Masculine spirit and the recovering ‘nice guy’ with Jason Lange

073 Only recently have both women and men been able to liberate themselves from the yoke of patriarchal norms.  The transition to a more egalitarian, post modern society in the last 50 years also meant a rejection of historical narratives about manhood, including what some mythological traditions call the masculine spirit.  In the absence of this archetypal energy, many men languish and struggle with a deep insecurity about their place in a fast changing world.

While the media focuses on caricatures of alpha males and examples of ‘toxic masculinity’, the shadow side of men, especially well intentioned and conscious men, more often appears in the form of the ‘nice guy’.  Dr Robert Glover first coined the term ‘nice guy syndrome’ to describe a complex of self defeating traits, including passivity, excessive people pleasing, covert manipulation and weak personal boundaries. Paradoxically, nice guys rarely get what they truly want from relationships or life by being nice.

In this episode of Awake In Relationship I speak with Jason Lange, men’s embodiment coach, group leader and podcaster, about men’s shadow work to recover the generative power of the masculine spirit.  In this conversation we discuss the origins of nice guy syndrome, it presentation in intimate relationships and creating transformative spaces for men to be seen and supported to rise to the challenge of modern masculinity.

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Transcript

From Macho To Nice Guy

Jason Lange 0:00

I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy that is a sexual abuser. I don't want to be the guy that is explosive with his rage. Because sometimes, you know, uh, boys are in fact the the um biggest victims of that kind of masculinity, too. Countless stories, right? Fathers, bullies, etc. And the pendulum kind of swung to what we kind of call now the more nice guy, right? Really sensitive guy, really open heart, very attuned, doesn't want to step on anyone's toes, really good natured, but generally has a really hard time setting boundaries, advocating for himself, often holds a lot of shame around his sexual sexuality or desire. And what we found is neither of those two work.

Intro Music 0:51

You're listening to Awake in Relationship with Silas Rose.

Guest Journey Into Men’s Work

Silas Rose 1:10

My name is Silas, and it's Movember, a month dedicated to men's health issues. So I wanted to publish an episode specifically for men. I don't think it's any secret that a lot of guys are struggling right now. Three out of four deaths of despair are men, which is shocking. I don't think men's problems are particularly unique. What is different, though, is the tendency of men to kind of withdraw and self-isolate. Our culture really imprints boys with this sort of stoic mindset, the lone wolf. On whole, women are much better at maintaining social connection and asking for support. Whereas men tend to lick our wounds in silence in a dark cave. There's an African proverb that says, The boy that's not embraced by the village will later return as a man and burn it down to feel its warmth. What gets labeled in the modern parlance as toxic masculinity is actually a loss of connection to what's been described in mythopoetics as the masculine spirit. I really believe that the sexual revolution was liberating for both women and men. However, in the rejection of historical narratives around menhood, we also jettisoned this spirit. Without a direct connection to this archetypal energy, men languish and struggle to find their footing in a rapidly changing world. While the media tends to focus on caricatures of alpha males like Andrew Tate, the more common expression of masculine shadow is hiding in plain view in the form of the 'nice guy'. In his groundbreaking book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Dr. Robert Gulover describes a complex of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors of certain men, particularly conscious, sensitive men, present company excluded, that includes weak personal boundaries, people pleasing, narcissism, covert contracts of manipulation, and a general sense of passivity. So you can imagine it's pretty hard for nice guys to really get what they want from life and relationships. In this episode of Awake In Relationship, I speak with Jason Lange, a men's embodiment coach and group leader, also a fellow podcaster, who does shadow work with men to invite back the power of the masculine spirit. In this conversation, we discuss the origins of Nice Guy syndrome, how it shows up in intimate relationships, and why it's so important to seek the fellowship of other men in the quest to embody a healthy version of masculinity for the modern world. Enjoy.

Jason Lange 5:07

Thanks so much for having me. Pumped to be here.

Silas Rose 5:10

I think a good place to start is your own journey into men's work. When did it start?

Jason Lange 5:18

Yeah, my journey to men's work began in my mid-20s. So about 20 years ago, actually. Um, I had been raised in a family that basically kind of provided for all my basic security needs. We were kind of lower middle class, was a white guy growing up in the Midwest of the US, uh, so had a lot of privilege in a sense. But one thing I became really aware of as I hit my teenage years and particularly kind of went through puberty and started, in my case, some heterosexual, got interested in women, was I just got really uncomfortable. I'd get really clammy in my body, really nervous, anxious. I would ruminate heavily in my mind and really struggled to connect with women. And then simultaneously, I met some great guy friends around that age, but I just started to notice they connected to each other very differently than I did. They would kind of wrestle, horse play, um, mess around a little bit physically in a way that my body just never really instinctually did. And that kind of the, the, the noticing that, and then particularly the pain around not being able to have the relational experiences I wanted with women kind of kickstarted off a journey of, oh my God, I got to, there's got to be some other way to be here. Something must be going on with me. And like a lot of men, I think, you know, this was before podcasts. For me, it started with books, and I got into philosophy and started studying Ken Wilbur and ended up in Boulder, Colorado a number of years later, and luckily got exposed to some really incredible men and some healing modalities I never would have found otherwise. And a big part of that was getting into my first men's group when I was about 26 years old that completely changed the trajectory of my life. And as I went on through my life, took some big adventures because of that men's group. They inspired me to kind of f follow a career in film. So I moved out to Los Angeles. And as I was out there, I quickly realized, wow, I do not do good do as well without men supporting me in this regular way. So I started a new group for myself out there, which I was in for um about 14 years or so. And then um I just started, you know, I was just talking about it so much, just men's groups, men's circles, that people started asking me, you know, can I come sit in in your circle? And at the time we had a closed group, we met in a friend's therapy office, and there was just no room. So eventually around 2017, I just started leading men's groups out of my living room in the middle of Los Angeles and posting them on meetup.com and kind of getting to have the experience of bringing other men into this modality I was so passionate about. And I just found that I liked it so much. I went out, got a whole bunch of training with some other men's work leaders, and then really pivoted my life to trying to bring this work to other guys.

Silas Rose 8:25

Yeah. So you've been doing this a long time. What are some of the challenges that men are kind of going through right now, modern men, that might actually kind of surprise uh the listener?

The Two Broken Masculine Models

Jason Lange 8:38

Yeah, I think um, you know, it's been really interesting because compared to when I first got into a men's group and now things are really changing. Back then, you know, if you mentioned men's group, really the only kind of two big associations most people would have with that would be a church study group, like a Bible group, or a recovery group through something like AA. And now you say men's group, and there's just a lot more awareness of the different ways this is showing up online with more of an emphasis on forward growth and transformation, and really this idea that, you know, it's crazy. There's almost barely a week or two that goes by now where I don't see an article showing up in a major publication about the crisis with men and boys right now, that men and boys are struggling, loneliness is through the roof, um men are much more likely to commit suicide. We die of heart disease earlier, and obviously there's huge changes culturally and politically. That's kind of all swirling together that we're living in this moment in time where, you know, the the work I do, I uh I hold under the umbrella, evolutionary men, where we're being asked to really evolve in a big way, in the sense that most of us were raised kind of with the traditional two paradigms that just aren't working. There's kind of the old school macho, patriarchal, Myerway or the highway guy who kind of takes what he wants, and in a lot of ways, you know, um, is very clear about what he wants as a leader in his life, but really does not have the capacity to attune to others or the impact he's having on his relationships or the environment. And we just have, right, I mean, plenty of um demonstrations of what that kind of masculine can can do in the world. And then it was really, you know, I would kind of say around the 60s and 70s, feminism came along, and there was a bit of a pendulum swing where um through changes in the schooling system, uh, industrial revolution, and where guys were working, Robert Blyse talked a lot about this. You know, fathers would go away to work, boys were increasingly being raised at home by mom, then going to school, being raised by female teachers a lot. There was a big shift. And a lot of boys and a lot of guys I work with, and I would consider myself this, kind of were raised with the awareness of the so-called that guy. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy that is a sexual abuser. I don't want to be the guy that is explosive with his rage. Because sometimes, you know, uh, boys are in fact the the um biggest victims of that kind of masculinity too. Countless stories, right? Fathers, bullies, etc. And the pendulum kind of swung to what we kind of call now the more nice guy, right? Really sensitive guy, really open heart, very attuned, doesn't want to step on anyone's toes, really good natured, but generally has a really hard time setting boundaries, advocating for himself, often holds a lot of shame around his sexual sexuality or desire. And what we found is neither of those two work. Both of those men end up suffering in some extent. And what men are being called to do right now is to evolve beyond that and to be able to hold both, right? To have a wide open heart, sensitive, attuned, connected to our emotions, but also still connected to our power, our desire, our sexuality, our no. And so many of us men have had so little modeling of that, we don't even know where to start. And I think is in that vacuum, we've seen the um prominent uh rising of certain masculine voices out there, the kind of Andrew Tates in the world who are speaking to a vacuum of particularly boys, but a lot of men just don't know how how am I supposed to be? How do I how do I win in this culture, right? A lot of the things I was taught I was supposed to be, right? I mean, a lot of the guys I work with these days, Silas, um, you know, they're in that kind of mid-40s and beyond. They got on the escalator, they did the thing they were supposed to do, they got a job, they got a family, they worked their butts off for years, but they had no training in how to be fathers and how to be husbands and actually be relationally present. And the kids get to that age, we're about to leave the house, and wife's like, we haven't had a relationship in years. I don't love you, I'm leaving you. And the man's like, What? Uh, you know, I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was provisioning, I was bringing in the money, and that's not enough anymore. It is just not enough. We're we're being asked to be more as men in some pretty challenging ways that a lot of guys get lost in just because um, again, we don't have anyone training us or teaching us.

Nice Guy Traits And Costs

Silas Rose 13:54

You spoke about or mentioned, you know, Robert Bly. And that was really kind of my first kind of introduction to this work back in the 90s, the book Iron John.

Jason Lange 14:07

Yeah, yeah.

Silas Rose 14:07

He was also kind of poo-pooed at that time as kind of a reactionary to second wave feminism. And I I personally didn'f jive with that critique. I felt he was very authentic and he really focused on kind of reconnecting to the masculine spirit, and that's kind of what I want to sort of talk about. He called it the wild man, not to be confused with the savage, which is you know the kind of disembodied or disconnected male that you kind of spoke about that maybe Andrew Tate kind of appeals to. How do you define uh masculine spirit, the generative quality?

Defining The Masculine Spirit

Jason Lange 14:50

Yeah, totally. I mean, I I've been getting asked this question a lot recently, and I I wish I had a very succinct answer, but kind of part of what I've been um relaxing into in a sense is the masculine spirit inside all of us, right? Whether we're a male body or a female body, does doesn't even matter, right? I think that's part of what's changing these days too, is we're realizing, oh, uh biology, you know, has certain tendencies, but it doesn't have to be that. And we all have both. And a lot of the work I actually do with men is about bringing a healthy relationship to their inner feminine, which allows them to relax and show up in their masculine. But in sense, you know, the the the masculine spirit to me is the part of us that can witness from a wide open and relaxed perspective what is happening and clearly see where they could bring structure to promote the deepest good, true, and beautiful. Right. So we call that depth in a sense. It's like take the perspective, and out of all the places attention could be, action could be taken, where would create the most benefit? Ideally, like that's the real masculine spirit, in a sense, right? And then we go and we build the system, the structure, the environment, the container, or whatever in order for life to ideally thrive inside. And it is incredibly generative, right? This is one of the things that um I think we're getting to rewrite right now that, you know, there's a great book uh you may have read um came out a couple of years ago, The Flowering Wand, which was really about the change from um back in the day, right? Masculinity and uh our genitals, our penis, they were associated with a wand that created life. So the wizard and his wand, right, would go around and creating life. And then that got changed, you know, particularly uh as it got more associated with the sword cutting, killing, destroying. And part of I think what we're being asked to do in the healthy men's work movement right now is bring back that generative capacity that, yeah, the masculine doesn't have to just tear down. We can actually support the building up and thriving of life as well. And that practice, you know, it's really in a lot of ways the essential masculine practice that has been done since the uh dawn of time, right? To slow down, get still, and become very aware. And then once enough has moved through us that it creates some kind of impulse for creativity, we follow that. And you know, it's it's a very different way of being that a lot of men that I work with have just never done.

Silas Rose 17:52

Right.

Jason Lange 17:52

Whether it's a simple meditative practice, whether it's some some more specific masculine practice that we do, but learning to really get that stillness in the body so we can really observe um our bodies, our hearts, our minds in the environment, etc. So haven't quite nailed that into a succinct podcast line yet, but that's kind of what I've been playing with.

Silas Rose 18:15

No, I think that's a that's a great start. You know, as you're as you're talking, I'm also thinking about the action quality. Probably a lot of the guys that listen to this show, I think would fall into the kind of they're kind of awake conscious guys, right? And they do create space. But the action part is often missing, the the fire to kind of to penetrate obstacles, to move forward.

Heart, Mind, And Core Drive

Jason Lange 18:37

Yeah, that's a big part of the I tend to work a lot with nice guys. And you know, it's a gross oversimplification, but you know, if we if we talk about the body in terms of the the three primary intelligences or energy centers, right? We have the head, the heart, and and kind of the genitals, the sex, the um instinctual part of us. And for a lot of nice guys, right, we're really good at the heart. We often have a lot of awareness up in the mind, but it's the connection to down below that kind of wild man that for a lot of men has been severed. Or frankly, just was never safe for them to express or connect to is more and more what I've seen. Because we've raised in a culture where, oh my God, male sexuality is bad, right? Men are destructive. All they want is X, Y, or Z. And there are definitely men who that's true for, but that is not the majority of men in my experience. And so part of the work is learning to reconnect really to our lower bodies, to our impulses, to our instinct, to that fire, right? Which is deeply related to our sexuality, our creative impulse, right? When we shut off from one, we often shut off from the other. And, you know, I see this so much. I do a lot of work with guys around um dating and relationships. And there's the kind of confusion that happens of why do women just like jerks? You know, why do they always go for the bad guy? I'm this nice guy, and yet they they don't, you know, you're really nice guy, but I just don't feel that da-da-da. And as far as I can tell, what I've seen is really what happens there is a confusion, right? For for anyone familiar with uh canon integral, right? He has this great thing, the pre-trans fallacy, that pre-rational stuff and post-rational stuff often look the same from the outside and they get confused. And the jerk thing, I think, is often like that. Where again, from the outside, these kind of what David Dato would call more stage one men, the kind of macho jerk, I'm just going for what I want. I'm very eye-focused. They have a lot of drive. They're very clear about what they want, right? And it looks like a certain thing that women will often gravitate to, that action, that drive, that willingness to penetrate and take risk. But it's completely different from what a stage three man is, which is a man who is attuned, aware, not only to the other, but also to himself and who can bring that drive forward, but more for the good of all and not just himself. And so it's not that women necessarily want jerks, but they really do often long for a man who is connected to his power, right? Who's connected to his desire, who doesn't collapse in shame, who can be very clear with what he wants and can take the lead. You know, this is a big part of the education I needed, and that I now help men with, is again, when we talk about the kind of cultural evolution, right? Feminism came. And again, a kind of overly generalized way to look at that is women were liberated from the role of just being mothers and childbearing, childbearers. And they were actually allowed to develop their own inner agency, to some extent, their own inner asculine. I can go out, I can have my own desires, I can have my own bank account, I can have a purpose on a job I'm moving towards, I can lead teams. And there's so many women who are just crushing it there now, right? They have incredible jobs, they make a ton of money, often these days more money than their male spouses do. And so it creates this interesting thing where then it's like, well, what do we do as men? And lo and behold, just because uh a lot of modern women can lead and hold the masculine pole, when they get home, they don't necessarily want to, right? Sometimes they want to feel their partner just kind of step in and here's what here's what we're gonna do tonight. I got the bath running for you. I've ordered some food. Tell me about your day, right? And she gets to kind of soften into herself. And that we have to train in that, particularly as nice guys, to kind of connect to that willingness to be in the directive energy of ourselves and others and really take the lead. And frankly, I think it's kind of more important than ever because when we don't do it, again, it opens up this vacuum where those kind of macho men are the only ones around stepping into those spaces. And so I actually think it's a pretty important moment right now. And, you know, count me, count me in uh Silas's. I'm like, to me, nice guy is an incredible evolutionary leap over the macho jerk, right? This is the guy who's actually has more capacity, and it's much easier in my experience to take a nice guy, reconnect him with his core, his power, his drive, his um fire in a sense, than it is to take that guy who's just macho and open him up to his heart. Like, because it it's easier to kind of just grow up that one part that a lot of us guys didn't have. And it turns out men's groups and men's work are an incredible place to do it, which you know, Robert Bly was pretty aware of ahead of the curve, right? He really kind of created the proto first wave men's movement back in the 90s that really was the first one that was like, hey, uh, we need help too, right? For all these years, we've not been allowed to feel we have to destroy our bodies and our work and service, and a lot's getting left behind in what we need to grow and thrive as well. And you're right, people didn't like that. And some people still don't like that. But I think we're starting to see the pendulum swing that as one person at a conference I recently heard is you know, the honest truth is men's work is human work. The more men thrive, the more everyone thrives. Just like the more women thrive, the more everyone thrives. The more it's just the way it is. And the these things don't have to come at the expense of each other.

Silas Rose 24:59

Absolutely. And I think it's important to know that I think men were liberated as well in the sexual evolution. Like you know, we are more we're more than just breadwinners and people that go and kill people, we're more than just aggression.

Stages Of Polarity And Relationship

Jason Lange 25:17

Yeah, I mean, and this is this is the big kind of uh revolution in in masculine culture right now that hey, having feelings, being vulnerable, doing things because they're pleasurable and don't have a productive outcome, that doesn't make you less of a man, right? We're allowed to have those experiences and be in our creativity and our flow. And we don't have to fit into these so-called rigid man box that so many of us were raised around, which in a lot of ways just comes down to to be a man, you have to be invulnerable, right? Particularly here in the in the States, right? We we have the uh, as I kind of joke, the whole romantic notion of the Marlborough man, the rugged cowboy out on the frontier, doesn't need anyone, tough as nails, never shows weakness. And a lot of us are raised with that myth and assuming that that's the way it should be. And the truth is, it kills us as men, right? We die sooner, we get addicted to drugs and alcohol. Um, and we are far more likely, like I said, to commit suicide. Right. I saw one study recently that was like men who strongly associate with very traditional kind of the lower end of those stoic stoic values, like don't feel, don't show weakness, mind over body, way more likely to commit suicide. Because they're disconnected from themselves, from their peers, from the environment, and that has massive consequences on our health.

Silas Rose 27:01

Yeah, I think it's three out of four deaths of despair are men.

Jason Lange 27:07

Yes.

Silas Rose 27:07

Which is crazy. You know, since you brought up David Deida and and the the three stages, um maybe you could talk a bit about the the second stage, because I kind of feel like that's where our culture's at. That's where a lot of men are at. I think that's where a lot of quote, unquote nice guys live.

Jason Lange 27:28

Yeah, so you can think of kind of like I said, stage one is um it tends to be eye-focused and outcome focused. So relationships, even at stage one, which a lot of the world, right, a lot of cultures are still there. They're transactional, right? I bring in food or money and you provide sex and children, right? That like that is kind of the transaction that a lot of society ran off of for a very long time. And those stage one men, like I said, they don't have a ton. It's not really about equal quality or fairness. It's as long as I'm getting what I need, I will give you some of what you need, but it's a transaction, right? And there's hierarchies, and it tends to be very um surface focused as well, right? How much money do you make? What's your status? How young is she? How attractive is her body? Like this is kind of the equation for a lot of that stage one stuff. Stage two, which in a lot of ways I think really did start to emerge, you know, particularly in the 50s and 60s, kind of culturally, as women were allowed to come advance. And then so were men, right? That was kind of uh the rebirth to some extent, it's existed in in different pockets and cultures, but you know, the hippie men, growing our hair out, not having jobs, becoming artists, like we were allowed to be a little bit more, right? The the box expanded a little bit. And relationally, what tends to happen there is stage two becomes way more about fairness and equality, right? So I'll give you some of this and you'll give me some of that. And I want I want to keep it equal. And oh yeah, we can split the bill, right, when we go out to eat. And in a lot of ways, it's about creating um safety and the ability to kind of talk about things is really the big shift. We can suddenly communicate and actually go a little bit deeper than the surface to talk about, oh, when I said this, I noticed you kind of tensed up, and I'm imagining this happened to you. And we process, right, to try to get on the same page. And again, in a lot of stage two work, um, women are often starting to focus on developing their own inner agency and masculine. And men were often starting to focus on, yeah, feelings and attunement and sharing. Our inner world and things that stage one men traditionally aren't allowed to do. So there's kind of like a great leveling. It's like the playing field gets leveled, where whether you're born male or female, like it doesn't matter. Like it's about equality and how do we manage life successfully for each other. And in data speak, right, what tends to happen there is it's very depolarizing because we actually soften our differences. We become more alike, more the same. And it can create deeply intimate relationships in the sense of like, I really know your inner world. You really know my inner world. And we take turns leading things, or we do things all based on consensus, like, okay, I want to go here, you want to go here, okay, but we both want to go here, we're gonna do that kind of stuff. And a lot of modern relationships are either there at that kind of neutralized place, or get even into a little bit more trouble and then they get into reverse polarity, where she's actually holding the masculine a little bit more than him. And if that's desired for both partners, great, it totally works. But a lot of times it's not necessarily desired, it's kind of an adaptation that's played out, and we need some training. And nice guys really tend to live there. Because again, my experience of nice guys, you know, when we talk about it um just even in terms of attachment theory, it's I am willing to put your needs first. Right. The the platitude that, you know, I get the spirit of it, but tends to be such poison for marriages is happy wife, happy life. Because what that often translates to is I'm just gonna do whatever it takes to appease my woman, right? I'm not gonna set boundaries, I'm gonna do what she wants, I'm gonna let whatever. And it often ends up creating a lot of dysfunction in relationships, right? And that's often what the nice guy does, is um our kind of self-sense, which again I would kind of associate with that lower body, those lower chakras. Um, it's a little underdeveloped. So we only feel okay when our partners are approving of us or feeling okay themselves. So if they get in distress, if they don't like us, our self-sense gets shaky, right? It kind of gets a little more anxious, and then we gotta fix them. Be nice, right? Try to try to win them over so their nervous system gets regulated, then our nervous system can get regulated. And the painful thing about it is it just doesn't work, right? Uh I'm I'm pretty close to Dr. Glover, and one of the wild things he tells me is, you know, his book's been out a long time now, and every year it sells more copies than the year before.

Silas Rose 32:54

And I should mention, and people aren't familiar with that book, it's No More Niss Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Glover.

Jason Lange 33:02

Exactly.

Silas Rose 33:02

He's the one that really coined the term uh nice guy syndrome.

The Dark Side Of The Nice Guy

Jason Lange 33:06

Exactly. He totally did. And it's often for a lot of my clients, it's kind of their matrix red pill moment in the good way of whoa, I can totally see what I've been doing now. And now that I see it, oh man, I can't go back, right? Because it's only caused dysfunction.

Silas Rose 33:25

Sometimes being nice isn't isn't so nice is what I'm kind of hearing you say. Um talk about the kind of dark side of the nice guy.

Jason Lange 33:36

Yeah. Yeah, the, you know, uh another amazing phrase Glover um kind of coined in that was covert contracts. And it's this idea where where for a lot of nice guys, we're actually giving in order to get, but without directly asking. So one of the interesting shadows of nice guys is they're often not very honest. They're not very honest about what they're feeling, or they're not very honest about what they're wanting. And, you know, the kind of most uh extreme, often kind of talked about version of this in some sense that we can all kind of feel in the cultural field is oh, I'm gonna be so nice to this woman. Eventually she's gonna have to sleep with me, right? I'm gonna buy all the dinners, I'm gonna go out of the way to pick her up at the airport. I'm just gonna totally overextend myself because there's something I want from her. But what I'm not gonna do is say, I'm really attracted to you. I would love to take you to bed, right? Be direct about it, because then I might get rejected. And that's the real deep fear of nice guys. So we'll do, we'll kind of go around the edges, so to speak, um, and often not be direct and not be honest. And then oftentimes because we're not actually asking for what we want in a direct way, nice guys rarely get what they want in a direct way. So they can build up incredible amounts of resentment and frustration and in their own ways be fairly manipulative because, again, they're trying to get something without clearly asking for it, can be the big shadow in a large part for a lot of nice guys that causes a lot of pain for them and then ends up causing a lot of pain for the people they're in relationships with.

Silas Rose 35:30

So you've already started into the conversation around the recovery process, like a recovering nice guy, lhow does one actually, you know, call back that that masculine spirit in a calibrated way?

Origins In Attachment And Shadow

Jason Lange 35:54

Yeah, totally. Uh I do a lot of shadow work with men and embodiment work, and they really end up being the same thing, but often we have to reclaim right our power, our ability to say no. And with most nice guys, it's not like this developed out of nowhere. There's usually some kind of origin story, right, that often goes back to our primary attachment relationships with our caregivers when we were young. You know, again, very oversimplified, but in a lot of ways, um when we're born, right, we come out with two needs: healthy, secure attachment and a need to be authentic to get our needs met, right? And particularly when we're babies and young toddlers, we cannot survive on our own as humans, right? We're different than a lot of other animals. Some other animals, they come out within an hour, they're running around, right? They could, if if mom or dad left, they could find a way to make it work. Humans, not the case. So we have a very strong attachment need early on. And where things often go wrong for nice guys is at an early age, something happens where in order to keep the attachment alive with one of our primary caregivers to stay safe, we have to start disconnecting from our authenticity. Mom doesn't like it when I get angry, or she gets annoyed if I ask for what I need. Um, and what the shift that tends to happen is, you know, ideally, as we're being raised, the direction of attunement is from caregiver and parent to child. Right? They are attuning to our needs, setting limits sometimes, but they're attuning to our needs, right? I don't expect my 11-month-old to attune to daddy right now. It's just not appropriate. I have the capacity to self-regulate in a way he doesn't, nor should he at this point. He's developing that, right? But for nice guys, that direction gets twisted early and often reversed, where oh my God, what what do who do I need to be right now in order to keep mom regulated so love can keep flowing?

Silas Rose 38:02

I think for a lot of guys there there is this, you know, I guess you'd call it a father wound.

Jason Lange 38:11

Yes, a hundred percent. Um, so it can be mother or father, really, in the sense, but the point is we start disconnecting or ignoring or modifying ourselves to become what we think that caregiver needs, that relationship needs in a sense. And that musculature, then, you know, it keeps us safe. It's a smart adaptation when we're kids. That's a big part of the shadow work here. Is there's nothing wrong with you or broken if you're a nice guy. It's you learn to adapt to a system in order to survive. The challenge is that system you adapted to was totally appropriate, likely, for you as a kid, but now it becomes the barrier to everything you want as a wise, functional adult. So we have to reintegrate a lot of that early childhood stuff of just for a lot of nice guys, right? Just expression. I mean, I can't even tell you how a simple practice I often give nice guys is the willingness to say, ouch. Right? If someone hurts them, if their partner attacks them or demeans them or withdraws, just ouch, that hurt. Because a lot of nice guys, what we'll do is we'll just stuff it inside, keep the smile on, be whatever we need. But there's this idea we have to reconnect to our actual impulses inside of what impacts our body and what do we want and what do we need, including making requests and saying no, right? These are huge things that a lot of nice guys really, really struggle with. So we often do boundary work, we often um learn to express anger, in particular, in a healthy way for nice guys. We often have to unwind a lot of shame. And the shadow work part, again, is trying to connect it in our bodies to where did we learn to do this? It didn't just come out of anywhere, right? And often revisiting those moments and recontextualizing them, and oftentimes even getting to kind of play them out in a different way with sound, breath, or movement, it starts to allow our body to catch back up to the present and okay, I was able to bring that to completion then, so now I can fully be here. And a lot of it is just getting into our bodies, learning to say no, um, becoming aware of these unconscious beliefs that often power us. And for a lot of nice guys, again, um, for many, it's a deep fear of abandonment. Well, the fear is if I truly be myself, everyone's gonna leave me. So I can't be myself.

Boundaries, Anger, And No

Silas Rose 40:57

So we we live in a very kind of disconnected, isolating time. I think both men and women uh suffer s that. But I really believe that women are a lot better at maintaining social connection and and asking for support. Men tend to hide and lick their wounds or, you know, smoke dope and play video games, whatever. A lot of your work is about bringing men together group experiences. So perhaps we could end our conversation, it might be appropriate to kind of just talk about the transformative impact of men sitting in a circle with other men.

Why Men’s Groups Change Everything

Jason Lange 41:38

Yeah, I mean, that you know, I've basically at this point thrown my whole life behind this. I believe it's so important and powerful that really the mission, you know, of my life is every man should be in a men's group, just because of how much it changed me and how much I do see it changing men. And all of these cultural forces we were kind of talking about, they're just accelerating right now, right? COVID, work from home, digital chat bots, social media. It's actually pushing us to be even more disconnected from basic human contact in some pretty profound ways. And I think us men are way more susceptible to that for the very reasons you just stated than a lot of women are by default. You know, there's there's there's whole pathways we can go on as to some of the biological roots for that. A lot of it is cultural as well, for sure. But what I have seen in my life and now the hundreds of men, you know, I've supported in joining groups and experiencing male community is it's just a total game changer, right? So many of us by default live with this lone wolf mentality. And again, it's not like we just made it up. We're often raised this way. These beliefs are pushed into us by both men and women. And um, for a lot of men, sometimes the most damaging things they've experienced were at the hands of other men, right? Fathers, bullies, peers. And so a lot of men learn to keep everything inside so I don't get attacked. And that everything's a competition with other men, right? And rewriting that narrative is so important to me because what happens when we don't have healthy male connection in our lives is a couple of things. This is particularly true for nice guys. Um, if we don't trust the masculine, if we don't trust other men out there, we often don't trust it in ourselves, for one, which creates a lot of those polarity problems we were kind of talking about, or fear of leading, so to speak. And because default masculine culture, again, is being vulnerable, don't share weakness, otherwise, you're going to get called all those locker room names we can imagine. We are emotional creatures. We have feelings, right? As men too. We don't feel safe bringing that to other men. So for a lot of guys, and particularly a lot of nice guys, I have found, they then only feel safe bringing that to women, and particularly bringing it to their intimate partner, which that's great. There's a time and place for. But if your woman is the only place you're bringing your vulnerability, your fear, your shame, your uncertainty, it puts a lot of stress on that relationship. And if we pair that with the fear for a lot of guys of, I don't want to be alone, what I see is a lot of nice guys get into highly dysfunctional relationships because they're so desperate for some kind of connection, they will stay with someone who's not treating them well or stay in a completely sexless marriage for decades. Many men I've worked with, right? But when we start to bring male connection online and realize, wow, I can get a lot of my emotional needs met by other men. Totally revolutionary to some guys. I can get touch needs met by other men. And as we do that, it liberates this kind of desperation and need in our nervous system from only being able to get it from the feminine and from women. And we get to change how we relate and what we're looking for in relationship. And I've certainly felt this in my life. My wife was here, she could tell you. It's a, it's been a totally different experience. Um, you know, if I she had been with partners before who weren't in groups, and if they bring her something, like, oh my God, I I just lost my job. I'm terrified, I'm so scared, I don't know what to do. She's like, Whoa, okay, I don't know, how do I help? Like, do you need me to, what do you need me to do? Right. And she can feel if he needs me, right? And that can be a turnoff sometimes or just overwhelming for the feminine sometimes. But if that same thing happens and I'm like, oh my God, I'm really scared. I lost my job. And uh the guys in my group are helping me figure out a plan and helping me deal with the fear of, you know, what I need to figure out here. And I just wanted to let you know because that's where I'm at right now. It comes, it hit, it hits the nervous system so differently because we're being held in a larger system and context of other men. And last thing I'll say that's so important about this is like we were talking about in the beginning, so many of us guys don't have this modeling for this kind of third-way masculinity of heart connected and balls connected, right? What does that look like? The fastest way I've seen men connect to that is when they're around other men who are doing that. So there's like a direct transmission, and that can really happen in men's groups and men's work where we're around a man and through his presence and how he responds to his stresses in life or another man in the group, it's like, oh, I didn't know that was possible. No one ever told me, right? One of my first experiences um walking into a men's group with a man I ended up training with. Um, you know, I was 26 at the time, so it kind of sounds hilarious, but I see him leading the group, how he's working with men. I even got to see him interact with his wife. And my body just had this experience of, oh, that's what I want to be when I grow up. And it wasn't his job per se, which turns out I ended up kind of doing, but it was how he was being his presence in his body. He was so relaxed, he was so present. He was not afraid to be direct when it came to conflict or discomfort. Um, and it was that transmission that sh started to unlock to my nervous system, oh, there's a totally different way of being here. And now I see this thing in groups I lead all the time where, you know, a man is courageous and brings forward his shame, his grief, his anger, his fear, but he doesn't collapse into it, but he also doesn't posture and pretend like it's not there, he's just in it. I'm here, I might have tears streaming down my face, but I'm but I'm here. Men see that and they realize, oh, it's not weak. I trust that guy more now. That was so courageous, and that it starts to move man from man and create this new context and culture for us and get us deeply connected. Um, one drive I've certainly noticed in myself and so many of the guys I've worked with for the for the masculine and men in particular is we want to have a strong sense of belonging and a strong purpose. And it's really interesting how men's groups can start to fulfill both of those things. Because suddenly we have a small collective that cares about us, is tracking us, loves us enough to give us that kind feedback. If we're a little out of line, so to speak, can support us when we're down, and that at the same time also needs us. And what I mean by that is our presence actually matters, whether we're in group, giving another man feedback, showing up. It matters. And it can fulfill this deep yearning I know I had in so many men I work with of just feeling a part of something and um learning that, oh my God, all the stuff I've been holding alone and trying to figure out alone, I don't have to do that. I can ask for help. I could share what's going on inside. And that in itself becomes such a profound medicine where guys are able to relax and not have to have it always figured out or be perfect. And as I've seen, it even goes beyond then becoming just resilient. It's not even just that we become more resilient, we take that next step to becoming more anti-fragile, where it's like the stresses of life come at us, and our group actually helps us metabolize it and make us even stronger. Like that's the real power of a group where we can then go out and handle even more in life through the feedback we're getting, through the support, through the accountability. And frankly, just for the through the connection, you know, if there's anything else men's group does, I see it just gets men really connected. And when we're connected, it's not that life gets a lot easier, but it sure does get better.

Silas Rose 50:21

Yeah, an important message for guys right now. Thank you so much, Jason. I really enjoyed this conversation. How can people learn more about your work?

Belonging, Purpose, Anti‑Fragility

Jason Lange 50:32

Yeah, absolutely. Best way to keep up with me is at evolutionary.men. So not.com, but dot men. And on there you can see I have a podcast of my own where I talk about this stuff. I have some different writings, and I do some one-on-one coaching, but my real passion is working with guys in groups, helping men start men's groups, get into men's groups, I have shadow work groups, dating groups, just men's groups experiences. So there's a lot of pathways in if you're wanting to find your way to community. And even if you don't work with me, I'm pretty plugged into the men's work movement now. So if you're like, hey, I need to find something local in Atlanta or something, just shoot me a message in the contact um thing and I'll hit my network and see what we can dig up for you.