Our Three Biggest Fights as a Couple

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. I'm Jason from Evolutionary Men, and this is.

Violet Lange: I'm Violet Lang, and I'm the host of the Pleasure Path podcast, and I'm a women's coach.

Jason Lange: And, yeah, we're married. And today we're going to be talking about our three biggest fights. And look, we just had one, and I lost joke. Just have a little sty here that I'm working through. But I thought it was kind of hilarious that it does look like I just lost a fight. On this day, we're talking about our three biggest fights. And why we're talking about this is to a just kind of shatter the illusion of the perfect couple, that relationships are hard and they take work. And part of what we're doing right now is we just launched a new program called Evolutionary Couples, which involves a subset of program called 12 Epic Dates, which is really about the skill building and. And time you can invest into your relationship to build a thriving partnership. But on the road to that, one of the most powerful things about relationship is rupture and repair, something we do cover in the program. And today, we just wanted to kind of dive in with three of our most epic fights and what played out and what we learned from them.

Violet Lange: And if you're not familiar with rupture and repair, it's basically like when you go to the gym, you build muscle because your muscle breaks down, and then it repairs itself and it becomes stronger. So breakdowns, fights, conflicts, differences in relationship don't mean that something's wrong. It just means there's an opportunity for deepening and authenticity and building some skills and tools and maybe working with someone like us or a therapist to help set you on the path of that repair.

Jason Lange: And so we're gonna dive in here and just talk about, yeah, what were some of our big ruptures and how did they play out? And with these types of stories, Violet, my wife, tends to be much better at remembering kind of the situation in specifics. So I'm going to let her kick things off with fight number one.

Violet Lange: All right. Fight number one was in 2018. And the theme of the fight, I would say is, was trust and co regulation or co disregulation. So I was away. I was on a pilgrimage in India And Jason was in Los Angeles. So I already was feeling my anxious attachment style flare up. You know, I was already feeling more insecure. We weren't connecting as often. It's like a 12 or 13 hour time difference. And I didn't know this, but at the time he was also recording a podcast episode, talking about his journey with sexuality, which all should be fine, except I was coming from this wounded place, this insecure place. And ironically, I had been reading the book by Robert Masters, I think it's called Journey to Mature Monogamy. And he talks a lot in that about trust. And I have had trust issues myself because of childhood sexual trauma, because of issues with past partners, and because, you know, in my worst, I do have some, like, borderline tendencies which I've worked hard to address. Having been raised by a narcissist. I won't get into all the details, but I, on that trip was already had decided in my mind, not in my body, but in my mind. Well, I'm just gonna trust. I'm just gonna trust him and I'm just gonna be in this mature monogamy thing. And I'm in India. So, you know, there was some spiritual bypassing happening. And of course, sometimes when we decide like, oh, I'm just gonna be more loving, I'm just gonna be more trusting, I'm just gonna be more generous, but we haven't done like the deeper work, then life will maybe throw something at us to really test us, like, oh, yeah, you wanna trust? Well, like, here's something that's hard to trust. So without getting into all the details, Jason's podcast with Mel again was talking about his sexual journey. And I got really hurt when I heard it because he didn't glorify me, he didn't talk about. And then I met my wife and we have the best sex ever. And I'm so grateful, you know, it was more like the earlier parts of his journey felt invisible. I felt unloved. I felt like he was prioritizing those other women from the past, which I know sounds ridiculous, like, as I'm saying it out loud, but I got super triggered that he was in my mind, not reality, talking about his sexual conquests without recognizing me as the goddess. So I of course got mad at him because I can't hold anything in, or I definitely couldn't back then. I got mad at him while I was still in India. I cried for like four days. This sounds very dramatic, but that was actually true. I just felt so. It was like a narcissistic Injury, you know, like, I was taking his experience very personally and very critically. And then what happened is when we got home, we just kept getting in this dance where I was poking at him and kind of escalating the situation, screaming and crying and being dramatic. And the more I did that, the more he felt unsafe, you know, so he would shut down. And we've talked before about the grenade in the wall, I think, or maybe it's been on other podcasts. But this was to me, like one of the biggest moments of me throwing the grenade. Um, and we were just taking a lot of space. At one point he was like, I need space. You know, he like left the house. Um, it wasn't like I'm leaving you or something, it was just, he needed space. Um, and we had to work with our couples therapist. I think that was maybe the first time that we started working with her in early 2018 because of this fight. Cuz we could, we could just could not lead ourselves out of it.

Jason Lange: Yeah, that's actually what started our journey to getting a couples therapist was, hey, we had just gotten married six months earlier and whoa, what is this? This hornet's nest that just blew up. I thought it was supposed to be fun in the honeymoon phase. Right. And that quickly kind of came to an end. And I viscerally remember where I was standing in our old house, you know, and she's across the world and we're both getting more and more dysregulated and I'm getting more and more angry. And I remember like shouting into the phone, you know, I love you. Or I don't remember what exactly, but the gist of it was, you know, I had lost a little, you know, on the one hand I had centered the episode before we made it public because it was like, hey, I want to make sure you feel good with what we're putting out here. So I was open in a sense, I was opening myself to the feedback. On the other hand, I had been so focused on the impact of the listeners, so other men who had kind of been stuck in the way I was, that it was like, oh, I really want to share something else as possible. But I kind of held priority of that over her experience. And then when she had an experience that, you know, wasn't aligned in a sense, like she didn't feel good about what I had put out. This is the, I think the key part of the first time this really started to come up in our relationship was, you know, part of why I started yelling on the phone was I was trying to convince her that what she was feeling was wrong. Like, I do love you. I totally trust you. You're my most important, you know, the most important person in my life. And as I've talked about on my podcast before, it was when I shifted to lawyer, not lover, in terms of, like, here's all the reasons that justify what I did and why you shouldn't be having such a big reaction. You know, essentially kind of how I came at things. And lo and behold, that doesn't really create much connection with the partner and did not help her feel validated or seen. And so we got pretty stuck in that dynamic, you know, really, really stayed for a bit. And we had to really burst that open by getting a professional help, getting a somatic therapist who could really slow us down and take the side of our relationship, not any of our individual sides, but it was the first time that I think we really felt at the bigger scale.

Violet Lange: What.

Jason Lange: When she says the wall and the grenade, that's what we call our relationship dance of dysregulation, in a sense, which is something we cover in our program of. Sometimes my wallness, which just means not revealing a whole lot of my insides, including my feelings towards her, would leave her hanging, and then she would need to poke me bigger and bigger and bigger till she got a reaction. And although it wasn't very skillful, you know, when I'm screaming I love you over the phone, there's. That's a reaction, right? That did get me to move towards her in a way. And that was the first time that really got illuminated. I wish I could say it was the last time we did that dance, but it was where it was like, wow, this is a thing, right? You don't feel me enough, so you escalate.

Violet Lange: And.

Jason Lange: And then I. I kind of come forward with anger, though, which then makes you feel unsafe. And then we're both like, this fucking sucks. Like, neither of us are feeling connected or together right now.

Violet Lange: And I think that's a great segue into our second fight because we got. We got help. We worked with a therapist. We were able to repair. Um. One of the things that she really helped us with that I remember from that initial foray, was keen noticing of our somatics. So noticing, wow, Violet, you're tightening your jaw. You seem resentful. You seem like you have contempt. Jason, I can't really see your eyes that much. They're, like, really closing a lot. You know, where are you? And so she didn't pull any punches, you know, she really held us accountable for how we were showing up in our words and in our bodies, because she knew that that's what was happening when we weren't in session. And I think we had come into this relationship both having done a fair amount of work on ourselves. It's not like we had never done any therapy or never looked at our stuff. So I think when this first big rupture came up, it really just surprised both of us and made us realize we're not invincible. We need outside help. We have work we've done on ourselves. But in relationship, new material gets triggered. And that's why continuing to work on your relationship as a couple is, is essential, even if you've done a lot of work on yourself before getting into partnership. And so, yeah, the second fight, which is definitely where the anger, anger dance came up a lot. And my contempt. This was almost a year later. It was in October, November of 2018, so maybe eight months later or something. And I was really dysregulated at the time. I didn't know why, but I. It turns out I was pregnant. I had an early. Was in an early experience of pregnancy. My hormones were kind of going crazy. But underneath all of that was we had had what some people might call like a reverse polarity. I had been working really hard on my business and had been putting tons of energy in and had a lot of volatility. You know, I up months and down months. But I had let go of my yoga teaching and let go of my Reiki clients and had really started taking a lot of. Taking on a lot of masculine energy. Getting up at 5am to take calls, staying up till 8 or 9pm to take calls and grow my business and work on my marketing. Instead of having a broad range of things, I was doing, like I mentioned, different healing modalities. I just really narrowed in on my love coaching. And that's fine, except then I started having escalating expectations. I talk with my clients a lot about how in the beginning we're like, oh my gosh, my person I'm dating is amazing. And then we get past the honeymoon phase and we think, well, why aren't they doing this? Why aren't they doing that? And we start expecting more and more and more from our partner. And sometimes that's because we're expecting too much from ourselves or we just grew up in a very high pressured, perfectionist family like I did. But either way, I was feeling resentful because I was burnt out. But I didn't want to admit it. I was teaching about pleasure and feminine energy, But I wasn't following my own practices. I was more in my masculine. And I wanted Jason to, in quotations, step up, you know, to contribute more financially, to be on the same level in quotations as me with his business. And he has a very successful, thriving business now. But he started his business building a little bit later than I did, and he's more of a slow and steady, and I'm more of an up and down. So I was projecting a lot of my own issues onto him. And it all kind of came to a head when I basically said, I want to have a baby, but I'm not sure if I want to have it with you because I don't feel financially supported. I don't know if we're, you know, are you. Where are we. Where are things going? You know, because he was. He was just having a hard time making ends meet because he had invested a lot in different coaching programs to become a coach and grow his business and all those things. And then I'll let Jason tell his side of what happened after I said that really awful attack.

Jason Lange: Well, yeah, this was all a buildup, right? So she pivoted to coaching, leading this work first. And then I had been interested in it, in that I was doing it. I was leading some relational stuff. I had just been starting to lead some men's group stuff, but I didn't really know how to pivot that into a career. And then she did. So I was like, oh, great, there's. There's a roadmap, right? I'm just going to take the same training you did. And right there, you can feel there's a little bit of reverse polarity in a sense, that she was leading the way. And I think the big thing here was I decided to go all in, which is something that is totally fine to do when you're a bachelor, right? And you just, okay, if this doesn't work, it falls on me, and that's okay. I can deal with that, right? But so I let go of some stable work I had in order to go all in on the coaching because, yeah, you know, live your purpose, go for it, don't hold back. And it just flamed out like it totally bombed. I was not making nearly the money I needed to make. So I was digging myself more and more into debt and getting stressed out. And when I get stressed out, I withdraw, which means there's less connection available. And so this was all building. And then simultaneously, you know, I was new to it and I was Like, I need more training. So I had invested in some significant kind of personal growth, men's work trainings that were. Were taking me away. And I went off for, I think, six days in the desert, and we had no contact. It was, like, no cell phone range, so there was just nothing. And I had been out there practicing, you know, getting really deep, getting clear about things, feeling our future children, like, just, okay, wow, this is. This is amazing. And, you know, come home and, you know, I teach this now to guys I go on retreat with. It's like, you got to remember you were on retreat, but your partner wasn't. Like, it's so important. So I'm thinking, wow, I can't wait to connect with her, express a lot of what I felt. And the moment I get in the door, like, I can feel she was. She was closed, and came at me with, like, what's the plan? Like, what's. Where are you going? What is. I don't feel safe, you know, and obviously, biologically, there was a reason this was particularly alive for her, which was she was with child at the time, and that does start to, you know, reorient the nervous system. And we got on to our infamous green couch, and we were facing each other, and she was really coming at me. And this was where this ties into my work is I had not yet built the capacity to set boundaries, Just be like, you know what? I can't handle this right now. I'm not open to this dialogue. I need to take a break. And so she's coming at me harder, and I'm getting more and more triggered. Like, I'm fucking giving you everything I got, and all you're doing is attacking me. And so I got aggressive. I actually got aggressive, and I slam punched the wall. About this close from her face, she's.

Violet Lange: Like, boom, this is like three inches he's showing.

Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah, so just slam. Which made a big hole in the wall and immediately stopped the whole conversation. And because of her family of origin history, like, you know, she. She felt very unsafe in what, you know, doubled this down even more to go back to some of what I was talking about earlier. And then deeper aspects of shadow, something that does absolutely come up in relationship is, you know, she pulls away, and she's like, how could I ever have kids with you? How could I trust that you wouldn't hit me or hit the kids? And I immediately went to. I would never hit you or hit the kids. And the second. The second I said it, I knew it was a lie. And I knew she knew it was a lie. I was like, what are you talking about? You just literally slammed the wall by my face. That is something inside of you. And that began a deep piece of work for me where I had to get in touch with part of my lineage that actually was physically abusive, in that this is part of me. I could do this. I actually could do it. My nervous system could get overwhelmed, that I could hurt her or my child. And what's dangerous is pretending like that can't happen versus, wow, this is inside of me. And I really need to learn to work with my anger and how to set boundaries at a much earlier state. And that kicked off a whole nother deep dive, really into therapy again. Thankfully, we had our therapist on the bat dial and you know, we had some tools, but it took some time to re establish any kind of connection. It was, you know, on and off in some big ways, but that it really surfaced, you know, me having to come to terms with my anger. And paradoxically, you know, things we started to uncover was that for me, I had to become okay with my anger and that if I let it out in a healthy way to not assume it was really bad and then that would have me hold it back. And to realize her nervous system was allowed to have an experience. But as long as I'm not projecting it on her, that's okay. Like, I'm allowed to have that experience. And that was a huge learning. Along with that was the wake up call I needed to. Okay, you know what? My current life strategy is not working. It's true. I would not be able to take care of a family like this. And you know, it sounds like I made that realization right after the moment, but this is like a three month aftershocks of all of this really kind of coming together where then I had to step forward and get some stable work, which I still have to this day. Even though, yeah, my coaching business is growing and thriving, it allows a certain type of stability that allows me to be present in a different way.

Violet Lange: Yes. And I had a lot of guilt and shame over, you know, attacking Jason, throwing the grenade, having such big needs, being in my masculine, being closed down to him, and then like causing him suffering, you know, making him do some work that he doesn't maybe love as much as some of the other work he does. And so me getting comfortable with my own needs and then also me getting comfortable with my self righteousness. You know, in one of our therapy sessions, Jason kind of like used his fist to hit the table was just kind of like, you know, very briefly, just kind of pounded it on the table. And I startled, you know, and I went into my whole, like, see, like he's angry and he's aggressive and I would never do that. I remember saying to the therapist, like, I, I would never do that. Like, I don't do that with my anger. Not realizing that what I do with my anger was just as bad. It was threatening the relationship. I was attacking him verbally, you know, I was, I was using my anger in very unskillful ways. And again, she was like, okay, tell me about that. Because that seems unreasonable and self righteous to just be like, no one can ever express anger in physical ways. You know, it has to just be through their words. And then I had some work to do on my lineage and me creating safety in my body and me re establishing trust within myself and within Jason. And also knowing that like, if for whatever reason he ever became physically abusive to me or our children, I would leave. You know, one of my shadow sides in my lineage is that there was a lot of trauma that happened when I was young and my mom never left, you know, and she had her own reasons, financial and otherwise, when. But I think some of my controlling, self righteous, attacking behavior was testing him and provoking him. Not only because I needed to feel him more, I needed to feel safe in him, but because I was recreating the past and I had not yet decided I will leave if I feel actually unsafe in that way. And that was huge for me because, you know, I had a long dating journey. I had a sexless marriage in my 20s. Like the last thing I wanted to do is leave a relationship. Especially now that I've just spent three years with this person and I'm really ready to have kids. But I had to be willing to let that dream go in service of prioritizing my lineage healing, which looks like being willing to leave if someone is not accountable to our agreements. And so one of our agreements is that we're not going to use physical violence. And our therapist helped us see that I was being in quotations, violent with my words, the way that I would threaten the relationship. So saying, you know, I don't know if we're going to last or work or, you know, I can't do this anymore or I want to have a baby, but I don't know if it's with you. Like these are ways that I was threatening the relationship.

Jason Lange: And I think that kind of rolls right along into fight number three.

Violet Lange: So, yes, I mean, we're telling you like the big, big ruptures. Obviously we have smaller ruptures along the way, like every couple does. But the biggest fight then was actually not till quite a bit later. That next kind of huge fight was in December of 2023. So pretty recently, again, related to fertility stuff. And you might notice a theme also related to when we have had distance from each other, which is common in a lot of couples, right? There's travel, there's long distance relationships, there's times when you just can't connect as often. And for me, part of what was percolating with this was a few things, one of which is that I had a miscarriage in August of 2023. And it was a missed miscarriage, which means that you don't realize that you're not pregnant anymore until you go in for a scan. And they say the baby stopped developing. And it's fairly common. But it was my first experience of that type of loss. I had had other types of pregnancy loss and I was, as my therapist said, as our therapist said, you know, mad with grief, crazy with grief. But it didn' it at the time. So I did some good self care. You know, I really grieved in many ways. I went on a pilgrimage to the UK to Glastonbury, which was very healing. But I wouldn't say that I was doing relational healing. You know, I was working with myself. But there were still old kind of ghosts and issues haunting me from myself and my own mindset. Questions about would I be a mom again, Questions about challenges in our dynamic related to fertility, which, you know, unfortunately is a struggle for a lot of people, parenting or fertility or pregnancy loss. And then I had letter retreat in early November and I think my nervous system just, it just got fried. I had the pregnancy loss and I went on my own retreat. We're still parenting, you know, at that time. A three year old, which can be very challenging age. I had just led my retreat and then we had tried a fertility treatment and IUI that didn't work. And I think all of those things combined, the separation or the, you know, the travel, the distance from Jason and the unwillingness to maybe go to the depths of my grief that I needed to go to, just all kind of piled up and slight improvement to things in the past that I like told him we need a session with our therapist because I have so much on my heart. So I didn't just unload it on him. That's like one, one small step in the right direction. But once it got in the session, it got Pretty nasty. So, yeah, I basically was like, I'm not gonna do this relationship just for the sake of. Of Ruby or just for the sake of appearances again, maybe this is me kind of trying to assert myself compared to my lineage. Like, again, in my family, you stay together no matter what, no matter how toxic. Toxic it is or who's getting abused or what the cost is. And there was also a lot of appearances, like, oh, well, our family is perfect from the outside and on the inside, you know, there's incest and there's physical abuse and there's narcissism and there's these other things happening. So I think my pendulum swinging in the totally opposite direction is like, I'm not going to be in this for appearances. I'm just going to be in this for the kids. You know, Like, I was so full of vitriol from the time we had wasted in quotations with our fertility journey and all the losses along the way. And I was punishing him. Yeah, I was punishing him with my words and my emotions. And I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of kind of like putting Ruby in the mix. I. I said some mean things about Jason's relationship with Ruby that aren't exactly true. You know, I basically was like, well, she doesn't even like you. But the truth is I was feeling lots of contempt and rage towards Jason and she was picking up on that. Once we worked through this cycle of healing, that was a much shorter cycle, but still, like, maybe, you know, two or three weeks in December of 2023, Ruby started bonding with Jason more. You know, like, we have a deep impact on our children and how we feel about our partner translates. You know, Jason has had the experience of his mom being upset at his dad, and Jason's feeling that feminine rage in his body, even if his mom isn't saying anything to his dad at that point. So anyway, I'll stop talking and let Jason chime in.

Jason Lange: Yeah, it was just another one where, you know, the energy was so off. As soon as we began our session, our therapist was like, oh, so I'm assuming there may not be a future here. Like, like, so this is like where you're at, huh? And I think that was kind of a wake up call for us in terms of what our nervous systems were actually, I don't know, conveying to each other in a sense. And, you know, I would say resentment and disgust were the energy, like, I really felt coming strongly towards me and that, you know, this. We consciously said a container for this to kind of come forward. And it was a huge growth for me because it was the first time I realized, wow, one of the ways I contribute to this pattern is I kind of go codependent, where when she's dysregulated, I start to become dysregulated. That, oh, my God, if she's upset, nothing is okay. I'm not okay until she's not upset. And which, lo and behold, then she can't feel a steady, sturdy presence, which dysregulates her more, which disregulates me more. So that was a practice in that session of actually learning to differentiate. It's like, wow, if you're mad at me, that doesn't mean I have to dysregulate. And it doesn't necessarily even mean that one of us is right or wrong. It's just this is the feeling that's here right now, and I don't have to collapse into this, like. What would we call it? Like, collapsed place of shame. I would go to. That would basically end the conversation between us where she would start to come at me with something, and then I would go so heavily into shame that it's like, well, you can't attack me anymore because I already feel as bad as possible, so there's no connection here anymore. There's no opportunity for feedback and for me to actually receive you, because I already feel so much worse about myself than you could ever, you know, have me feel. And that was actually a pretty safe place for me. But it stopped. It stopped our connection from. From. From growing, in a sense, and from building. And so I had to learn to differentiate that, oh, my nervous system can be okay, even if she's really dysregulated. Like, I can actually be okay in this moment. And I've had to practice, you know, bringing that forward more that it's like, okay, I don't have to immediately collapse here if she's mad at me or even if she's not mad at me. But I start to create the story, she's mad at me, which then I kind of collapse and get dysregulated and disappear, which just doesn't help. And I would say weaved along with all of this was because of the pain of our journey. We had not been physically connected really at all that year. And that's particularly an important thing for our relationship. That's actually a value. And we had strayed from it because she had some resentments, I had some resentments, but we weren't really talking about them. Regularly there was just this kind of both in our position and this fight really kind of blew that open where it was like, we had to really get frank, like, are we going to try to make this work or is this it? Like. And I think that was a pretty big shifting point of, like, no, actually, I think we do want to make this work and we do need some help. And once some of this resentment had started to move, things started to loosen up. And once I didn't collapse because of some of that energy coming my way, she actually had a partner to relate to. And then it was like, oh, okay, that this is a person again who I want to stay connected to rather than, you know, it's not very enticing when. When one partner is just totally collapsed into self shame because it's like, who would want to be with that? Right? But as I was able to find a little bit of my dignity and forgiveness for different things as well, it's like, yeah, I fuck that up and I'm still here. And, you know, now it matters to me how I keep showing up, moving forward, and there's nothing I can do about that. And it's not helping you or me to. For me to stay in that sour, collapsed place. So we gotta, like, really work with this and what's that gonna take? And that was a fight that I think was probably one of the most pivotal ones in that we did bring help in a little sooner and we had a lot more tools, I think, at our disposal even going into that. So I was a little more resourced going into that session and then was able to kind of keep this boundary itself more alive after that.

Violet Lange: Yeah. And I think there were things I just learned that I didn't know were having such a big impact. You know, Jason shared in that session that he. If I, like, startled in the middle of the night because I have a pretty big startle response, ironically, less so now that we've moved. But that came up a lot in our old house. I didn't quite feel as safe there, just based on the neighborhood and, you know, kid throwing a rock through the window and other things. And that when I had a startle response, he was taking that on like, oh, I'm bad, I've done something wrong, like, I've hurt Violet. Even though I have a startle response because of my childhood trauma, some of which happened, you know, when. When it was dark and because this place we're living that I don't necessarily feel this super safe in our physical home. So I felt a New awareness of how responsible I needed to be for my nervous system. And I've seen like memes on the Internet or this kind of concept. I just want to reiterate that's we are responsible for the energy we put into our relationship, even if we're not verbalizing it, even if we're not doing something wrong in quotations like, oh, what would it be like to actually be responsible for Jason's nervous system in a healthy way with the way that I'm showing up with my nervous system. So I completely agree with you that we had more tools going in. We actually did the fight in front of our therapist, which is probably healthier than we had ever done it before. Even though is. Is more, you know, extreme, like verbally and there was more at stake than ever before. And, and we kind of went to that very scary place of like, do we want to be together? Which we hadn't really vocalized in our previous. It catalyzed me to take a little more responsibility for my nervous system. I got a fertility specific therapist so I could work through some of my grief. I started doing sessions with our couples therapists one on one. I had been working with like herbology stuff and I just kind of took that to another level, making sure I had the right structure and rituals in my day to day routine so I could show up a little more self regulated. And then, yeah, letting go of that hurt. I think I had a tendency in the past to maybe hold on to that because it's what kept me connected to Jason, false, falsely connected, you know, just through my rage or, or whatever. But the rage in some ways felt better than resentment or better than contempt or better than disgust. And as I was able to move through that more quickly then I was able to feel the love that Jason had for Jason and, or Jason had for Ruby and Ruby had for Jason. And kind of our family unit began to heal in a way that we, we just hadn't the year prior because we were either doing fertility treatments or we had pregnancy loss or we were traveling or working. And yeah, I think that year we probably had the least amount of physical connection than, than any other year. And that is, that is a tool for regulating. It can be overused. You know, we don't want to just trauma, trauma bang our partner and just be like bonding as a way to sexually as a way to regulate our own nervous systems. That's, that's not great. But, but true connected intimacy where your hearts are open and you're enjoying physical pleasure, you know, that can Be like a healing balm for your relationship.

Jason Lange: And again, just kind of what I took away from that was learning to differentiate my nervous system in that she's allowed to have her experience. And it's not that I'm closed to it, but I can also be safe in my own experience, which is different than hers. And you know, another place this sometimes used to show up would be she has very visceral dreams. And so sometimes we would wait, wake up, and she would be mad at me because of something that had happened in a dream. And I would take that on, right, like, oh my God, I gotta like fix this now. Or somehow prove that that would never happen. And I would actually get dysregulated from that versus now I have more capacity to. No, I'm okay. Like, oh, that's okay. It's just a dream, like, and it's okay. And she's going to be okay. She always ends up regulating herself long term in a sense in that. Instead, you know, the shift now is to just kind of approach that from a more curious place and, you know, not assume it's true or that I have to defend something because of that and again, just not collapse into my own dysregulation in the, in the relationship. And for us to just be much better at naming resentments and frustrations and to build more and more safety to bring these different parts of ourselves forward. And while we used an example here of, for us, we leaned a lot in these instances on our therapist. But we were each doing individual work with therapists and different programs and modalities at the same time. Because the other, I think, core component here of what's shifted over the course of these three fights is our individual capacity and our individual intimacy with ourselves and our patterns and our ability to take responsibility for, oh, this is, this is what's going on in my side. And that, that takes practice and training, right? That's something anyone can learn. We learned it. We're still learning it. It's not like you just master it one day, but it's just you get better and better at bringing things forward more and more real time in ways that lead to connection rather than conflict, in a sense of bringing forward vulnerabilities or hurts or things like that. Much more on, on the dime, so to speak, rather than they build up and then they kind of come out for me as, you know, more passive aggressive or hers, you know, more that grenade energy initially. And that's part of the inspiration for, you know, the program we've created is okay. How do you actually build these capacities as a couple without having to have the extreme situations? Like, what. What are the safe ways you can start to play with all of this different kind of stuff. Conflict, connection, sexuality, in ways that we can really get to know ourselves and our partners at a much deeper level.

Violet Lange: And I will also just add, you know, looking back at these three biggest fights, there was always a calling towards growth or an opportunity for growth on the other side of them that perhaps was in the field or was something that wanted to happen. I'm not saying the fight wanted to happen. That could have done a lot. We could have done that a lot more skillfully. But for instance, our fight in 2018, that I didn't realize I was pregnant at the time, and it did end in a blighted ovum, like an early miscarriage. We got. We worked through that, and then we got pregnant a few months later. And the. Sorry, that was fight number two that we talked about. And then the first fight that we talked about on the other side of that was actually growth for both of us in our businesses and in our personal development. We just maybe couldn't see or anticipate it at the time. And then the huge fight we had In December of 2023, you know, month and a half, two months later, we had bought our new house. We had gotten pregnant through some fertility treatments. And so if you are going through a hard time in your relationship or you look back on the hard times you've gone through on a spiritual level, maybe something is being worked through to support you foundationally for this next level of growth in your relationship. If we can take the hard medicine of taking responsibility, doing our work, getting resourced and supported, being surrounded by other role models and couples and. And knowing that we are committed to ourselves and to each other, that interdependence.

Jason Lange: And, you know, it's really two things that ended up playing together here to allow us to keep moving forward, which are part of, again, what we weave into the evolutionary couples and 12 epic gates experience, which are really both capacity and tools. So capacity is just the ability to stay present, right? And then to kind of consciously respond rather than react, as we were both doing earlier on, where we would just become the reactive emotion. Now we can, you know, at our best, take these more subtle pauses and come with a little more intention. Okay, I have the capacity to choose what I want to do here. And then where tools come online is, well, what do I want to do here? What do we actually have in the toolkit to deal with, with this resentment or deal with this physical disconnection or deal with this just kind of, I don't know, things are good, but we're kind of missing a little bit of the electricity here. What's, what's the tool we can reach for to kind of generate that again? And that's really what we're teaching in the program.

Violet Lange: And I'll say that this, these last, you know, eight months or so have probably been the healthiest months that we've had. We've noticed our pattern sooner. We haven't been without stress, you know, moving to a different state while pregnant, you know, while getting your four year old set up for a new school. You know, there's been all sorts of things that could have been stressors but I feel like we've both, to Jason's point, been developing our capacity, reaching for our tools and prioritizing our connection physically and emotionally even amidst all the stress. And it's probably the first time, at least in my perspective in our relationship where for a very solid amount of time we've had both physical and emotional connection online, that we've stayed connected even through the hard times. And I'm, I'm really proud of us for that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, it's definitely been a whole new, whole new boss level mode to be navigating together. But it, you know, things can get better and you can build more resiliency in your relationship. So it's not that there hasn't been blow ups or disconnects between us, but instead of them being, you know, a 10 out of the 10 and then it takes us weeks to reconnect, it's more like, okay, that's like a 6 out of 10 and we can come back together fairly quickly after that. And that's what it's all about, really moving towards. And then as I often say that the beauty of that is the deeper trust that starts to come online that's like, oh yeah, we can totally handle the, handle the, these different disconnections and conflicts because we've done it so many times before. So it's, I don't get as forlorn with this is so hopeless. It's never going to get fixed. It's always going to be, you know, this bad. It's more like, oh yeah, here's another speed bump. And we know how to deal with speed bumps because we've increased our capacity. We have these tools, we have a road map to keep coming back together. And that's what we hope to, you know, support you. For anyone listening that's in a partnership that wants to go deeper and create more with your partner. You know, we've got a roadmap and we'll help you get there. So if you want to learn more about Evolutionary Couples, which is an actual cohort, an interactive version of the 12 Epic Dates program, which you can also do just self paced without doing any of the interactive stuff, you can go to Evolutionary Couples. So Evolutionary Couples us will also be a link in the show notes here as well and you can learn all about the program. And we actually start in just a couple of weeks here. It's fall of 2024 as we're recording this. But you can do the 12 epic dates part at any time as well.

Violet Lange: And we're excited to support you because we know that a lot of relationships kind of go down in flames that don't have to. If I had had these tools with my first marriage, maybe it would have been different. I mean, I'm glad it didn't work out that I can't imagine not being with Jason. But I think we don't have to choose either codependency or kind of living separate lives and being hyper independent. People in the world are doing this. They're building healthy partnership, even if you don't see that in your immediate circles. And that's one of the cool things about joining Evolutionary Couples is you get to see other couples that are as just as committed as you are to growth and conscious partnership and not spiritually bypassing, you know, bringing the messiness and also bringing the joy and the fun and the, and the sexiness and the playfulness and all of that too. I also wanted to add one more thing, which is that one of the parts of the program for Evolutionary Couples is that you get your own WhatsApp chat as well as individual or not individual, but group calls just as women or just as men. And that is also really helpful because a part of how we've built our capacity as individuals to bring to our relationship is having groups of just women or just men that we can go to where we can bring some of the yucky messy stuff, but it's held with consciousness, it's held with respect for our partner. And we don't get away with our own bullshit. You know, it's important to be surrounded by women who are not just going to bitch and moan about their husbands, but are going to say like, well, that reminds me of this pattern and have you looked at that? Or what sort of support do you have? Or you know, have you moved that through your body. You know, have you done self pleasure related to this? People who will hold you accountable and inspire you, inspire you to bring your best self to your partnership that are rooting for you and your partner to stay together, not just kind of bitching and moaning.

Jason Lange: Well, I think we'll bring things to a close there. If you have any questions, you can contact us on the Evolutionary Couples website. And until next time you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men Apply.