Being a man often comes with a strong sense of responsibility. There may be an expectation that you should provide, remain dependable, protect the people around you and keep going when things become difficult. You might take pride in being resilient, practical and capable of handling things yourself. These qualities can be deeply important and are not something I believe men need to abandon. Strength, ambition, responsibility and even anger can all have a valuable place in a man’s life.
The difficulty comes when these qualities stop feeling like choices and become rules you are never allowed to break.
Strength can gradually come to mean that you must never struggle. Providing for other people can mean that your own needs always come last. Being dependable can mean that you cannot admit when you are exhausted, frightened or uncertain. Anger may become acceptable because it feels active and powerful, while sadness, shame or vulnerability feel dangerous. A man may understand rationally that it is okay to cry, ask for help or need reassurance, yet still feel something very different when the moment actually comes.
This gap between what a man knows and what he feels is at the heart of many of the men’s issues I encounter in therapy.
What Do We Mean by “Men’s Issues”?
I am not sure there is one neat definition of men’s issues. Men come to therapy with anxiety, depression, anger, relationship difficulties, low self-esteem, body-image concerns, addiction, grief, trauma and many of the same struggles that can affect anyone. However, the way a man understands and responds to those difficulties may have been shaped by what he has learned a man is supposed to be.
These messages do not always arrive as explicit instructions. They can be communicated through families, friendships, schools, workplaces, relationships, social media and the behaviour that receives approval from other men. A boy may learn that crying makes other people uncomfortable, that fear invites ridicule, or that asking for help means he has failed to cope. He may learn that being respected depends on appearing confident, remaining in control and never finding himself at the bottom of the pack.
By adulthood, he may consciously disagree with many of those ideas. He might believe men can be sensitive, nurturing and emotionally expressive. He may want to communicate more openly with his partner or be more affectionate with his friends. Yet the older rules can remain underneath that understanding. They may appear as embarrassment when he becomes tearful, a joke when a conversation gets too close to something painful, or a determination to deal with everything alone even when he is reaching breaking point.
He does not necessarily need to be told that men are allowed to have feelings. He may already know that. The more difficult work is helping him feel safe enough to have them.
When Strength Becomes Something You Cannot Put Down
When a man tells me that he needs to stay strong, I do not immediately try to take that strength away from him. Instead, I become curious about what strength means to him.
Does it mean carrying everything alone? Does it mean never allowing other people to see that he is struggling? Where does asking for help sit within his definition? Could recognising that something is no longer sustainable be the responsible, adult thing to do? Might it require more courage to speak honestly than to continue pretending everything is fine?
This is not about replacing one rigid definition of masculinity with another. Telling a man that he is now supposed to be emotionally articulate, endlessly vulnerable and perfectly secure in himself can simply create a new standard for him to fail. I am more interested in helping men develop a broader and more flexible understanding of strength. One that still contains resilience and responsibility, but also makes room for limits, uncertainty and the ability to receive support.
This feels particularly important when I work with new fathers. Many arrive with an enormous sense of responsibility towards their partner and child. They want to provide financially, contribute domestically, remain emotionally available and be a stable presence for their family. At the same time, they may be surviving on very little sleep, eating poorly and experiencing the shock of how completely life changes when a baby arrives.
Even then, the internal instruction is often to keep going.
Acknowledging his own needs does not mean diminishing a father’s responsibility to his family. In many cases, caring for himself is part of how he sustains it. Taking an hour to exercise, play a video game or sit somewhere quietly does not necessarily mean he is neglecting the people he loves. It may allow him to return more present and resourced. The challenge is learning when to give and when to allow himself to receive, rather than treating self-neglect as proof of his commitment.
Anger Is Not the Problem
Anger is often described as one of the few emotions men are permitted to express. I think there is some truth in that, but I do not believe the answer is to teach men not to become angry. Anger is an important emotion. It can tell us that a boundary has been crossed, something is unjust, or an important need has gone unmet. It can provide the energy to protect ourselves, challenge something harmful or create change.
What matters is how that anger is understood and expressed.
I do not see reacting aggressively as particularly strong or self-respecting. When anger takes control, a man may behave in ways that damage his relationships and leave him feeling ashamed afterwards. However, simply suppressing it is unlikely to help. In therapy, we might slow the experience down and become curious about what is happening beneath it. There may be hurt, fear, humiliation, guilt, rejection or shame that has been much harder to acknowledge.
Recognising those emotions does not weaken the anger or make it illegitimate. It helps the man understand what his anger is trying to do for him. He can then begin to communicate in a way that is more honest, deliberate and respectful—both towards the other person and towards himself.
The Masks Men Learn to Wear
Men will sometimes test the safety of therapy before they trust it. Something painful may be minimised or turned into a joke. A man might apologise for becoming emotional, look away when tears appear, or become visibly uncomfortable when I respond with warmth.
I do not see this as resistance that needs to be broken through. It often makes sense as a way of protecting himself. If openness has previously led to ridicule, rejection or being perceived as less masculine, why would he immediately trust that therapy will be different?
This is why pacing matters. I may initially use language that feels more familiar and accessible to the man sitting opposite me. I am not agreeing with harmful beliefs or pretending not to notice them. I am recognising that emotional safety develops through the relationship and that softness cannot be forced. As trust grows, our language can become broader. We can begin naming shame, fear, tenderness, care and the parts of him he may have spent years keeping out of sight.
At times, I allow men to see when I am emotionally moved by what they tell me. This can initially feel awkward for them, and that is okay. Sometimes another person’s emotional response helps a man recognise the significance of something he has minimised for years. It can communicate that he has been heard, that his experience matters and that care does not have to be threatening or embarrassing.
Eventually, the mask may become less necessary. He may discover that he can be known more fully without becoming less worthy of respect.
What Men Can Offer One Another
Some of my understanding of men comes from facilitating men’s groups in residential addiction treatment. I have seen what happens when a group of men is given enough safety to step outside the usual competition and posturing.
Men who may previously have struggled to speak about their feelings begin recognising themselves in one another. They challenge each other, but the challenge is no longer about establishing who is strongest or who occupies the highest position. It becomes a way of saying: I can see what you are doing, and you do not have to do that here. You can put it down.
Often, they do.
Those experiences have left me unconvinced that men are naturally incapable of emotional depth or intimacy. I think many are responding to a culture in which nobody wants to be the first person to make himself vulnerable. Competition can create an underlying sense of unsafety even when none of the men involved particularly enjoys it. There may be pressure to one-up each other, appear unaffected or avoid expressing affection in case it compromises how they are perceived.
The “no homo” era captured something particularly painful about this. Men could not always tell a male friend that they loved him without immediately distancing themselves from the emotional or sexual implications of what they had said. Affection required a disclaimer.
I believe men are capable of something much richer. A man can care deeply for another man, express that care and remain secure in both his masculinity and his sexuality. He can challenge other men compassionately rather than turning the challenge into another contest. When the social conditions change, men often demonstrate that the capacity for tenderness, empathy and emotional honesty was present all along.
When the Body Becomes Part of the Armour
The expectations placed on men are also increasingly visible in their relationship with their bodies. Just as women have long been told that they should be thin, men are increasingly surrounded by the message that they should be muscular. Social media can create the impression that a particular physique represents discipline, desirability, confidence and masculinity.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to become stronger, enjoying exercise or preferring to look a certain way. The more important question is where that desire comes from.
A man may spend considerable time exercising and appear extremely confident in his body, while privately remaining convinced that he is inadequate. His physique can become part of the mask: evidence that he is desirable, powerful or worthy, even though the wounded part of him remains unchanged underneath it. The body may become somewhere he endlessly tries to solve an emotional problem.
In therapy, I am not interested in telling someone how his body should look. I am interested in the relationship he has with it. Does exercise come from enjoyment, self-respect and a desire to care for himself, or does it feel punishing and compulsive? What happens internally when he misses a workout or fails to reach a particular goal? Does his sense of worth disappear with the definition in his muscles?
Two men may follow almost identical exercise routines while having completely different experiences of themselves. One may be pursuing something from a relatively healed and accepting place; the other may be trying desperately to escape the belief that he will never be enough.
Towards a Broader Masculinity
I sometimes think about what I call “The New Man.” This is not a polished ideal or another collection of expectations men must meet. It is a way of imagining masculinity that is broader, more accepting and less frightened of itself.
The New Man does not need to surrender his ambition, physical strength, anger, responsibility or desire to provide. He may value all of those things. But he can also communicate honestly, receive care, act with empathy and be loving and nurturing. He does not need to reject qualities simply because society has labelled them feminine. He can draw upon every part of himself without experiencing that integration as a threat.
Most importantly, he does not have to divide himself into acceptable and unacceptable pieces. He can become curious about the parts he dislikes rather than trying to overpower them. He can recognise when strength has become armour, when responsibility has become self-neglect, or when anger is protecting something more vulnerable. Masculinity then becomes something he can inhabit rather than something he must constantly prove.
This matters because the consequences of men feeling unable to struggle openly can be profound. In 2024, the registered suicide rate among males in England and Wales was more than three times the female rate. That statistic cannot be explained by one cause, and it would be far too simplistic to attribute it solely to masculinity or men’s reluctance to talk. However, it does underline the importance of creating places where men can acknowledge distress before they reach crisis and ask for support without experiencing that as personal failure. (Office for National Statistics)
Therapy can be one of those places. The aim is not to feminise men, remove their strength or tell them that masculinity itself is the problem. It is to help a man become more emotionally aware, communicate with greater honesty and self-respect, and recognise when old rules are making his life smaller. Over time, he may become more comfortable in his own skin, more able to ask for help, less dependent on achievement or appearance for his worth, and more accepting of himself and other men.
Perhaps the strongest man is not the one who needs nothing and never wavers. Perhaps it is the man who can carry responsibility without disappearing beneath it, who can express anger without being controlled by it, and who is secure enough in himself to love, grieve, rest, receive care and be fully known.
If this resonated with you and you’re a man who’s interested in talking about his issues in counselling, feel free to reach out.
Alternatively, for more information on how I can help with men’s issues, visit my page here.
I support men in Blandford Forum and online.