In this episode my wife Violet and I share the five scariest moments in our relationship. These weren’t just hard conversations or minor disagreements, but the moments where both of us genuinely questioned whether we’d make it, whether we’d chosen the right partner, or whether we were trapped in patterns we couldn’t escape. We get specific about what actually happened, the deep fears underneath each crisis, and the exact moves that allowed us to work through the terror instead of letting it end things.
If you’ve ever had that gut-punch moment in your relationship where you think “is this it, is this over?” then listen in! Every long-term couple hits these inflection points where fear can either derail everything or become the catalyst for deeper trust and connection. Tune in to learn how we did it, what we’d do differently, and why these scary moments became some of the most important turning points in building a relationship that actually works.
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Jason Lange: Jason Lange: Yeah. And just to be clear, right, the idea with the fear here is any long term relationship, any. Any couple really committed to each other over a long period of time, there's going to be moments where you question things. And that's part of what we mean by fear of, like, is this it? Is this over? Are we done? Is this repairable? Can we mend this? Can we come back together? And these are just some of our top moments. Not our only moments by any means.
Violet Lange: No.
Jason Lange: But some of our top moments that we're going to dive into here today.
Violet Lange: Mm. So I think the scariest moment we. We both said when we were preparing for this episode, that number one scariest moment was when we got the diagnosis that our daughter was born deaf. And now looking back, it's easy to say, well, that was just a moment of discovery where we learned more about her and our journey. But at the time, for me, it just felt really high anxiety. And anxiety is just a fancy word for fear. And it was this question of will we get through as a family and will our vision of family stay intact? And I know I sound really ableist when I say that, but it was more that how are we going to communicate with her? Because communication as relationship coaches is, like, paramount for us. And then we were worried how would we become fluent in sign language? Sign language. And it just. It was scary because of the unknown. And I think that's a common thread through a lot of fear moments is what happens next, and how are we going to solve for this challenge without losing our integrity, without losing ourselves? And one of our kind of mentors during that process, Mary Beth at jtc, would always say, you know, anxiety actually isn't a bad way to deal with things in the beginning because it gives you fuel. You know, it really does kind of ramp up your nervous system in a way that you can fight the proverbial tiger. In this case, the tiger was just wanting to be really good parents and having this unexpected thing happen.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And it was a good example of a lot of uncertainty. And so, you know, we had already had a journey to even get pregnant. And there was this feeling once the birth was over, of, okay, right. The. We got through it. The hard part's over. It's. It's. It's smooth sailing here. And I think this is something we often kind of encounter in life and relationships when it's actually like, oh, no. You know, we had basically a short month of not knowing and kind of nestled and beautiful in its own way because it allowed us to just really be present with our daughter. But then it was just the high amount of uncertainty around, we don't know what this is going to do. And having come off of, you know, a few years prior of having to do a lot of work to stay connected, and some of our deep wounding already appearing, some of our biggest fights, which we've talked about before, there was a sense of, okay, how is this going to reverberate in our connection? And have we built a strong enough connection to get through this together? Because our stress levels are going to go up. Right. And it just so happened that this coincided with COVID coming, and it was kind of an. Just total amount of insanity for us where the world was shutting down. We were having to get our daughter into hospitals for testing to find out, you know, is this just deafness? We didn't know, or are there going to be serious complications down the line? Is the deafness part of something else? And so there was just a high amount of anxiety between the two of us and a lot of fear around. What's it going to mean? Right. What's it going to mean for our family? What's it going to mean for our relationship? Are we going to even have time to have a relationship depending on how things go and. And how do we protect our daughter through all of this? And it was a good Example of we really had to use the resources we had around us in terms of our couples therapist support system. From this educational center, we started working with other friends and family, my men's group, her female friends. We really called on it, all our families as well, to help us navigate that transition. But it was full of a lot of fear, including fear, you know, when we didn't know what caused it. Right. Was, oh, wow, is. Is there something about my genetics that, you know, caused this in my daughter? And we didn't know. Right. We later found out it wasn't from either of us, but there was a lot of that fear too, of, oh, if it was me, what is it going to mean? What's she going to think? Et cetera, et cetera.
Violet Lange: Or I was like, is it because I ate mussels one day because I was really craving all the iron and minerals and my midwife actually said for it. But anyway, it wasn't that.
Jason Lange: Yeah, but there was a lot of fear, as you can see, that we were carrying inside of that that then just spilled over into our connection. Meanwhile, it's the first time we've had children. Right. So we're also just dealing with the experience of having a kid for the first time and having to raise and what a monumental shift in our time, energy, presence that that was in terms of. We didn't really know. Right. We were both entrepreneurs working from home. She had a massively scaled back her business. I had to learn to switch gears in a way I never did of, okay, I got two hours to work and then two hours with kids. And nobody tells you about these things that, you know, just to prepare. And so there was just a lot of fear and I would say stress that kind of came from a lot of that fear as well, that we really had to work hard to navigate as a couple of.
Violet Lange: And I will say, you know, there are hidden gifts I find in every kind of fear experience because it is a catalyst and an activator and you can choose how you're going to work through it to become closer or more distant. I'm really proud of looking back, like, our physical intimacy stayed intact. You know, I took a program that I don't know if I really needed to take, but it was more about me investing in this part of our relationship. The fall, you know, when our daughter was basically around eight or nine months, I took an online course about sexuality and getting support in maintaining my sexual essence. We saw our couples therapist, we saw the counselor at the hearing center clinic that we were working with. And we also found kind of a silver lining of really amazing community. You know, there was just unfathomable support, assistance, hope, encouragement, like all of that from families who were a year, two years ahead of us in the journey, whose children had also gone through the journey of being deaf and then getting cochlear implants. And they were all born to typically hearing parents. So we had that kind of common thread. And I would also say now that we have two kids, looking back, I'm like, wow, we really did it. Like, we went through Covid with a child with a disability in a totally, you know, different context of where we thought we would be, you know, financially and with our businesses and all of this stuff. And now having a second, everyone's like, oh, is it a big adjustment having a second? I'm like, it's easy. It's so much easier. Which isn't to say that Ruby is difficult, but just that, you know, she's a. She's a fiery soul who chose a really interesting path. So what do you think you learned? Or what did we get from that? From your perspective?
Jason Lange: I mean, just the. I think the deeper lesson with this one that is going to be applicable to any couple is right, even if we try to stay present and sober in a relationship, we all future project as to what it's supposed to look like. And I think it's a very common experience that life comes along and rewrites that story. And that can be a point a lot of couples don't get past, you know, frankly. And for us, I think it was the first really big one where it was like, oh, okay, the. The perfect little. It's all going to unfold without any hiccups. That's not the case. And, you know, I think for us, it was the first of a few different experiences that we've had to learn to navigate in our coupledom of, oh, those. Those things just happen to other people, right? It's this percentage of the population or whatever. And then you start to realize, oh, that can happen to us and it is happening to us, and if that's happening to us, what else can happen to us? And so for. For me, it certainly has been a shift to more gratitude as well. For, wow, okay, it was really hard. And it was all completely workable, you know, using the resources we had. And we have a lot of privilege in the work we do, our skin color, our economic status that some people we know didn't have. And just even acknowledging and noticing that of like, okay, yeah, sometimes it's really hard and we work really hard and we do have a lot of benefit behind us that not everyone does. So just woke me up to that as well. As. Well as something as simple as oh yeah, we have typical hearing and we've never had that challenge that we've now been exposed to a lot, a lot of people, including our own daughter, who don't have that just automatically there. So for me, yeah, it was full of a lot of fear and I think we really had to grow together to grow up through it in a lot of ways and you know, learn to work with each other in different ways as well of just managing our day to day life and managing this big transition of okay, what's this going to mean for a life? How do you make big decisions that are going to impact your child's life for decades really, when you don't have a whole lot of information, you know, and we had to make some choices and thankfully we were able to make them together.
Violet Lange: Yes. And so if you're listening to this, maybe you don't have a child who has special needs, but maybe you've lost a parent or have to deal with elder care or situation with in laws are different than you expected or job changes. Like hopefully you can take some nuggets for this about anytime uncertainty comes around and you have to readjust your plan on the fly with each other and stay connected without getting resentful.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And I'll share just one last benefit of that experience was like I said, covet happened while that was happening and it, you know, was hard and because we had such a clear mission and focus of taking care of our daughter even beyond just, you know, her diagnosis and stuff like a baby came into our life. There were to a lot of ways I don't think we were quite as impacted as others because we had this little family family unit and this little joyful being to just take care of and pour our love into and then had just enough connection around that that, you know, we were able to ride a wave that many, many men in particular I worked with didn't have that. And it was much more painful to navigate those times. But that was one experience that really gave me appreciation for the family unit and the life we had created inside, you know, this teeny little plot of land in Los Angeles at the time in a lot of ways fe very vital and very abundant. So while there was a lot of fear there, there was a lot of gratitude for me as well that we got to navigate that experience together and.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I would say it's the fear, I think a lot of people experience when they commit to someone for the long haul of, oh, my God, did I. Am I stuck in something that's never going to work now? And what does it mean? And the. The deeper the investment becomes, in a sense, the harder it is to get out. So there's this feeling of, right, the. The walls closing in in some sense, on the. On the low end, you know, the shadowy side of it. But it's the. Oftentimes, you know what I think this shows up as is. We've talked about it before. It's the. The relationship inflection point where all the fun and polarity and newness and difference starts to kind of decrease because you just interweave your lives much more together. And then all the old attachment stuff and patterning surfaces. Right. And that's kind of the, oh moment a lot of people actually don't get through because they assume, oh, if I'm feeling that this can't be the one.
Violet Lange: Right.
Jason Lange: If. If I'm feeling that this can't be the one. And, you know, probably my version of that would be some of just the huge fights we would have that felt like something, you know, I was getting. I would get loud like my dad used to get loud, and then nothing would kind of change. I wouldn't really change. And then I would walk around with this feeling in my body that she was harboring a lot of anger or resentment towards me. And that was something I had modeled for me in my family system. And there was just like, oh, my God, after all this work, I basically am just in the same relationship my parents had. Like, that was kind of right. The fear. In a sense, my version of that totally wasn't the case because we actually can talk about these things and are growing and changing and developing. But thank God we have the context. We do as relationship coaches and growth oriented people to know about these things that are going to come for any of you, for anyone listening, right. It's just part of the development of a relationship. And if you're not aware of that, that fear can end things because then.
Jason Lange: So an important one in just this realization that everyone's going to have, I think at some point of oh, or questioning. Right. The fear of did I make the right decision? That we both kind of had different parts in our own ways that I think everyone has. And to just know as a couple, it's totally normal. Right. And particularly once you have the tools to go under the hood, it doesn't have to be such a big deal.
Violet Lange: Do you want to talk about the Mexico one?
Jason Lange: Yes. This was definitely one of the more challenging moments in our life. We. We were. I don't remember how many weeks.
Violet Lange: Like eight weeks, I think.
Jason Lange: I think eight weeks pregnant. And this was before Ruby was born. And I was leaving for a men's retreat with some guys down in Mexico. A friend had basically paid for my ticket because I didn't have a lot of money at the time. We were in a. I in a lot of financial stress. We were under a lot of stress. And we had a huge fight on the way to the airport. I mean like explosive fight in terms of you dropped me off and you know, we were kind of almost barely talking. It was one of those big fights.
Violet Lange: I don't remember that quite honestly. I think I was just so overwhelmed with the hormones of pregnancy and then impending miscarriage. Yeah.
Jason Lange: And then I got onto this plane in. By the time I landed, she. She was texting me that, yeah, you know, the. I'm losing the baby right now, it's happening. And I completely froze. I just. I literally froze. Luckily, I just happened to be on the plane with one of the men who was coming to the retreat that I knew really well that I had. That lived in LA at the same time. And so he kind of shuffled me into a car and got me to the place we were going to stay, which was another friend of ours house. And I was just totally frozen because I did. I just didn't know what to do. Right. I didn't know, do I. Do I go home right now? I can't even pay for a ticket. Like, it was extremely stressful. If I stay here, is she gonna hate me forever? Like, I did not know the right answer to do. I did not know the right answer. Right. I was just totally frozen of like, oh my God, should I be immediately getting home right now for this or what? And thankfully, you know, I came in a pretty frozen catatonic state through this doorway. And the men kind of helped Thaw me out a little bit. Enough that we were able to have a conversation on the phone and we were able to form a plan for the weekend. And things ended up, you know, working out, but it was still a very tender thing to come home and reconnect after that. And the great fear underneath was, wow, did the fight we have that I kind of, you know, created through some of my choices at the time, did that lead to the miscarriage? And that was like a deep, deep fear I was kind of holding the whole weekend. Is she gonna, you know, think that? Is she gonna be mad at me for that? Is she gonn ended up staying with the group because I realized I was in no state to care for her, frankly. And there was a lot of fear about what the reconnection would look like. On the other side of that.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, I would say my fear in that one was just, if you've never been. It's. It's. It's a journey just to get there. Like, just driving in lines and waiting. And so we had already been on the car, you know, probably 16 hours, and we're crossing the line to get in, which means you basically, once you're in, you're like in for the week, right? There's. You don't really leave again. And we had just. We were crossing in when this topic kind of blew up again. And she was like, I don't want to be here. You know, I. I don't want to be here. And it was like, oh, like, is this weekend. Is this week. Week already over? Right. In a sense. And then we had to navigate that as we went into the week. And, yeah, the fear was what happens. You know, part of my sticklerness around some of what was coming up was not wanting to say things that didn't feel true for me at the time, just to appease, in a sense, because to me, it would have felt like lying. And as a nice guy, kind of a people pleaser in the bat, it was just always easier to kind of bullshit and okay, that this is the way to ease someone else's. I'll just say the thing, even if it's not necessarily my truth. And having done a lot of work, I was getting more in contact with my truth. And there was just like some very specific languaging and stuff that I was getting really stuck on, that I didn't want to lie in a sense where I was like, I don't know at this point. Da, da, da, da. But the beauty of that was what. What I learned was, oh, we can stay connected, right? It's not easy. It's not like sunshine and rainbows, like rave all night. It was like some real tension and taking space and coming back together. And I think a theme in a lot of ways of our relationship from the get go was it can be hard at times, but there's enough here that we want to keep coming back together. And in fact, there's something really unique that starts to happen when we can move through the hard stuff, because that was something that I think neither of us had quite ever had modeled for us or experienced before of. Oh, wait. These things that feel like they could end a relationship if you actually just communicate and stay clear and honor yourself and get Support. There's. They don't actually have to end the relationship. Right. In. In a sense, they're tools to build deeper trust and connection. And the more we've done that in our relationship, the more it creates a much deeper trust and relaxation of, oh, we don't have to be afraid of the big fights. Right. So the paradox is then you can go into them even deeper and, like, be even more authentic and even more true because we've moved through it enough times to know, oh, we can do that so we don't have to pretend like where. I think a lot of couples get into trouble of withholds, which then simmer into resentments. And, you know, they have the research that is the thing that kills relationships more than anything else. And so I had a lot of fear that weekend of, okay, this. What I thought was going to be this amazing, fun weekend isn't going to be it, and maybe we're done. And through just how we navigated that challenge partially in community with each other and other people, it revealed to me, oh, this is really unique. Right. What I'm experiencing with her is really unique. And even though it's really hard and really vulnerable and full of a lot of uncertainty in the times I've really led in the relationship, she's been willing to show up and try. And that was really what kind of sealed the deal for me.
Violet Lange: Yes, I think you said that beautifully. Should we move on to the last one? This is our fifth scariest moment, and it is about moving, which is a more recent one. This is all in the last, like, 18 months.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So, you know, I had a career as a filmmaker in Los Angeles, and in a lot of ways, California is my first love. Love. It's a place I moved to right out of high school, and it just represented so much for me. Love the culture, love the people, love the land, still do in a lot of ways. And ended up really enjoying my time in Los Angeles. And it became clear through having our first child, changing housing market, our finances at one point that it was just not. Not going to happen there. Right. That if we were going to live there, it was kind of going to be a renty type situation. And just a lot of uncertainty and fear with that. And so a whole bunch of things came together and it became clear that we're going to move. And we did some, I guess, explorations of different places. And then we landed on moving back to Colorado, where I had lived previously. Had some community, we had some family. She had always liked it when we had Been out there and the realtor we were working with suggested we look over the winter because there'd be a lot less competition for buying because most people want to move right around the school year and whatnot. And it so happened, something came up and it was within our means and near schools and like, checked a lot of the boxes and we put in an offer and it got accepted in February and our daughter was in preschool and it became very. It just became very clear, okay, this is what's happening and I'm not ready. And so I started to feel a lot of fear about the very thing I was just talking about of, wow, I. I can tell she's ready to go right now. Like, just, let's do it. Let's go right now. Was done with the situation we were in. I wasn't both personally, and I just felt oddly really tied to my daughter finishing preschool and like having this whole experience. She wouldn't remember, but I would of like graduating and closure and all that kind of stuff. And the deep fear that really dawned on me was, wow, if I don't really bring my forward, my truth right now, in typical nice guy way, I could just go along with it. And also in typical nice guy way could feel that would create a deep amount of resentment in me. And so this has had come up in different things we had done where then instead of it being something like warm and exciting, I would be kind of passively mad and resisting about it, which then would change the energy. So we'd be moving to our new home, a place of excitement and. And, you know, new possibility, but I would kind of be about it, right? And the fear was, I don't want to do that to her or to my kid, right? I don't want to go and feel resentment and like, kind of pollute the experience, let's just say. And I didn't know what to do about it, right? And lo and behold, you know, I had a pretty frank conversation with my men's group about it when it became clear in. And they help me. They help me just feel my truth of I'm a yes to moving and I need a little more time, right? And that's going to come with a consequence of rent and mortgage, right. That we'll have to dual pay. And, you know, we were doing better at that time, but still it was, you know, not a small amount. And the realization was, if I don't bring this forward, I'm gonna make this transition in a resentful way and not feel good about it. And it's gonna ruin it for her. It's gonna ruin it for me, and I don't want it to feel like that. So, okay, I gotta. I gotta have this conversation. And so I literally went home that night and we had talk about, I'm in, and I don't wanna go to the end of the school year. That gives us time to close out our lives here, to prepare to enjoy the last things we, you know, really enjoy here and just kind of stew a little bit in the transition. And, you know, we were able to get some support and make it happen and make a plan. And she totally agreed, right? It wasn't like a yeah out of the gate, but it was like, okay. Like, she was willing to see where I was coming from and meet me in that. And I think because of that, I was able to transition in a much more positive, optimistic kind of like, it was like, we kind of got to wrap the bow on everything and do all the last things. And it was a great transition for me. That, again, the. The fear was, if I speak my truth, you know, is this going to cause more discontent? Which I think is the. The fear for a lot of nice guys. But in this case, you know, I spoke my truth, and it was met, it was received.
