men. and on there you'll find I have a podcast where I basically just talk about men's groups non stop, the benefits, how to create them, all of that kind of good stuff. I have writings, I have programs just to kind of get onboarded into that world. And if you're you know, even less sure of, well, I don't know. Do I need help? You can go to my site. There's a button up there in the menu to take a quiz that will show you as a man what I call what your evolutionary edge is. Meaning what's the place of your deepest gift? It's something like you just rock in this world, but that next door to it almost always is your biggest blind spot, the place of the deepest growth for you as well. And that when we start to kind of cross train our blind spots, that's when things really take off for us in life. And depending on, you know, what results you get back on the quiz, I'll send you some suggestions for a path forward for you in terms of men's groups and men's work.

Host (For the Man Shaped by Struggles – Reflections from a Feminine Presence): Fantastic. Well, Jason, thank you very much. Please, please, please visit Jason website because definitely I think this is a great work and is supporting men to be better men. That is exactly what we need, better men and better women. So thank you very much for being my very first interviewee. Having a pleasure to have you here and yeah, hopefully I hope to speak with you in the future. It would be a pleasure to talk with you a little bit more, Jason. Thank you very much.

Jason Lange: Okay, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.